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I am taking palliative medicine.

Now that I have your attention, let me assure you: I have no plans of dying soon, despite my disease being incurable; I will die with it but not from it, as long as I take that one pill every morning before breakfast (which is what palliative medicine is, strictly speaking: relieving symptoms without curing the cause. Think of diabetes and insulin, for example.)

Unfortunately I was running out of my pills and hence, I had to see a doctor to get a new prescription. I decided to go to the Kyoto University Hospital, partly because at least the doctors there (should) speak English, and partly because it is just a stone’s throw away from Ebisu’s. The hospital accepts outpatients from 8:30 to 11:00, so I went there as early as possible.

I arrived at the responsible ward at 8:30 but was slightly surprised that it was empty of both patients and personnel. Somebody told me however, that as a first timer in the hospital, I had to register first on ground floor, counter #2. The hospital appears to be very prepared for the foreigner who does not speak Japanese: The form was in English and the staff has their usual explanations translated and compiled into a long list, so they only need to point at the right sentence in English. My old Austrian drivers licence caused some hilarity (they need a copy of an ID and I don’t carry my passport), but besides that everything went smoothly. I was issued a Hospital Card immediately and, armed with instructions and something that looked like a mobile phone I was sent back up to the responsible ward.

There, I first was handed another form to fill in (medical history), and was then instructed to have my measurements taken. I stepped on a small platform and a machine automatically took my height (less than expected) and my weight (still too much), and then I sat at another one that took my blood pressure (all ok). Then, I had to wait.

Finally, at about 11:20, the phone rang. Well, it’s not really a phone, but some kind of oversized beeper with a large display. When it rings, a message is displayed telling you what to do next. In this case it said “come to examination room 207”, and I dutifully obeyed. The doctor, a nice middle-aged man who spoke excellent English and even some German, was already waiting with my file ready. After discussing the medication and its dosage he asked me to have a blood test done and whether I’d want to wait for the results. I agreed to that, and off I went, first to have my blood taken (everything done and over with in less than 5 minutes), then to have lunch in a coffee shop.

At about a quarter to one the phone rang and I saw the doctor again. We agreed on a slightly lower dosage than what I have been taking until now, he gave me a prescription and a new appointment in 3 months’ time.

Barely out of his examination room, my phone rang again and I was instructed – provided I was finished now – to take all my stuff to ground floor, counter #5, in order to finalise everything and to pay. The paperwork was taken by some clerk, and I was asked to wait in front of several machines where I could pay my bill. “But, how much is it?” I asked, just to get the answer: “You’ll get a message on the phone…” And so I did after maybe another 10 minutes. I put the phone into an extra slot into the machine so the amount was transferred and I could pay by inserting cash or using a card. Once the receipts were printed – very nicely on A4 paper – the phone disappeared automatically and I could leave the hospital.

I then walked across the street, picked one of the pharmacies at random, and while they were filling the prescription, I had to fill in yet another form about my medical history… It seems that Japanese love forms of every provenance.

The whole adventure including the trip to the pharmacy took about five and a half hours, but mostly that was because I had (or chose) to wait. As I have a fixed appointment for next time, it should go much faster then.

Things that surprised me:

• They needed my mother’s name on the application form. Why?
• Everything appears to be highly efficient. You know who’s an office clerk, a doctor, a nurse, they all wear appropriate uniforms. Everything is organised, you know exactly what to do, where to go and when. All forms are in English (even the one in the pharmacy) and the lists with the English sentences are a great help. If you are still unsure, all staff are very friendly and helpful.
• The beeper/mobile phone. You can walk around the whole hospital or have a coffee while you are waiting. There is no need to stay put in your ward and stare at the wall. A brilliant system – and: I got the messages in English! I have heard that those beepers also work across the road in the many little restaurants – buy maybe the beepers for the doctors on call have a larger range?
• My next appointment is in exactly three months, and I received medication to cover exactly those days – and not a single more. Instead of a full package of pills as normal in Europe, the pharmacy handed me a bunch of those blister packages tied with a rubber band in a plastic bag together with a single piece of paper stating how often I need to take them. No package insert listing all hazards when taking this medication – but it may have been different had I said that I could read Japanese.

So yes, despite the endless wait it was a rather pleasant experience, and I’m looking forward to the next appointment.

It was a very nice day today, hot and comparatively dry. The maximum temperature was 38 degrees, with a humidity of about 40 percent, and it was cloudy enough that the sun didn’t heat up my room to resemble a sauna.

I took myself as usual to my favourite place at Yoshida shrine until the late afternoon, when I could hear thunder in the distance. I then sat at my window watching the storm approaching over the city from the South where there are no mountains. It took only half an hour and lots of lightning – which unfortunately I was always just a fraction too late to capture on camera – until the rain finally arrived at Ebisu’s. And then, everything was over almost as quickly.

Thunderstorms in this part of the world are not overly pleasant, I think. While in Austria, a summer storm is always a reason to be grateful for as it cools the area and leaves fresh air behind, this is not so in Asia, as I had to find out before. Mostly, the rain has no cooling effect whatsoever, and there is hardly any fresh air afterwards, although there may be this nice “wet” smell lingering for a short while. Thunderstorms in these parts seem only to be there to raise the humidity, so the general feeling when one has just passed is one of increased stickiness, which is not really something to look forward to.

This time, probably because the storm came so late in the afternoon, there was an unexpected and quite refreshing drop in temperature of about 5 degrees. It does feel nice and cool right now, I may even need a blanket for the first time since I returned from vacation! Unfortunately, humidity has doubled to 80 percent – and it may stay just like that tomorrow…

Isn’t it nice to be able to complain about the weather no matter what it is and where you are? 😉

Near Ebisus’s there is a small sento or public bath. A sento follows the same principle as an onsen – another type of public bath – but there are small differences: The biggest one is that a sento does not draw its water from its own well. Sento use normal tap water which does not have any minerals in it. Also, traditionally, a sento consists of an entrance/changing room and then the bathroom with at least one large tub. The facilities for men and women are next to each other, mirrored along a separating wall – which does not reach to the ceiling! So, you can hear what’s going on on the other side. Modern sento are almost sterile and boring affairs with white tiling all over, but I have seen old ones with beautiful paintings on the walls – and a considerably lower separating wall…

The other day I went, one of my housemates in tow, to said sento nearby Ebisu’s. It had four adjacent tubs, all with the same water temperature (onsen usually have several, differently tempered tubs). One tub was scented with lemon (the smell of the week), there was a large and deep normal tub and one Jacuzzi style, also relatively common.

However, I have never before encountered a tub with electrified water. It was a very small one only, meant for one person, and, at the left and right walls, about 20 cm under the water level, there were some type of pads, maybe 12 x 60 cm in size. Between them, a current was flowing. The feeling when passing through was … strange, scary almost.

At first, there was only a small tingly sensation on the skin. Standing right in the middle of the pads though, the current forces the muscles to contract. It is nearly impossible to voluntarily counteract this contraction, and I am not sure this is entirely owed to a lack of strength on my part. It’s not really painful, or not meant to be, but it is an odd feeling if your body is doing something you cannot influence one way or the other.

Personally I found the experience interesting, but I will not repeat it again very soon. Unfortunately I have had some problems with my hip for quite some time now, which has certainly been aggravated by sitting on the floor and running around for days on end… When I passed through the current, my hip muscles contracted involuntarily, there was a sharp pain – and now walking around is more painful than before and I will need to take even more frequent breaks on my trips through town… Well, good to know that this kind of electric shock therapy is not doing me any good.