A couple Fridays ago, I took my first trip to a Japanese hospital. Don't worry, it was just a routine visit to the hospital to get a medical examination. However, I did see a few interesting things that I will describe in further detail.

Hospitals in Japan are generally kept in very good condition. The hospital that I went to had a ground floor emergency room and where I was required to go was the 2nd/3rd floor checkup facilities. There were at least 20 other people there that were getting check-ups so I am guessing that hospital is a hotspot for insurance companies to send the employees to. 

Unfortunately I did not take any photos, so I will do my best to describe the location. The waiting room was huge! And I mean huge as in they had a giant TV with the World Series on. They also had at least 80 seats with 2 massage chairs. I wish Canadian hospitals had massage chairs in the waiting rooms! The waiting rooms downstairs at the emergency floor also had giant plasma TVs.  Damn.

Well like you know, the reason why I went to the hospital was to get a routine physical examination. This health check wasn't too hard. The only hard part about it was that they spoke Japanese only. That's why I went with my company friend who spoke both English and Japanese. During the examination, you basically proceed from room to room until you reach level 5, errr room 5. Then after that you pay your fees and go home.

Room 1-3 involved checking your weight, height, eyes, ears, and blood pressure. The weight and height check was routine but the eye and ear examination was interesting.  For the eye examination, they check to see if you are blind by having you read various sizes of a rotated letter "E". You just need to say if the "E" is rotated up, down, left, or right. After that, they check if you can hear low and high frequency sounds. This was all pretty basic so far. After checking your blood pressure in room 2, you go and talk with a doctor who pretty much told me that from the results in room 1-3, I was healthy.

At room 4, they do blood work and check your heart. They do a blood drain from the elbow, which in my experience is usually taken from the forearm or bicep. For checking the heart, they check it's pulse at different parts of your body by using suction cups. I assure you that they check it nowhere interesting =p.

Room 5 is definitely the hardest stage of them all. To check for cancer tumours, they use a medicine called Valium that allows them to see organs quite clearly (I think that's it's purpose). I got to see the X-Ray machine live while the doctor was checking my friend's insides. It was quite interesting to be in the control panel and seeing the X-Ray machine live. The reason why this one was the hardest stage of them all is because they make you take Valium and for it to work to allow the doctor to check your organs, you have to follow detailed instructions given by the doctor. The hardest of these instructions involved rotating on the spot 2 times while you are lying down on your back. Valium makes your stomach full and mouth and neck thicken, so talking and moving seems funny. It was an interesting experience to say the least and at the end of the Valium check they pull out a little robotic arm that punches you in the stomach. What does this check? I still don't know.

After taking the valium, I heard that if you do not drink enough water and did not follow the instructions the doctor gave you, it could solidify in your butt. This would be twice as bad for me because the doctor actually asked me to take 2 times the traditional dose because my stomach was too small. Luckily, they give you pills to make you have diarrhea so I didn't have to face this potentially terrible ending, but the voyage was pretty stinky.