Wanna know how I know I'm gay?

So, I know what you're thinking: "Merican, you said you've been in Japan for more than two years.  Why are you just now starting to write about it?"

An abundance of free time, I'm afraid.

For you see, gentle readers.  I am not well.  And I don't mean "I'm not well and am now airing my grievances on the Internet for the entire world to see," I mean I'm sick.  I'm a sickly person and I always have been.  I've had more obscure jungle diseases than Tarzan.  And you know why?  Because Tarzan is a strong, healthy, Adonis, and I am a pale, sickly, anemic man.  But what I have in illnesses I make up for in lost wages free time.

But there's being sick, and then there's being sick in Japan.  Because in Japan, everything--and I mean everything--is a cold.  In the two times that I had food poisoning in Japan (delicious as it may be, don't eat the raw chicken dishes in Japan.  Japanese people can walk away from it, Americans wind up laying in bed moaning and wailing as they shit their lungs out), both were declared by the first doctors I saw "a cold" and by the hospital people in the emergency room "food poisoning leading to dangerous levels of dehydration."  My fiancee had her pneumonia, flu, and mono all originally diagnosed as "a cold." Japan is so devoted to getting you back to your rightful place (the office) that a protruding femur is "a case of the sniffles."

  Pictured: a cold in Japan.  Also, those aren't my pearls.

I hurt my toe a few months ago, and unlike normal people, and really, really unlike Wolverine, I didn't get better.  In fact, it got worse.  Ever had an ingrown toenail?  Not like this one, I promise.  Fortunately, the surgeon was really nice and had a good sense of humor (he even laughed at me when I put my hospital gown on backwards.  Wearing it with it open in the ass is common in the States, doctor).  Fortunately, my fiance was allowed to come into the operating room and we had a nice conversation about our upcoming farewell party in between my intermittent screams of agony and pleas for more anesthetic.

Because the painkillers in Japan, aren't.

Don't get me wrong, the local stuff was balls-out.  I'm talking about the painkiller that every Japanese person and every person in Japan has been prescribed a thousand times and has worked absolutely zero: Loxonin.  Everyone's had this stuff, and it never, ever fucking works.  60mg of this stuff is barely half a Baby Aspirin in the States.  So this time, I thought I was going to outsmart the system and beg and plead for some real painkillers.  Vicodin.  Percocet.  Oxycotin.  Gin.  Anything.  Guess what I got?

English translation: Loxonin.

Beaten.

So I did what anyone in my position would do: go to another doctor and beg and plead for more drugs.  What I got, was this:

Pictured: proof that in Japan "you can take your painkillers and shove them up your ass" 

isn't just the prevailing attitude, but actually medical advice

At a time like this, all I can remember are the immortal words of Bugs Bunny: "Just remember, you asked for it." (by the way, that picture was snapped literally seconds before that thing went up my ass.  Bless you, Internet)

And you know what?  It was good.  

 

It worked.  It actually, actually worked.  And eight hours later, I bounded hobbled pitifully to the bathroom to insert another stake of opiate goodness into my rectum.  And will continue to do so for the next five days.  So Japan, for going above and beyond all expectations and delivering to me prescription ass-heroin, I say bless you.  And also, thanks for the instructions.  I wouldn't have been able to figure it out myself.