Delicious Pain: A Tale from a Tokyo Hospital

Since being born blue a month early, head to head, with my identical twin in photo finish fashion (Nobody knows which one of us was born first. I think it was me because she was dead at the time.) I've spent more time than my fair share in a hospital. Over the past ten years, I've had four knee surgeries in Tokyo. Several years ago, I snapped my ACL ligament doing a jump kick in karate class. (I know, I'm a jackass.) The doctor at the time wouldn't fix it because, in the doctor's words, "You're not an athlete. You're a woman." As a result, I've needed patch up surgeries over the years. This year, I've finally got the ACL repaired. Here's one thing I've learned over the years.

In Japanese hospitals, pain is considered a relatively good thing. When my kneecap broke in three places and my leg started to spasm, causing me to internally stab my thigh over and over, I screamed for morphine. The doctors and nurses laughed. " You're not getting morphine! You don't have brain cancer." I was encouraged by the ER nurse to look around and see all the other patients correctly suffering in silence as they waited to be treated. I look up and sure enough, there in front of me was a salary man with a samurai sword through his head waiting patiently as he pretended to be asleep, or maybe he was dead. I don't know. All I know is that the only other people screaming were two, what looked like 7 year-old boys with broken fingers. The three of us locked eyes and began screaming in unison, creating a Bermuda Triangle of Pain. By that, I mean everyone around us pretended we didn't exist. A few minutes later, the doctor agreed to give me a "mild morphine". However, they only had suppositories. Yep, that's right, the home of the space-age toilet doesn't have chewables. The nurse said,"We will have to remove your clothing." "I can't move!" "What do you want us to do?" "Cut them off and stick the morphine up me!" "But they are nice clothes!" "They are from Uniqlo. Cut them OFF!" Had I been in America, the nurse would have been cutting through my clothes with massive shears as I was wheeled into the ER saying something along the lines of, " Oh, I'm sorry, did you want to wear your wedding dress again?"

Perhaps the best example of just how comfortable Japan is with pain is the fact that friends smuggled drugs into the hospital for me. Yup, I routinely got gifted chocolate, Starbucks and a bottle of valium. I soon became a model patient:)

Famous People in Japan

Being a Westerner in Tokyo has it's perks. One of my elusive favorites is spotting famous people from back home. Stars look so cool, calm and "king of the world" until they arrive in the Land of the Rising Sun. Once they come through customs where they've been shown a picture hard core porn and heroin needles and asked, "Did you bring this with you?" A look of, " What the fuck is going on!?!" sets in on their faces and doesn't go away until they are back sleeping in their own beds in the old country. My first hour in Japan, I saw Sting. Rather, I would have, had I not been in the toilet. All of the other exchange students saw him walk through the gate. ( Apparently, he owns a house in Japan somewhere.) One of the students yelled, " Hey Sting! You're great!" Sting looked at him, decided the student wasn't dangerous, smiled, waved, and disappeared into the crowd. ( Yeah, it's possible for white people to do that here.)

One of my friends stood behind Ray Charles in immigration for a minute until an officer recognized him and called him by name as they opened up a new line for him.

Another friend saw Aerosmith spill out of a McDonald's one morning in Kabukicho, Tokyo's pink district.

I will forever have warm feeling for Downtown's legendary Matsumoto Hitoshi for telling Janet Jackson she never " wanted to talk about anything interesting on his show. Will you please talk about the nipple slip!? You know that's all we want to talk about!" and how well the interpreter managed to ask her something about the weather instead.

I will never forget how a reporter asked the then Governor of California Shwa-chan, who was on a tour to promote California produce to " take off his shirt and flex his muscles for us." (He would not.)

My biggest celeb sighting was a few summers ago at Shibuya crossing. The busiest crossing in the world with over a million people using it a day. shibuya crossing The area is full of 25 year-old girls in micro-mini skirts year-round. Not a single one of them has cellulite, not even a hint of a dimple. I know that because when, in the corner of my eye, I saw cellulite in motion that didn't belong to me, it stopped me. I had to get a better look at this otherwise skinny person in a hot pants. That's when I realized I was looking at Tayor Swift then with a string of flowers in her hair and her entourage flanking her. At the time, she wasn't that famous in Japan but the poor bodyguard treated every single passerby in the crossing like a potential threat. He really need not have worried about them. He should have been walking behind her.

In Memory of Jon, the best boss ever

This week, my boss unexpectedly died of medical complications. He is without a doubt, the best boss I've ever had and he is sorely missed by everyone who knew Jon, especially those who were fortunate enough to work for him. He was a master in the powers of persuasion. I will never forget his soft voice asking me, " Would you mind doing such and such, Spring?" Then, after I've agreed to the request, he'd turn to a manager and say, " Spring said she'd love to do it."

He looked out for all of us and always brought the staff American sized bags of candy we'd almost forgotten existed, such as the frosted pink and white elephant crackers and Reese's peanut butter cups as souviners from his latest weekend trip to Guam.

A fellow techie geek, he was always helpful with personal computer problems, and if he didn't know how to fix it, he'd let you know who could. When I was contemplating buying a NetBook earlier this year, he offered me his old one for ten bucks, saying, " I've got a better one now, I've just been using that old thing as a flashlight." He even recorded the Macy's parade for me , the whole thing, when I commented that I kinda missed watching it. He always approved every staff request happily, in a country where heming and hawing and a dash of guilt is often a prerequisite for any approval given by management.

I will miss sitting with him in the office chatting and joking about TV shows, the eccentric people in our lives and the random information he'd gathered living in Japan some 30 years. ( i.e. Japanese and East German dentists used the same material for fillings and crowns so if you're of a certain age and go to an older dentist in America, he'll assume you've lived in East Germany.)

My coworker worried, " Do you think he knew how much we loved him?" I think he did. When it was announced last month in the break room that he'd be transferred to another office in 2012, it was met with a barrage of "That sucks!" and other expletives I won't write here. I remember Jon smiling at that.

Jon, we miss you and will never forget you