When I first came to Japan I lived in a small farming town in the far north of Honshu. Winter was extremely harsh, and as soon as I showed signs of having caught a cold my local colleagues insisted that I must visit a hospital. This seemed a little excessive to me - I had assumed the first place to head would be a pharmacy, or perhaps a clinic if my symptoms persisted.

A Japanese colleague accompanied me to the nearest public hospital. After registering at the reception I spent an hour being measured and weighed, having my eyesight and hearing checked, and providing various samples. Eventually we were told that the tests were over and that we should wait outside the doctor’s office.

An old noren curtain hung in the entrance to the room, and below it we could see the sensible shoes and stockings of several attendant nurses. In time, a nurse approached the noren and poked her head through the slit in the curtain. She was supposed to be calling the next patient, but when she saw a foreigner sitting across the room she cried ‘Are?!’ (‘What the $&%#?!’), swiftly closed the curtain and backed away into the doctor’s office. Her reaction startled me as much as my presence had clearly surprised her. Meanwhile my cosmopolitan coworker smiled on genially and absorbed the scene.

After a couple of people wearing surgical masks had made their way in and out of the room ? ‘So they’re not working here’, I thought to myself ? it was my turn to see the doctor. I was ushered into his office, changing from shoes to slippers on the way, and a nurse gestured that I should sit on a stool facing him. Without warning, just as I was getting comfortable, someone grabbed the back of my sweater and ripped my clothes over my head from behind. I wondered if this was how they dealt with all patients, and if so why everyone seemed so keen to visit the hospital.

The doctor gave me cursory check with a stethoscope and announced to the room that I had a cold and a fever, which was what I’d told my colleagues four hours previously. He scribbled a prescription and advised three days complete rest. A doctor in my home country would also have recommended rest, but I doubt they would have prescribed a cocktail of four medicines. When I asked what each was for the doctor replied that one was for my cold, one for my fever, and two were for my stomach. ‘But my stomach’s fine’, I protested, and received a glowering look by way of riposte.

On the way to the pharmacy my colleague explained that it was not considered polite to question a doctor in Japan. She also enlightened me on the payments that some doctors then received for prescribing certain medicines, and said the stomach medicine was to prevent side effects from the cold and fever remedies. After three days’ rest, and a course of the drugs for my cold and fever, I was well enough not to need to return to the hospital. I learned a lot during my first experience of Japanese medical services, especially the importance of finding a doctor you are comfortable with and whose advice you trust.

 

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