Last week I went to a pharmacy for the first time since I moved to Japan.  Marty had gone for me before and he hadn’t mentioned any of the differences.  The first thing I had to do was register.  They wanted my name and address.  Then I had to fill in a medical questionnaire regarding any medication I was currently on, what symptoms I currently had, and what the doctor had told me about the medication I was about to be given.

I was there to pick up a prescription for the common cold.  After filling in my symptoms and the required information I was then interviewed by the pharmacist. So I got to waste someone else’s time discussing my rather pathetic cold.

The pharmacist also advised me to use a book to record my medication in.  This book is provided for free but you have to pay a bit extra for each prescription ( a bit being about 20 円, (15p or 22 cents)) as they print out a sticker for the book.  This is an excellent idea.  It means I don’t need to know the Japanese names for my medication and I won’t need to fill in questionnaires or try to explain what I am taking to someone else.

It was nothing like going to get prescription medication in Belfast.  In Belfast you pick up prescription medicine in a chemist that is going to also sell over-the-counter medicine as well as everything from shampoo to face cream.  In Japan these things are bought in drug stores and prescription medicine is dispensed in a pharmacy. Over-the-counter medicine in Japan is still actually behind a counter.  In Belfast you can pick up pain-killers and cold medicine in a garage or a supermarket.  And these are no longer behind a counter in a chemist.  It does make it harder for me to buy tablets in Japan, as I need to know how to ask for them, but it does seem to be a much safer system if less convenient.

I really like traditional Christmas food.  This year we are going out to Roti in Roppongi for Christmas dinner.

The Japanese have started to produce their own Christmas food.  I have been amused by the adverts from Moss Burger wishing people a “Happy X-Moss” and advertising some sort of chicken they plan to sell for Christmas.  Kentucky Fried Chicken produces their version of a Christmas dinner, described as a premium roast chicken, which is sold in a “roast chicken barrel“.  These are very popular and need to be ordered in advance.

The Japanese also have their own Christmas cake.  It’s expensive and made with strawberries and cream.  I’m not that fond of it but I eat it anyway.

I spent all morning at the Ito Hospital.  It was horrible.  I arrived at 8:00am just as it opened.  It took about 10 minutes for me to register as a patient.  By that stage I was already number 267 on the waiting list.  I went up to the waiting room and managed to find a chair.  I was very lucky as the room, which probably held around 200 people comfortably, was already holding more than 300 patients and whatever family members they had brought with them.  And it got worse.  By 9:00am I reckon there were more than 500 people in that room.  It was getting difficult to see the monitors or to work out how to get through the crowds to reach the examination rooms.

When I finally got to see a doctor he didn’t completely agree with the opinion of the doctor I had seen the day before.  Both agree that I have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.  But they disagree as to how serious my hypothyroidism is.  So I got to wait for another 3 hours to have another ultrasound done.  How different can it be to the one that was done on Wednesday afternoon?

I have to go back on the 10th January for more blood tests, another ultrasound and maybe a biopsy.  On the plus side that’s nearly a whole month without having to see a doctor.

We had our first guest to the new apartment tonight.  Everything went really well until we got to the dessert.  I had forgotten to put the Christmas puddings on to steam.  As this would take at least 30 minutes Marty suggested running upstairs to the Sky Lounge and heating them in the microwave.  He poked holes into the lids with a fork and went upstairs.  But he arrived back really quickly as the Lounge was closed.

Now we have three little Christmas puddings that can’t be steamed because of holes in their lids.

At the minute the only Christmas music I get to hear is the really annoying, speeded up, cheesy sounding type that they play in supermarkets to torment shoppers.  I was practically galloping around the store today to “I’ll be Home for Christmas”.

To rectify this problem I created a Christmas play-list.  Since I really like carols and choirs my play-list was starting to sound a bit serious and was lacking any of the fun music associated with Christmas.  I decided to find myself a copy of “Christmas Time” by “The Darkness”.  What I ended up with was some awful thing called “Christmas Time” by “Darkness” from an album called “Christmas Hits”.  I really don’t know how this happened.  Looking at the iTunes store now this song is listed as being by “Backstreet Boys”.  Most definitely a waste of 79p even if the pound is tanking.

Today I had to go to the Doctors.  When I woke up I considered not going because I didn’t feel well.  That my sound strange but I wouldn’t normally bother a doctor with something as simple as the common cold.  And given that my throat was sore, my nose was running, and I kept wanting to sneeze I assumed that’s what I had.  I didn’t even have an appointment to cancel, (the surgery charges 5,250 円 (38 GBP, 57 USD) for one), as I had planned to walk in and wait.  In the end I decided to go anyway because I was really keen to get some blood tests out of the way.

I’m not quite sure how long I spent waiting.  Part of the wait was my own fault as I arrived an hour before the end of their lunch break.  And even though I was near the start of the queue they don’t necessarily see people in the order that they arrive.  It was worth the wait as I got to see an experienced doctor who ordered all my blood tests and quite a few more that I wasn’t expecting.  At first I didn’t mention the cold as it has been drummed into me by doctors in the U.K. that colds are not something you should waste a doctor’s time on.  But when the doctor was looking at my file he pointed out that my body temperature now appeared to be normal when before it was slightly too low.

My body temperature appeared normal because I was running a slight fever.  And the doctor then checked my ears, nose, and throat and proclaimed that I had a cold and that he would prescribe medication for this.  He then went on to ask me what my preferences in cold medication were and I told him that I have never been prescribed anything for a cold before.  This made him smile.  He likes the U.K. policy of not visiting a doctor with a cold but told me that in Japan many people prefer to get a prescription from the doctor for this.  I took the prescription.

And now I can tell people that a man who has been a Court physician to the Emperor of Japan treated me for the common cold.

When I was out yesterday I was surrounded by people who were wearing multiple layers of clothes, hats, scarves, and gloves. I know it’s December and that in Japan December is considered to be winter but why dress for winter when it’s still 18 degrees C ( 64 degrees F) outside?

A couple of weeks ago one of my friends sent me a thank you gift that contained packets of Maltesers.  Since moving to Japan I have started to crave these little chocolate honeycomb balls.  Marty also loves Maltesers so they disappeared much too quickly.

Not surprisingly Maltesers aren’t the only thing I miss eating in Japan.  As a Christmas treat I ordered us some food from one of the online British food stores.  It’s expensive to do this, because of the postage costs, but I really wanted a traditional Christmas pudding, cake, and mince pies. In my last order I decided to get some Maltesers.  I must not have been paying enough attention at the time because I made a bit of a mistake.  Today I received 16 boxes of Maltesers. Anyone fancy a game of Malteser Jenga?

A couple of weeks ago Marty bought me a scanner.  For a while now I’ve wanted to do something with the large collection of prints I have taken over the years. I never got round to putting these in albums and the damp air here is causing them to stick together.

I would like to have bought a negative scanner but I rarely use my 35mm camera anymore so this would have had a limited use.  In the end I compromised and bought a flatbed scanner that can also scan some types of negatives.

One of the reasons I moved to digital was that it was becoming too hard to get film printed.  Black and White film had to be posted away and some never came back.  Others came back with prints composed of half one picture and half of another.  Even colour films were ruined.  All my Egyptian films came back too yellow with lots of scratches on the pictures.  When I first saw them I was really worried that something had gone badly wrong with my camera but then I realised that these had been left to dry on something dirty.  I found the Egyptian photographs today but the negatives wouldn’t scan.  So far I haven’t been able to scan many of my negatives.  The process is slow and seems to work less than 50% of the time.  The negatives have to be completely flat and a lot of mine curve slightly.  There are also problems depending on how the negatives have been cut by the processing company.

I did manage to scan a few pictures though and I’m glad that I now have some of these stored on my computer.

We finally got round to buying bikes last weekend. I wasn’t able to get over my love for the first blue bike I saw so I sent Marty out on his own to pick the bikes. He brought me back a bike that is also blue but that cost a fraction of the price of the one I really wanted.

Today we cycled along the Sumida river. I have been ill for weeks and I was shocked at how much it has affected my fitness level. It’s true that I’m still not completely healed but I wasn’t able to cycle for longer than 20 minutes.  It was fun though and I’m looking forward to exploring more in the coming weeks.