Disabled in Japan...getting to know disability

Access all areas: camping trip offers no-holds-barred insight into disability

Immersing disabled with non-disabled to learn and see what it's all about to be disabled.  Camping is a "little inconvenient" as the author says.  

There is a lot about me that you would learn about me if you were with me for 24 hours.  

I love my coffee.  All my coffee mugs have lids.  

I drink everything through a straw.  Coffee....beer...everything!

I kill too much time on the computer.  I can't button a shirt without a small buttoner tool, which I have misplaced.  

Buffets are hard for me...I just don't have good enough balance to carry a plate accross the room without spilling, and if I get a twinge in my back, forget it!   

This doesn't mean I can't do anything....I just do everything differently.

A couple gems from the article:

At Bar in the Dark, my first problem was how to get my beer safely into a glass without it overflowing. I settled for putting my grubby finger over the rim of the glass and waiting for it to get wet. I asked the barman, who was blind, what he does. He said he could tell when his glass was full by the weight.

And:

But the biggest change is in the mind-set of the able-bodied, he said.

"Able-bodied people in Japan are beginning to think of people with disabilities not just as 'the disabled,' but as human beings who can do something for society."