Due to vacation and lack of portable computer, this blog is a little last minute, but that is how it goes sometimes. So, in the Japanese tradition, I WILL DO MY BEST!
When I broke my foot around 6 months ago I found myself in the hospital. This was the first time I found myself hospitalized, either in Japan or in my home country of America. It was only for a month, but it was a lot harder than I expected it to be. For one, I didn't realize how much you need to bring in a Japanese hospital (they actually tell you the stuff you should bring, but I guess I was too out of it after the injury to really read it too carefully) and how little there is to do there. There was a TV room and people did visit me from time to time, but the TV room was always filled with older, sicker people, and there would be just stretches of 5 hours when I just wouldn't have anything to do. I was too sleepy to really concentrate on a book, but too awake to just go to sleep. It was these down times that really hit me the most.
It was in these times that I really appreciated having video games as a hobby. While I love reading, and my kindle was great for the hospital, video games helped me both keep my mind active and deal with not being able to move around and be active. Keeping that sort of movement and activity really helped me keep my spirits high and made daily life in the hospital easier to deal with. As an adult, I could have just did nothing for a month and been fine, but it was such a nice thing to be able to turn on Super Mario Brothers and feel happier about the day. While being an adult helped me realized that I was fine, I wonder how I would have dealt with the day to day monotony and inactivity if I was younger. How could a child deal with all that?
That is why I implore people to consider giving to Child's Play via the Humble Bundle (click here to check it out). It is a charity that gives money to hospitals to pay for video games for the children to play. While you yourself may not play video games, or find them enjoyable, kids of my generation on have enjoyed video games and it brings them a form of entertainment that makes staying in a hospital bearable. The bundle also helps the Electronic Frontier Foundation (which is a non-profit organization that defends peoples' rights of free expression on the internet) and helps independent game makers get their games out. While I support all these causes, people can just donate how much they want to whatever they want. I also enjoyed the games that comes with them if you give any amount, but in the end, that is just a little nice bonus to the charity that you can give peoples' rights, indie game makers, and sick children.
This charity drive does give several opportunities to share, I hope that everyone will at least consider giving, since it is almost that season! And by "season" I mean Thanksgiving, not Christmas, as all the coffee shops in Japan are trying to convince me is right around the corner.
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