A busy Golden Week, and CPR for midgets!
And a busy week since then, seeing as my responsibilities have increased at my workplace, becoming the senior educator in all of my subjects. Consequently, I am in charge of planning all of the classes, arranging homeworks, marking and making sure the syllabus is being followed. It’s a lot of work (more than it sounds) but I’m relishing the extra responsibility and control over my classes. It does mean that if it all goes wrong mid-way through the year, the blame stops with me, but I’m not intending that to happen!
But back to last week, and a series of public holidays collectively known as Golden Week in Japan. This consists of Showa Day (April 29th, but that is a Sunday so the Monday is taken as a holiday), Constitution Memorial Day (May 3rd), Green Day (May 4th) and Children’s Day (May 5th). Consequently, by taking 2 days of annual leave I managed to have 9 days away from work. I was determined to not waste it though and set up diving classes for almost every day of the week. A couple of days before Golden Week started, my first student (and one who was taking a whole range of classes with me) postponed his diving for 3 days as he wanted to go to another island drinking with friends. It was at short notice but I’m pretty tolerant and flexible so rearranged my schedule for him. Unfortunately I had to cancel my first 2 days of instructing due to a cold. And then my student for the 3rd day sent me an email overnight telling me that he couldn’t make the diving due to ill health. I may be sceptical, but I’m hoping he was ill rather than it being a self-inflicted illness! When I heard my customer for a Discover SCUBA experience the net day pulled out, I was feeling decidedly down. After gearing myself up for about 6 weeks for this hige week of diving, almost 4 days had gone and I hadn’t even touched the ocean. I had taught a first aid course to one customer on the Sunday afternoon, who came with one of the strangest questions I have heard so far in my short career. While covering the differences between child & adult CPR, the customer asked “What method should we use if we’re giving CPR to a midget?”. I have absolutely no idea how the customer managed to keep a straight face while they asked that question but that really threw me. Their thinking was that, although they may have a child-like body, their bones would be strong and like an adults. Well, we stopped for a coffee and I was looking on the net but failed to find anything. So if anyone out there is a nurse/paramedic trained in treated midgets/gravity-challenged/whatever-else people, let me know what protocol to follow so I can pass on the advice!
Things picked up on the Tuesday afternoon when I met my first student. He was booked in to do the Advanced Open Water Diver, Enriched Air Diver, Deep Diver, Night Diver, and to start the Rescue Diver & do an Emergency First Response first aid course. I realised within 30 minutes that we were not going to get all of these done without some serious work, as the academic work I’d requested be done before the course started hadn’t really been touched. So we sat and did about half the work I’d wanted to do in about twice the time it took before heading out to the ocean. Things improved from there as we did 2 night dives in almost perfect conditions at Kadena North. The visibility wasn’t great, but the ocean was flat and there was a full moon above offering some light. The dives went very smoothly and we saw a big blue octopus hiding away on the second dive. I shone my torch at it a few times but it had no intention at all of coming out. Some instructors would actually grab the thing and pull it out, but I had no intention of doing that.
And from that evening, the diving work really picked up. The following afternoon I met up with this first student, and another who had flown in from Ishigaki (an outer Okinawan island). We proceeded to do 3 dives in the afternoon and evening, as part of their Advanced Open Water courses. The dives we did were Underwater Naturalist & Underwater Photography for one diver, and Fish ID & Multi-level diving for the other diver, followed by a night dive for both. The activities went really well, the weather was almost perfect, and despite my new student feeling the strain of lugging a tank around on land, both enjoyed their dives. The Underwater Photography one went especially well, and during the summer I am really going to try and push the Digital Underwater Photography Specialty, as it’s got the potential to go down a storm.
Thursday was a big day of diving, with 3 dives planned, and 2 of them deep dives (to around 30m/100ft). For this we headed to a couple of dive sites north of a village called Onna. The first dive site we headed to was called Toilet Bowl. If the winds are coming out of the west or north-west at this dive site, you may as well call it off, and unfortunately there was a slight breeze coming in. If I’d have been diving with Brian then we’d have probably jumped in and made contingency plans incase it got rough. But I was in professional mode here with students which means covering every eventuality. So as aggrieved as I am to do this, I called off that dive. Luckily, we headed about 500m down the coast to a place called Horseshoe and found much more favourable conditions. The sun was beating down and despite a little surge in the entry/exit area, we all agreed to go for it. So I gave a dive site briefing and an activity briefing for the first of our dives as we geared up and then we ventured down the path to the water entry point. It is a little climb the last 2m/6ft or so which isn’t so tough, but which fazed one of the students, who had been used to boat diving until now. My first student made it in and cleared the entrance area but the second one had a lot of difficulty. They made it into the water but then got stuck a little in the surge. While the best thing to do in those situations would just be to kick out about 10ft so you’re past the waves, they were adamant they wanted to get out of the water. The student was sat at the edge with the waves knocking into them, so I grabbed their hand for them to get up but they just claimed they couldn’t get up. In the end it took me and my other student hauling her up onto her feet. I got them both out of the surf and sat onto dry land before I jumped back in and rescued one of their fins which has escaped their grasp. I was in a serious mind to scrap the dive with that student, but after a few minutes of calming down they looked at the water again and realised it was nothing really to be that worried about. After a little more time, we elected to go in again and this time the student made it past the surge area with no problems at all, and after that the ocean was almost flat.
We headed out from the entrance area and down the wall. I love this part of diving: the feeling that you’re almost flying down a coral-covered cliffside. Post-dive, both students told me that they got a huge rush from it too. It was the first time they had done anything like that I think, and that first feeling of making a bog descent is one you always remember. We made a momentary stop on our descent to look at a moray eel which was sticking out from the wall, but this dive was a serious one, and so there wasn’t too much time for sightseeing. We leveled off at 30m and proceeded to do our couple of activities to show the effects of nitrogen narcosis on the body and brain. For non-divers, let me jest explain. Nitrogen narcosis is caused by the nitrogen under high pressure in your blood stream playing around with your nerves. You get a feeling like you’re drunk and this brought rise to Martini’s Law, which states “for every 3m you go below around 24m, add one Martini”! The way to avoid or prevent nitrogen narcosis is very simple: don’t dive deep. Each diver is affected a different way, but for me it just makes me have to really focus and concentrate on what I’m doing. I could tell my students were both a little affected by the depth, and one especially (you can usually see it in their eyes). This was illustrated when I asked one student to tell me how much air they had left. Initially they grabbed their inflator, before realising it wasn’t their gauge and then just shrugging at me nonchalantly, as if to say “I don’t know, you find my gauge and have a look if it’s so important!”. After the activities I noticed both divers were using their air very quickly, and so we started our long, slow ascent to the surface. We made it up and onto shore with no problems, although one of the students barely made it back to the car; a 10l tank was proving to be quite a weight for them. This student didn’t have to do the 2nd deep dive (they were not doing the deep diver specialty) and so I told them to relax, take it easy our of the sun and to rehydrate. The second dive of the day went smoothly, as did the navigation dive taken at a much shallower depth. The Deep Diver specialty course was finished the next day with 2 dives at Maeda Misaki, reaching a depth of 37m. We were aiming for 40m, but my student used air fairly quickly, and what’s a couple of metres between friends. Maeda is looking very good after it’s 5-month refurbishment, with car parking spaces for 100-150 cars and much better facilities. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until they start charging for parking there.
The diving for the week was concluded on Saturday, with 3 fun dives with Brian followed by a final theory session with my student. The fun dives were great at Maeda, despite pouring rain. We hit a maximum 
depth of 35m going along the wall to the south, and on our dives we saw stonefish, a ray (I think a manta, but could have been an eagle), a large lionfish in full flight, and 2 of the biggest eels we’d ever seen. Those things were sticking out of the wall and must have been 1.5m long. You could have got your arm in its mouth (although that wouldn’t be a great idea!). And then that brings you pretty much up to date with things. The talking point of today was probably an ultra right-wing nationalist (oyoku in Japanese) parade/march going past our school and through the village, mid-morning. Looked pretty substantial too, with the black buses playing nationalistic music (see right for an example) and plenty of people walking behind. No doubt it’s got something to do with the Japanese Prime Minister’s comments last week about turning the Japanese “Self Defence Force” into a full-blown military. My students are dead set against the idea, and were very vocal about it in my classes. I’ll write more about this story once I get more information as I hate writing about things without a good knowledge of the facts.
That’s about it for now, and the weekend is almost here. I say almost as I’ve got to work tomorrow for some bizarre reason, but we get Monday off in lieu. I’m not too bothered as I still get a full weekend and will be teaching diving on both Sunday and Monday. Until next time, take care and enjoy the start of summer.
or Discuss this Article
Hi Dave,
Seems like a lot of diving there after allwith some great things that you saw u/w.
Good to see that you have plenty of students, are you making any money at all with teaching and how did the family turn out, did they all get certified?
Dave,
Congrats on the promotion-type thing at school. It shows they appreciate the hard work and commitment you’ve shown to the school and students over the last three years. Well deserved.
Bim x
Hi Dave,
Congrats from me as well for your promotion. Now you really gotta show what you’re up to.
I’m confident that you can pull it off!