you're going to stick me with what?

As I lay reading the book, "Hitching Rides With Buddha", this afternoon (yes, I'm a slow reader...), I suddenly remembered a most peculiar experience that I had in Japan.

One day, while rifling through the usually hard-to-figure-out mail, I found a blue card that looked like some kind of official form, with my name typed on it. I searched it for any familiar Japanese that might explain what it was, but I found nothing. So, to work with me it went the next day, to be translated by one of the teachers I worked with.

It was a form ordering me to show up at a certain time and place for a "medical examination".

Um, what? Who orders this? What are they examining me for? I felt rather uneasy, especially considering the teacher I asked was very matter of fact about it.

What I learned was that everyone apparently goes to these public medical examinations every year - most people's workplaces arrange and deal with it - but because I was a freelance teacher, I was notified by the city where and when the "public" one would be.

Great.

So, the day arrived. It was swelteringly hot. If you have been in Japan in the summer, you know what I mean. If you've ever spent a hot summery day spraying yourself constantly with hot water, then you'll also know what I mean. The heat and humidity in Japan is almost unbearable.
I hopped on my cool retro bike (okay, everyone has those there) and pedalled through the back alleys of our town to the elementary school that this public medical examination was being held at. I had no idea what to expect and I was, needless to say, a little apprehensive.

I walked in the doors with my card in hand, and was struck with the sight of a gymnasium packed full of senior citizens. It made sense, of course, that it would be me, the freelance English teacher, and all the retired people of my town that would be at the public exam.

So there I was. I walked up and stood in a line that looked like the right place to stand. A man sitting behind a table looked at my card and ushered me back outside. He pointed me towards a big white trailer with a lineup of old ladies winding out of it.

What was this? Well, when my turn came up, I walked up the little stairs and stepped inside. The old ladies, all jam packed into a very small, very sweaty room, were stripping off their outer shirts, much to my surprise, and revealing that they were smartly wearing silky, lacy little undershirts. They were ushered into booths one by one, and it was then that I realized I was in an "x-ray trailer". The doctor, or technician, who was ushering them in looked at me and said something in Japanese. He made some gesture towards my boobs and I (somehow) figured out that I couldn't wear a bra in there.

Um, I didn't exactly have a little undershirt on underneath....

So I managed to discreetly loose the bra without losing the shirt, and in I went, into my little cubby, to have my torso x-rayed.

After that hot, sticky, and uncomfortable experience, I figured it couldn't get much worse. I walked back into the school, having redressed and regained my composure. I was ushered into another lineup. When I got to the table, a young man handed me a dixie cup and pointed towards the bathroom. As I walked to the door, I saw people filing out, holding their filled cups.

No way. I have to walk out with my pee in a cup? Yes, and I did it, much to my embarrassment. The man at the table took my cup, stuck a little strip of paper in it, marked something down, and tossed my pee into the "pee collection can" behind him. Yes, they had a large garbage can collecting everyone's pee. Nice.

My dignity being steadily swallowed by my stomach, I moved on. I was ushered into the gymnasium circuit. The place was set up in numbered stations. I started at 1, told them when the green light turned red, they marked it down and I moved on. Station 2 was a hearing station. I raised my hand when I heard a beep. Then there was weight and height. Then the mysterious partitioned off section where (gasp!) I had to take off my top so they could stick rubber suction things all over my abdomen and take some readings.

There were a few more stations, but the last one was the most mysterious, and perhaps the most frightening. It was a shot. Yes, a jab. A needle.

What was in the needle? I didn't know. I wanted to find out, but what could I say more than, "What is that?" I did ask, but I had no idea what the jabber said in response.

So I did what any wise person might have done in the same situation. I said to myself, "Well, everyone else is doing it!" and offered my arm.

Public Medical Examination day was something else. I received a report in the mail weeks later, which I could hardly decipher, talking about my medical state. Then I left the day behind, and decidedly refused to go again the next year.