For the first time in a year and a half I called in sick to work on Friday. Calling in sick in Japan is pretty rare. In my situation, it is a big deal to call in sick because there isn’t really a teacher around to take over for me, so everybody that had classes that day has to reschedule. Also, it doesn’t look good for me, and it doesn’t look good for the company I work for when I can’t make it into teach. But despite all that, I had some serious stomach pains, and so I called in sick and went to the doctor instead on Friday.
The doctor I go to in Okubo is a nice enough guy that listened to my problems, ordered some bloodwork to check the situation, and prescribed a bunch of stomach settling medicine to try to ease the pain. The medicine seemed to work – after a weekend of taking it I feel much better. When the bloodwork came back on Saturday morning he showed me that the results were normal. So we’re not sure why, but I’ll keep on the medicine and maybe visit a specialist next Saturday morning.
The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful. I had to cancel plans to go with Kuniko to Osaka when I had a stomachache on the train going to meet her, but after resting at home that night I was in good enough condition on Sunday to make carnitas for the first time in Japan. They were great, too – braised for 3 hours in the oven and then served in fresh, hot tortillas – so good.
So this week will be interesting to see how my stomach does. We’ve got a party at the end of the week on Friday, and we’re cooking Thai food, so that’ll really put my stomach to the test. I guess we’ll try to burn the engine clean!
