I've go WHAT?!

Greetings, gentle readers. It's been a while. Despite having various things happen, and even more things being on my mind, I have been silent lately. This is due to a potent mixture of me being very busy, and very sick. Yesterday, I had my first vocab quiz, as well as my re-placement test for Reading and Writing Japanese. And I studied for and took both of them feeling like death warmed over.

I'm pretty sure I smoked the vocab test, and as for the written test...

Well. I don't think I should be in that level, anyway. D :

I've also made arrangements to move to a different room in seminar house. The unit I'll be heading for has two less people, and all the people there are serious studiers, and non-to-light-drinkers. From what I can tell, they're about as LOUD as my current roommates, but eh. You can't have everything.

And hopefully this group won't traumatize my speaking partner, leave porn lying around, watch (gay) adult videos on the internet in the common area, graphically describe their "encounters" while I'm eating, develop obsessions with certain words not fit for polite company...

Um.

I could go on, but what's the point.

To sum it up, I'm hoping things will get better.

I was even supposed to move in today, but that didn't happen.

After being sick AND sleep deprived (from studying) yesterday, after my tests were over, I came to the dorm and crashed. I actually crashed in between the tests, too, on a couch in the library. Anyway, I didn't wake up until around 8:00 at night. Then I got up, and sat around feeling wretched for a few hours, until I went back to sleep sometime around midnight.

And I didn't wake up until around 11:00 this morning, despite that being when my first class was.

I was feeling to crappy to care, though. I called the CIE (center for international education) and asked them what I could do about seeing a doctor. Thus begins my wondrous first encounter with the Japanese Medical system.

The first thing you should know about the Japanese Medical system is that they take one hell of a lunch break. It seems that the hospitals are open from 6:00-11:45 am, and then they close. And don't open again until 5:00 or 6:00 pm. Why this is, I have no idea.

In any case, I had no choice but to wait until then, and then go down to the CIE so one of the assistants could take me to the hospital and translate.

So I popped some medicine, and waited. I had originally planned to sleep some more, but by that point I was too awake to drift back off. So I killed what time I had by reading about Transhumanism, Transmetropolitan, The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, and watching Homestar Runner cartoons.

I don't know if it was the medicine, or all the rest I was getting, but by the time I was supposed to go see the doctor, I wasn't feeling like death anymore. I considered not going, but figured, in the end, it would be better to be safe than sorry. (Plus, mom would kill me if I didn't go.)

So, I headed off early. Or so I thought.

It was only about 4:00, and the hospital didn't open until 5. I knew dang well I didn't feel like walking all the way to the CIE, so I decided to take a bus.

Well, it was easier. But it took about the full hour to get there! We kept getting stuck in one spot for ten minutes at a time. We were about a block away from my stop for what seemed like 15 minutes!

In the end, I actually arrived LATE. I met up with the woman who was supposed to help me, and we headed off to the next-nearest hospital. It was about a 3 minutes walk away, as opposed to the NEAREST hospital, which was about 2 minutes away. But that one didn't open until six.
We arrived, and I noticed that we had to take our shoes off and wear these hospital slippers.
Big surprise, they were all Japanese-sized. I had to settle for a pair that my heels protruded about an inch from.

It was definitely a good thing I had a translator there, because we had to fill out some paperwork, like you would at any hospital. However, unlike at MOST hospitals, a doctor saw me within 3 minutes of filling it out. While we were waiting, though, we had to take my temperature.
The nurse came out with a bare thermometer, with no disposable health-guard on it or anything. I was thinking, "Man, no way am I going to put that in my mouth." As it turns out, I didn't have to.

I had to put it in my armpit.

We got the reading, which confirmed that I did in fact have a small fever, and a few minutes later I got to see the doctor. She asked me to open up and say "Ah," ( I guess some things are beyond cultural boundaries), and she used a metal tongue depressor and flashlight to give my throat a once over. She then talked to my translator, who told me I had Tonsillitis.

"I've got WHAT?" I asked. "Uh, just a minute," she responded, and pulled out her electronic dictionary and started punching buttons on it as the exam continued.

Eventually, she told me that my tonsils were infected. However, not in the serious cut-them-out-of-your-throat way. The doctor gave me 5 different kinds of medicine, to take three times a day (after every meal) for three days. One of them was a weird powder, which is apparently very typical of medicine in Japan. However, as much as I might like to experience medicine from the Japanese perspective, I asked for a medicine that I actually knew how to take, and got some more pills.

Then it was time to pay. I asked my translator if they needed my insurance information, but she told me that the proper way to be reimbursed is to keep the receipt, and then contact my insurance provider about a refund. Um... never done that before. But, what other choice did I have?

I paid the $40 I owed out of pocket and left.

Me and my translator split off, after I thanked her profusely for helping a clueless foreigner get some medical attention, and I bought some dinner from the convenience store nearby (since the sum total of the food I have at the dorm is one piece of bread.)

Then I braved the bus yet again, still half-expecting to be commanded to get off halfway there, and made it back home.

I've just had dinner and knocked back five different pills.

I suppose I aught to be feeling better pretty soon. I jusht hoep tey don't side ny hav effexs.

--TIM