(i know, i know, this is from JUNE but i'm gradually catching up to the present, i swear)
Towards the end of my blissful spring month in Nihon, I finally put my Japan Rail Pass to use, heading first to Sendai to see my old friends D and Goichi (that's Goichi below--he sings in a local rock band and was definitely game for some 2pm karaoke!)
Then shinkansen-ing on to Osaka to spend the night in a capsule hotel (Capsule Inn Nanba)...
Some minor drama the next morning when I put in my contacts, because they had been soaking overnight in the solution I had bought at a Osaka pharmacy which turned out to be HARD not SOFT contact solution. This resulted in me, clad in just a yukata in the capsule hotel bathroom, falling down with the sudden burning pain in my right eye, crawling to the wood-floored shower to try to flush it out, being unsure if my contact was still in my eye or had been clawed out of it because of the searing sting of the whole right side of my face... then figuring that it could be nothing, or I could actually be going blind, so rather than gamble it I should see a doctor. I stumbled around the 70s-carpeted capsule corridor trying to change into my clothes and get all my stuff together, then down the creaky elevator (this was one of Japan's very first
capseru hoteru's, after all), completely scaring the
obasan working the front desk with my swollen, red, weeping eye and managing to explain in broken phrasebook Japanese my situation.
I think I said something like this: "Excuse me. I need doctor. Eye problem. Mistake. I mistake. Problem. Now doctor. Eye hurts, very hurts. I'm sorry. Please. Help me. Thank you."
She either understood or took a wild guess as to what some hysterical
gaijin cupping a hand to her scrunched-up bright-red eye could be begging for, and called an ambulance. Into the phone I heard her say the words for "foreigner", "eye", and "doesn't speak Japanese", so I figured we were on the right track, and sat down in the micro-hotel's micro-lobby to wait. About 10 minutes later (I was never so glad for stereotype-affirming Japanese punctuality) the ambulance pulled up, and three EMT-looking guys came in. One of them thankfully spoke English, so I explained my situation in escalating tones of urgency. But he wanted to slow down and discuss where I was from, so he could properly fill out the form.
"Well, I'm from America, but I live in Hong Kong."
"You live Hong Kong, so sight-see in Japan?"
"Well, I am staying with my friend in Tokyo for one month-- now sight-seeing in Japan"
"You live in Tokyo?"
"No, I live in Hong Kong, but I am an American, and I stay in Japan one month for long trip."
"But soon you go back to Hong Kong?"
"No-- first I go back to America, then go back to Hong Kong."
It continued on like this all the way into the backseat of the ambulance and most of the way to the hospital (most of the confusion was definitely due to my answers, but my eye was burning out of my head and I wasn't lucid enough to leave out non-essential information). At one point I called Sarah on my cellphone (there go another 5 Vodafone minutes, at 300 yen-- 3 USD-- a pop) so that she could explain it to them in Japanese, which seemed to settle the issue for the moment. Then I settled back into the beige vinyl ambulance seat (realizing this was my first time in an ambulance, in any country), still cradling my still-crying eye, and starting to wonder why we were rolling along at about 10 mph, with no sirens or lights blaring. I asked.
"We are finding hospital who is not busy."
"How long will that take?"
"Now we are going through Naniwa-ku... [pause for about 5 minutes]... Now it is Yodoyabashi-ku..." Essentially giving me a play-by-play of our progress, though to which "ku" I wasn't sure. Slow and lawful driving is one thing, but permanent cornea damage is another, and upon spotting what looked like an eye-wash sink in the corner of the ambulance, I tried to take charge of my own optical destiny.
"Do you think we should wash my eye?"
"What?" the English-speaker said (he was the driver as well).
"DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD WASH MY EYE-- RINSE WITH WATER. It hurts very bad and I am scared. I am very afraid it is hurt."
"You want to wash your eyes?" he asked, puzzled.
"Well, I'm not a doctor-- do you think it is good idea? To wash eye?"
To this he just chuckled, and continued to drive. Finally we sped up a bit, so I stopped trying to be my own health advocate.
When we stopped in front of a hospital, I got out of the back and was met immediately by an adorably tiny nurse who gently took my arm and led me into the waiting room. The EMT guys explained my situation to everyone, and they sped me up a gleaming escalator to another floor-- let me just say now that Japanese hospitals put American ones to SHAME. I was shuttled into an immaculate waiting room and even more immaculate exam room, where a clean-cut, confidence-inspiring doctor ever-so-softly tended to my eye. He sensitively held my neck as he tipped my head back to put in drops, then stared intensely at my eye through the peep-hole contraption between us-- I thought for a moment I had fallen in love. He told me in accented but elegant English that my eye would be fine, the contact lens itself was nowhere to be found (and no, had not slipped behind my eyeball as I had feared), and that I needed to use drops three times per day (the nurse would take me to the pharmacy to pick them up). So not more than 20 minutes later, I was back on the street, eyedrops in hand ("This is an eye medicine of the cornea protection"), not knowing where on earth I was in the city, but glad to be alive and even better, sighted for the foreseeable future. I gradually found myself on a map, and then spent my last few hours before the train to Kobe wandering around Osaka's shopping districts, joyfully stumbling upon the Organic Building, as well as a cosplay shop called "Stoned Village" and something called an "Ice Dog" (hot dog bun with ice cream inside). Hurray for vision.
