Hopefully my last visit to a Japanese doctor

I'm going to Sapporo in two days for the 50-something annual Sapporo Snow Festival.

As luck, and Murphy, would have it, my body has chosen now to get sick. As good a time as any, I suppose. Lucky for me, whenever I get sick I lose my voice. It's one of those freak occurrences that's not so freaky for me, but other people seem to think is freaky and a sign that I'm dying and therefore I get to stay home from work. It works to my advantage I think.

Normally I avoid doctors. I don't like them, I don't think many of them are very good, and I don't like leaving my house when I feel like shit. However, I'm going to be on a plane in two days, and I'm not sure if it's such a good idea to mix an unknown Japanese medicine with Robitussin, so I went to the doctor. Because I'm sick--and not in my right mind--I didn't bring a book with me to the doctor's office. I met my translator at the station and we went to the doctor's, which is located in the shopping center at my station, as it should be. I sat down while she talked to the receptionist and gave them my insurance information. She gave me a form to fill out--in English!!--describing my symptoms, which consisted of a few boxes of symptoms that I could check. I checked the following: Fever, Sore Throat, Head Ache. They didn't have boxes for Stuffy Nose, Body Aches, Cough, All Around Shitty Feeling. When I turned in the form, the receptionist gave me a thermometer. This thermometer didn't have anything covering the tip. In fact, it looked rather beat up and dirty. I looked at my translator, who told me to put it under my arm. It said 37.5, which apparently means, "Slight fever."

Then the waiting started.

Forty-five minutes later, and god knows how many games of Tetris on my [thankfully] charged cell phone, the receptionist calls my translator up and asks if it's okay if I don't see the main doctor. I can see the assistant doctor from the university quicker than the main doctor. I say that it's fine with me, that I just want to get some medicine and go back to bed. Another thirty minutes pass and I hear a faint, "Jennifah-san" coming from the back of the room. [I always forget to put my last name first.] Behind the rows of sick people is a door which opens into a tiny room where the assistant doctor works. I sit down on a stool in front of the doctor and my translator stands behind me. The doctor starts talking to my translator for some time very quickly. My translator looks down at me and says, "He wants to know if you have diarrhea." This strikes me as a very strange question and I am suddenly reminded of the words of my friend, F., from months ago...

"These people are obsessed with diarrhea! They talk about it all the time. They think it's acceptable to talk about it in class. Do you think that's okay? Me neither! It's sick!"

After I say no, he takes out a metal tongue depressor--METAL!--and looks at my throat, while I'm wondering where he got that thing and who he used it on before me and what they had and whether it's been disinfected since its last use... He then starts writing and talking. My translator tells me that my glands are swollen and I have a cold. He's going to give me some medicine and we have to wait for a little while longer. That turns into another hour, and some more Tetris, followed by twenty minutes at the pharmacy to get six different types of medicine, including two powders, a bottle of something that looks like iodine [that I have to use, "about this much of," and mix it with, "about this much," water] and some green LifeSaver things that I'm to use when my throat hurts, but no more than 6 a day! That's very important! No more than six! To which I say, "Yeah yeah. No more than six... Show me what, 'this much,' of that iodine stuff looks like again."

On the way home, I stop at the video store and pick up "Murder on the Orient Express", mostly because I have fond memories of "Death on the Nile" from childhood... I tell you, that Angela Lansbury's underrated.