Oh, Nippon.

[akujunkan]

Long-time readers of this lj will be familiar with my many run ins with Japan's "health" system, of which this example is one of the country's crowning achievements in weirdness.

Of course, being back in Japan again means being health examined again.

So today I dutifully trotted down to the airstream trailers parked on the uni plaza and submitted myself to the same health check I had to take a mere eight months ago in order to be admitted.

Anyway. It turned out to be a lot less invasive than the health checks I'd undergone as a civil servant. No swallowing bromide. No vampire-worthy levels of blood drawn. No (see above). It looked like it would be over in the blink of an eye, but then I made the unfortunate mistake of informing a nurse that I was currently undergoing a certain biological process.

Now, American physicians often just make note of this and carry on, but not, apparently, their Japanese counterparts. The nurse told the head physician on duty, who handed me a plastic cup and urinalysis vial and told me to bring them back at my leisure. I mean, seriously.

This would NEVER FLY in America. NEVER.

So I'm now walking around with a slightly mushed paper cup (albeit one manufactured for actual use in urinalysis tests, not a dixie cup) and (rather paraphanelia-remininscent) plastic apparatus in my bag. Apparently the contamination they will undergo in there is less worrisome than the presense of some extra platelets. I'm having a much easier time getting over this than I'd anticipated, due in no small part to the fact that I was told to complete a urine test...eh, whenever and wherever I felt like it. I mean, doesn't that defeat a large part of the purpose?

Never change, Japan. Never change.

That will be all.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I used the "biological process" excuse to get out of health checks for the past two years. They found out that I hadn't been checked in two years last month and the excuse no longer flew.

I was much more perturbed by the fact that the woman drawing blood did so sans gloves. She also looked shocked when I told her that that was a filthy practice and refused to give her any.

Went through the electrode thing too. Fortunately, it was just me topless, and not a gaggle of women.

No turd core samples either, thank god. :/

[uberdweeby.livejournal.com]

Uhhh, that's me. I dunno why LJ signed me out. Weird.

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Huh. I wonder why To-town is so much more lax than Ta-town.

I've never actually tried the biological bit as an excuse...it really happened this time & was something I'd rather not have told the nurses and the too-genki male guy in charge of them.

Gross about the gloves, but not uncommon. I've found most dentists in this country don't wear them, which is one more reason why I'm scared of dentists in this country...

[theosakakoneko.livejournal.com]

I don't know how, but I think I never read your other entries on the topic until now.
Eh.
I have done almost all of that and I never thought it was all that strange. Different, but not intrusive. But I got to do it at my school, so it WASN'T intrusive.
And my school didn't make me take a dump on the floor. Your place is WEIRD, man. I did have to use something that sounds like the same thing to take a sample of the same thing, but I got to do it quite normally almost the same way as a urine test, so while it was a bit gross, it wasn't a big deal. Haahaaaa, damn you got screwed. Everything else sounds about the same.
Course the fact that at my school they lined all of us up and made us all just file through the entire thing made it feel a lot more normal. i definitely wouldn't want to go through that alone at City Hall, especially for the first time ever doing it.
This current unfolding with the urine test is prety hilarious.

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Man, I don't mind the health check-up proper, just having to do some of the more invasive tests to check for illnesses that I as an under-forty female who grew up drinking my milk and eating my vegetables am very, very unlikely to suffer from in my lifetime.

And dude, I don't care what anyone says, taking a plungerful of warm turd? Is just not something I can be down with, ever.^^