Finally, I broke down. It’s time to admit it: I need glasses. New glasses, that is, I always had serious problems (astigmatism) with my left eye, in fact, I could not read what I’m writing right now with my left eye only. It’s so bad, that my doctor once told me that essentially my right eye would do all the work and that I would get my driver’s license only as a one-eyed person. That didn’t happen, but it’s a long story… And because my right eye would do double duty, I never really wore glasses for long periods of time; the last ones I bought 10 years ago.
Anyway, since I have lots of writing jobs at the moment, I spend many long hours in front of the screen, and I notice how my eyes are really strained in the evenings, they even feel a bit sore. So, I have decided to look at glasses again, especially for computer work. I did not know, but apparently the blue light emitted by computer screens may cause extra eye strain. There are special glasses for computers with slightly yellow tinged lenses that are supposed to take out most of the blue parts of the spectrum. They are widely available and quite cheap, only 3000 yen a pair.
However, I need correction on top of that, so I was looking for different options. While standard correction, i.e., reading glasses are very cheap, there are also bifocals that can be used for computer work and reading, which cost about 10 times as much. Even though they seem very practical, health insurance doesn’t pay anything for those at all. I mentioned that I needed glasses to a friend of mine who told me that her eye doctor recommended her to use reading glasses that are older or weaker than what she would need now for work on a computer screen. This works because the computer screen should be much further away than a book or mobile phone (at best, about an arm’s length away).
So, for now, I have decided to use my 10 year old glasses while working on the computer. I’ll give it a month or two and then I’ll see if this is enough to reduce the eye strain. If not, I will look into new glasses, possibly even the expensive ones for desk work, even though that will set me back 80.000 yen… Let’s hope that won’t be necessary.