Adventures around town

So I still remain deprived of a proper bank account (and so am stashing my paycheque in the tried-and-true peasant way), but I do have a cellphone! It's deep blue (almost purple), takes pictures, plays TV, sends and receives emails in addition to texts, tells you the time, scans barcodes, but doesn't surf the web... that costs extra, and I am nothing if not prudent with my money that is not in a bank account yet.

This weekend I went to karaoke with two guys from my training group + the coworker of one + the girlfriend of the other. They're all awesome people, and we had a blast. Why has karaoke not caught on in the West? It is clearly the best thing to do with friends - plus there's free drinks (yes, alcoholic and non). That was pretty excellent.

In a not-so-excellent turn of events, I ended up eating some clear plastic mistakenly along with the sausage to which it was attached. After four days of constant nausea and some weird jabbing pains in my abdomen, I nerved up and went to the clinic today, expecting the worst. The clinic I went to is in downtown Sakae, on the 11th floor of a department store building right across from my school. They open at 10am*, so of course I was there at 9:30, after having written down a few choice phrases and words from my dictionary on a piece of paper (clinic, gallbladder surgery, since Sunday, nausea, etc). My coworker had told me where the clinic was earlier, and that he had met with a doctor there who spoke English, but in a limited fashion, and I was fully expecting everyone to stare at me as I tried to communicate in a squalid office, quickly running out of time before I had to go to work.

Not so. I walked into the clinic (after having been lost) at 10am, and the nurse at the desk replied to my bumbling Japanese in clear - if not fluent - English. I was given an English first visit information form, and so I sat on one of the four spacious padded benches in the tastefully-decorated lobby. I barely had time to glance at the flat-screen TV before the nurse came out and took my information form, then gave me a cup and instructed me to give a urine sample. She ushered me down a patterned-wood hallway to the bathroom door, showed me in to the most spacious bathroom I have ever been in, and showed me how to place the finished sample into the discreet cupboard just above the toilet, as it opened on to the adjoining nurses' room desk.

Let me tell you, I have never ever been in a nicer bathroom, and I don't think I ever will be. The decor was wonderful, the sink was something out of a "Perfect Homes" catalogue, the toilet was high-tech and the whole thing was about half the size of my apartment. After this, the nurse took my temperature and I got to sit for about twenty minutes out in the waiting room again before I was ushered in to a small room to see the doctor. Who was both a woman and an English-speaker. Not fluent, of course, but pretty damn near - she reckoned I have an infection of my stomach, after prodding at me, listening to my symptoms, and working with me to find the most accurate words for what I was feeling. At the end of the visit, I walked away with two packets of pills: one for three days, one for six. The whole thing cost me $46**.

I have been teaching classes for exactly a week; I navigated a Japanese health clinic single-handedly; I was complimented by my coworker that I ask the least amount of questions of any newbie so far; I keep being complimented by random Japanese people (my students, the doctor, the nurse, the lady I was talking to in the elevator) on how easy my English is to catch and understand; the weather today was lovely; I am on my way to not being sick anymore.

It's been a good day.

*The earliest I have seen something open in Sakae is 8:30am, and that was like, a breakfast place. Seriously everything opens either at 9 or 10. These people know how to live.

**In the Japanese healthcare system, you pay 30% of the bill, and the government pays the other 70%. Since I don't have my healthcard yet, I have to pay 100% upfront. Best-spent $50 of my life, I'm pretty sure.