Oh my me!

The primary reason (laziness excluded, of course) that it has taken so long for this post to be made is the same reason that I now have an appreciation for the affordability of Japanese health care. I went in to the doctor on Wed. the 22nd, because my right eye had been quite painful all day. What I found out was that I had accrued some cornea damage, and that they were worried it might be infected. They gave me some eyedrops and I came back the next day, and apparently they were alarmed that it had gotten worse so they sent me to the Tokyo University Todai campus hospital, where I received all sorts of antibiotics, in both eyedrop and pill form. As I said, they were a bit alarmed at this stage and so I was to come in the next day, with the understanding that I might need to stay there if it continued to worsen.

Luckily, however, the next day I showed promising signs of recovery, and was allowed to go home after further examination and distribution of medicine. For most of this time I was to be seen walking around with a jerry-rigged gauze eyepatch, as the patch made it easier to just open one eye, and I was still a little photophobic. I was still coming in for a checkup every day, and continued to recover admirably. I was eventually allowed a day off from the hospital, and after the next (most recent) checkup I was allotted a 5-day window before the next one. At this point I am walking around with both eyes open, almost totally recovered. The right eye is still slightly blurry, so small print is sometimes difficult if it isn't too close, but it is still getting better every day and my worries have pretty much fallen to nearly zero.

The doctors were extremely nice and helpful here. I still haven't even paid for my last visit to the very first clinic, as they wanted me to get over to Todai as soon as possible. All in all, this ordeal has cost me probably in the ballpark of $5-600, including medicine and doctor visits, all without any kind of insurance. They apply insurance after the fact here, so the overall cost is likely do drop to an even more dramatically low price. My last checkup barely even cost $15 (1200 yen), less than the usual co-pay back home.


my eye's current condition

also, as the title of this post states, eye in japanese is "me", pronounced may





Sad to say, I don't have all that many pictures from this last week, as my looking around was at a minimum. I was able to go to sumo though, despite my condition, and got some pictures and videos of that.























2 Sundays ago we also participated in part of a Shinto festival, dressing in... interesting attire whilst shouldering a portable shrine (oh my aching shoulders).
I have to run off to class now, but I'll keep updating this with anything I may have forgotten. Sayonara