Japanese Health Care Part 2: Insurance health Checks
Once a year, Japanese employees are requested to take a full health check, provided at the company’s expense, for insurance purposes. Most consider it a free doctor’s visit and are happy to oblige. However, knowing I speak very little Japanese, I was less than eager. No truly good afternoon begins with your (male) Board of Education supervisor trying to express in broken English that he wants you to pee into a cup.
The cup’s only the start. My supervisor quickly excuses himself, leaving me with a Japanese nurse who chirpily litmus tests my sample. This isn’t in a private room mind you; the urine lab has been hastily set up in a public corridor on the second floor of the town hall. She measures my height while the test registers, then apologetically tells me that my urine appears to be slightly less acidic than normal (at least I assume that’s what she was saying – my years as a biomed student taught me how to read these things for myself). I attempted to explain that this was most likely due to the 5 medications I was on – painkiller, anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, multi-vitamins and iron supplements. She seemed to accept this and let me through – but not before telling the next doctor about my urine problem. In fact, all the doctors got told about this, regardless of their area of expertise. I failed to see how the pH of my urine was relevant to my long distance vision, for example.
Standard tests like weight, blood pressure and lung capacity were no real biggie because I already knew what to expect. Corneal examination, I did not. They ask you to put your head under a black cloth and look through a lens framed in a little box, just like an old-school camera. You there staring at a little green light for close to a minute, wondering if something is supposed to be happening, when suddenly you’re blinded by a light brighter than the sun exploding and fall backwards out of the box. Obviously I’ve been in
‘I was surprised.’
Next was a test which I can only assume was similar to an ECG, but was more like a scene from Alien Autopsy. This was followed by a blood test, where I successfully freaked out the nurse with my insistence on watching the needle penetrate my vein (…I have a needle thing…).
Last on the list was a chest X-ray, where you’re permitted to keep your shirt so long as you lose the bra. Here I demonstrated my total gaijin superiority by jumping two Japanese women in the queue – apparently they do not know the legendary remove-your-bra-through-your-sleeve technique. A happy little snap by the most nervous Japanese man in existence (Gaijin boobies! Get them away! AWAY!), and I was free… for another 12 months.
Hey AChan, do you still post on this blog? I started reading it and got into it but you haven't posted since July.
Posted by Anonymous | 9:02 AM
I can't specifically reply to this comment so I hope you'll return to read it. The reason for the dwindling of my posts is privacy and contract complications. JETs such as myself have been specifically warned about blogging, as there is a clause in our contract that states we will not release any information that could be damaging to the Board of Education, the school, its teachers or students. One JET almost lost his job when his school-related blog was discovered. As I know this blog has been found and is being monitored by a member of my local community (with somewhat stalkerish tendencies) I've had to take care in what I post. I'm hoping to be able to keep the blog open, but chances are I'll have to take it down eventually.
Posted by a-chan | 10:01 AM