Seein' Red

Sunday morning came, and I was dead asleep when my alarm went off; I forgot to turn my weekly alarm off that rousts me from bed at 6:30 every morning to catch the 7:15 bus. I opened my eyes, well, one of them, anyway. The other one was still shut; I thought nothing of it, I slung the gunk out of the corners of my eye, pried it open, and promptly fell back asleep.


This is why you shouldn't fall asleep with your contacts in.


I woke up again a few hours later to remove the plastic discs from my eyes. The right eye that would only open with my prying fingers resembled a red grapefruit, that's really really red. My eye was beyond bloodshot, it was like someone took red dye and injected it straight into my eyeball so you can see every tiny, intricate vessel that carries blood and oxygen to and from your windows to the world. Thinking it would go away, I ignored it until lunchtime, when I thought going to the pharmacy to get some sort of eye drops would do the trick. No go; the eye stayed its super-bloodshot red color until night.


Recently I have started going to the gym, and I ventured off to tear up my muscles that night also. After doing a couple sets of curls, I noticed that everything I was seeing through my right eye was tinted red. I hurried off to the gym bathroom to look; I found out the hard way that working out doesn't do much in the way of fixing an infected eye. I called it a day and went home, hoping my fruit-eye would sort itself out in the morning.


No luck.


I woke up with the eye still red as ever. There is a small hospital about 5 minutes away from my house, so I walked over there, told them my idiotic self forgot to take out his contacts, and pointed at my infected eye. Because it was Sunday, there were no optometrists there. They drew me a map to go to the larger hospital in the city. Me, having no sense of direction, helplessly nodded and took their illy-drawn map. After walking about 20 minutes, I got into the viscinity of the hospital. I literally stood staring at the map whilst scratching my head, when a toothless Japanese bum on a bike came up to me and asked if I was lost. He had a beanie, looked like he hadn't showered in a fortnight, and was damned near impossible to understand because it looked like he was losing his teeth by the hour. Although he was the most kind Japanese person I have met to date. We chatted (kinda. I did a a lot of nodding and smiling as he rambled about things I couldn't make out) while he took me to the hospital. I thanked him profusely and headed in.


Again I was forced to explain my stupidly to the clerk and show them my eye. I sat down and waited about 20 minutes until the doctor called my name. Basically, he did a lot of scolding and lecturing on how I need to clean my contacts and clean them out. Then he handed me a prescription and a bill. There are a lot of things to criticize about how Japan runs their country, but I was happier than an overweight quadruple bypass surgery patient in a McDonalds; 600 yen for the medication and 2000 yen for the checkup!


The medication worked like a charm; after about 12 hours my eye was completely cleared up. I no longer looked like Rudolf the red-eyed reindeer.


I suppose I should take out my contacts before I hit the sack to night.


...nah. Too much work.

I'm Famous

Not just famous, but I'm the most popular guy in town. Girls have crushes on me. The guys all think I'm cooler than a genetically created cross of Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Ed Norton. Nevermind that there are only 550 of them, and they're all between the ages of 11 and 14. But damn I feel cool when I'm eating school lunch and teaching kids how to say "fart" and "booger" in English.

Why couldn't it have been like this when I was a student myself? Nevermind the fact that I was a small nerdy kid who rushed home after school every day to try and get past the next level of Doom on my computer. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that I couldn't grow facial hair when I was 12.


Everyday a few of the same kids have their own little rituals they've formed with me. Every time a 6th grader sees me he wants to do techou, which is doing a handshake, but squeezing as hard as you can as a type of game. (I always win. Damn I feel masculine being able to crush an 11 yr old's hand!). A 7th grade girl sees me, greets me, and proceeds to start petting my hair. This usually prompts all of her other girl friends to start playing with my hair, until I have about 10 tiny Japanese hands tugging, stroking, and touching my curls. Another girl always asks me sensei, hima? (are you bored sensei?). Still haven't figured that one out yet. Last Friday I answered cho hima!, "I'm really freakin' bored!", to which she replied casually yappari, "I thought so".

Now I just need to figure out how to make this fame and girls touching my hair transcend into the rest of my life.

An Update and a Promise

I think even as children we are aware of our faults and shortcomings, but it is only as we reach adulthood that we are able to consciously admit them. The older you get, the more you are able to clearly define your own personality, traits, and views of the world. Conversely, the older you get, the less willing you are to change any of this personal attributes. Being in your early 20s is a pivotal time in your life; you aren't old enough to have all of your thoughts and ways of life permanently fixed into your brain, but you are old enough to begin to understand yourself. It's the time of your life where you really have the chance to grow up. And I say "have the chance" because I believe many adults don't take this opportunity to properly give themselves a good looking over to see what areas in their life they can improve on. They usually turn out to work fast-food for a career, become shitty parents, start to stink because the whole shower thing never became habitual.


This is my flaw: I will become very interested and fixated upon something for a short time, and then stop doing it. With the exception of Japanese, this has ruled in all areas of my life: learning guitar, working out, relationships, school work, and of course, updating this damned blog.


So here's my promise. I will, without fail, update every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Three times a week. These days were inspired by my favorite webcomic, XKCD, which consistently updates these three days.

So here's to changing my bad habits. And here's to keeping everyone else partially interested in my blog updated with my Japanesey life.

Sleepless in Nagano

I have to be up in about five hours, but instead I'm giving my blog a long overdue update.


Why?


Because of this damned cough. So I scoured the net for a quick remedy. (Drug stores close at around 8pm here, and convenience stores aren't allowed to sell any drugs.. not even Advil) I read that gargling warm salt water gets rid of a cough pretty quickly. One problem; I have no salt in my apartment. But what is pretty salty?


Shoyu sauce!


I took a cup of that, threw it in my microwave, and warmed it up a bit. I picked up the cup, put about half in my mouth, and tilted my head to gargle. The moment the shoyu reached my thoat, it caused an involuntary coughing reaction. The sauce spat out of my mouth and into the sink.


Okay... a bit too strong.


This time, learning from my mistake, poured about 20% shoyu and filled the rest up with water. I warmed it up and tried again. Drinking diluted shoyu is still pretty damned disgusting, but I gargled away, and my cough isn't gone, but it's certainly muted.

Three points for creativity.


But negative four for making my throat worse that it was by abruptly coughing up shoyu.