Urgh, I’m now on day 2 of a crappy head cold. It’s a little disheartening to learn the hard way that not all Japanese care enough about the people around them to cover their faces when they have a cold. In walking through crowds to and from stations, or standing on tracks in a crowd waiting for a train, I’ve seen a lot of people wearing the “surgical masks”, to keep from spreading their colds via coughing or sneezing. Unfortunately, some people in the crowds have not been so considerate, and I’ve been standing near people who let loose with a cough or sneeze, leaving their clouds of mucus and viruses for others to walk through. It’s hard to avoid them, too, when you basically have to keep moving behind them, or have to grab the hanging straps that have been grabbed by untold others.
At any rate, it hit me Monday evening, the sneezing, the runny nose, the crappy feeling. Tuesday I stayed in the apartment until the evening, when I decided I needed to get some kind of cold medicine, and some food and something to drink. A quick Google search of the expat sites for advice, a little research with my iPhone dictionary app, and I was ready to head to one of the local drugstores ( 薬屋, kusuri ya, literally “medicine shop” ) for some head cold medicine ( 風邪薬, kazegusuri, cold medicine ). I wanted something specifically for the symptoms I had, sneezing ( ãã—ゃã¿, kushyami ) and runny nose ( 鼻水, hanamizu, literally “nose water” ^_^ ). Fortunately I was able to convey this to the pharmacist, who pointed me to a box of something that had most of the words, and double-checked with him to make sure.
So, fortified with hope, I stopped at a combini to pick up dinner and some juice and soda. Different convenience stores stock different things, but they all have a hot food, cold food, and drinks section, so I picked up a tonkatsu meal, which is a fried pork cutlet, on scrambled egg and rice, and a bottle of Kagome vegetable juice. On the way back I passed a vending machine that carried hot and cold drinks, and so I decided to try a “hot lemonade”. Sure enough, a bottle of lemonade came out of the machine, very warm. I bought two, and they were still warm when I got back to the apartment. I drank the bottles of hot lemonade with the cold pills, and as I was eating the tonkatsu, the medicine started working on my cold. I called it an early night a few hours after that, but had to wake up a few times during the night with more sneezing.
Today, Wednesday, I’m feeling a bit better, the cold is still with me but not as bad, and the cold pills are doing their job. I figure I should be back up and about by tomorrow. Hopefully I just caught the same cold everyone in Tokyo seems to have, so that I have immunity and don’t have to worry about it anymore. We’ll see.
Here’s my magic combination that seems to be working on my cold!
Had a bit of a scare this past couple of days, with the pain in my poor, poor tooth getting worse and worse. Fortunately I called the dentist this afternoon after struggling with lunch, and he told me to come in right away, from the symptoms he said he needed to carve away more of the tooth. Apparently I’ve been hitting the tooth whenever I chew, especially at night when I grind my teeth, and so the tooth socket wasn’t getting a chance to heal. In fact what I was doing was, in his words, “like running on a sprained ankle.” I have to admit I was skeptical, since I couldn’t feel the contact, but after just a few seconds of examination he figured out how much to whittle down, and while he was at it he touched up a problem with the bite on one of my new crowns.
He also surprisingly said that acetaminophen works better than ibuprofen or the other NSAIDs for post-dental work pain, in fact he said that they can actually slow the healing. Well, you don’t have to tell me more than once (especially when pain is involved) I walked right out and down to the grocery store in the strip mall and bought me some extra strength generic acetaminophen. Now, over 5 hours since he worked on me, and after two of the pain pills, I’m not wincing with every jaw closing, and it might even be getting better (finally!) Thank you, Dr. Dan Babiec!
So, I just have to focus on the last-minute little things like finishing up my apartment clean-up, telling the bank to let me use my ATM card in Japan, find out just how much or how little the insurance with my company will cover (I bought traveller’s insurance, for, well, insurance!) I’ve been packing clothes away, figuring out how much to take. I was a bit taken aback when I found that it was taking more room than the last time I went for a month, and I finally realized that packing 6 days worth of fall/winter clothes takes up a whole lot more room than 5 days of summer clothes! (I said I get it, I didn’t say I was fast!) So, I will probably add a gym bag of stuff along with my suitcase/backpack combo, and split the clothes between them in case one gets lost or left behind in transit. All the delicate/valuable stuff goes with me in my new camera/laptop backpack!
I was pleasantly surprised to see quite a few trees in this area turning colors, including some very bright yellow maples. Even better, there were two trees in the plaza at work that were just starting to turn orange and yellow, and to top it off, the color is on the sunset side of the trees! Naturally I didn’t have any camera better than my iPhone so I missed the brilliant colors set off beautifully by the setting sun, but I plan to have at least my small camera tomorrow at the same time!
I’ll get you my pretties!
I’m hoping this means that the trees in Tokyo and parts north will be coming into color about now, too, since they’re at about the same latitude, and we have roughly the same climate. But, being the downsider that I am, I’m prepared to make the most of the trip, even if it’s too late or too early for the colors.
… What.
When you randomly wander the Internet like I do, you occasionally stumble across things that not only make you go “hmmm”, you risk finding things that make you go “Lord, what are these people thinking?” One example: this video by Lyall Coburn called “Scary Beautiful”… Continue reading ““Scary Beautiful”? I don’t think so…”
Well, I’ve now (finally) been hit with the pre-trip jitters, and it’s not fun! It was okay when I had 3 months to go, then two, even one month was not bad, but now that it’s less than two weeks to go, it’s “done got real”!
Okay, this is way too good, I think I might have seen this video before. Â Two cats, one game, one hilarious “conversation.” Â Something to lighten up your “Caturday”…
Believe me, I had no idea before watching this that a dubstep mashup like this was even possible. (Note: if you don’t know what dubstep is, or who Skrillex is, here’s a nice video of otters playing with cups: awwww)
Well, I’ve now (finally) been hit with the pre-trip jitters, and it’s not fun! It was okay when I had 3 months to go, then two, even one month was not bad, but now that it’s less than two weeks to go, it’s “done got real”!
Okay, this is way too good, I think I might have seen this video before. Â Two cats, one game, one hilarious “conversation.” Â Something to lighten up your “Caturday”…
