When my supervisor walked all of us through the initial paperwork, I was surprised to hear some invasive medical health questions that seemed irrelevant. Why do they need to know if I've ever (like, ever, once in my life, even in years past) had a hemorrhoid? How could that possibly help them to understand anything about my current physical condition?
As uncomfortable as it was for me to hear these questions from my supervisor, it must've really sucked to be him and have to explain everything. And it must really suck to be anybody who reads the rest of this blog entry.
Along with the medical history paperwork, we each received our own do-it-yourself stool and urine sample kit, complete with instructions--one page of which doubles as a stool catcher. These instructions are very specific and provide clear directions on how and where to go. Here's a scan of the aforementioned stool catcher.
The writing in the box, "この面を上にしてお使いください" basically says, "Please go on top of this side of the page." The placement of the paper depends on whether you are using a western-style toilet or a Japanese-style squatter. That little guy--we'll call him Poo-san--is actually the bull's eye of a target.
I don't know what's worse: the fact that Poo-san is blissfully standing and waving at me, or the fact that he's green. This color is not only unnatural, but it was also confusing to me when it came time to sort everything out.
Once you have some data to work with (read: poop), you can consult the following guide, entitled The Correct Way to Collect a Stool, for proper technique on obtaining an effective sample.
I'll defer to the diagram if you need to know the next few steps. You'd think it's bad enough that they make you collect your own samples at home. But they make you do it twice, including once on the day before your health check. So you have to have a sample sitting around the house for at least 24 hours. Not that we don't already have plenty of "data" in the diaper bins already.
The "sample" in section 2 is yellow and orange, which is in stark contrast to the viridescence of Poo-san. Ms. Poo, our little "correct answer" sign-holding friend in the bottom-left corner, is pink. I've heard that people who have to drink the barium sulfate solution have stools as white as the driven snow for up to three days. In a land of blue hair (you gotta have blue hair), I shouldn't be surprised at such a wide spectrum of poo hues.
How'd you like to be the person whose job it is to prepare 'how to poo' diagrams? I like to imagine a chipper Japanese woman in her forties presenting the new poo sheet design in PowerPoint to a room full of hardened, middle-aged salarymen, all nodding seriously.
I have a pretty weak stomach, which can be difficult in a land of people seemingly immune to the poop-induced gag reflex. For some reason, they embrace poop out here (well, not literally--though you never, never know). When your kids have soiled diapers in Japan, you have to physically take the poop out and wash it down the toilet before throwing the diaper out with the burnable trash. Popular Japanese video games like Blue Dragon feature characters made of poo, like the Poo Snake.
Online stores in Japan sell a wide range of poo-themed products, like these fashionable hair pins at a Yahoo! shopping store.
You may not know it, but the children's book Everyone Poops is actually a translation of a Japanese book called Minna Unchi.
My supervisor explained that the stool samples, once collected from the green Poo-san paper and labeled, are placed in a green plastic bag and again labeled. That bag goes inside a green paper envelope with my name and info printed on the outside. Upon hearing our displeasure about having to collect our own samples, our supervisor inquired incredulously, "You mean you don't have to poo on a stick every year as part of your job in America?"
For the urine sample, there's a sheet of paper with instructions on how to fold it into a cup to be used for catching the sample.
Origami is fun! Hooray for health checks! The origami cup comes with a little squeeze bottle like the ones they use for soy sauce in bento lunches. I should start a lucrative urine sample/soy sauce bottle recycling business. Once you've got the sample, you label it and put in in a yellow envelope with your pre-printed info.
Yellow goes with yellow and green (or pink/brown/white/yellow/orange, if you want to get technical) goes with green. Sounds logical, right? Well, it's not. My supervisor was wrong about the colors. When I went to get my health check, the people at the reception desk took everything out and switched it around. The urine goes in the green paper envelope, and the stool samples go inside the yellow one. It makes perfect sense. They placed my samples in a huge plastic bag with hundreds of other envelopes. There's something about a whole bunch of people walking around with their own feces that makes my stomach churn.
The rest of the check-up was your standard, wait-in-line stuff. Being my first time, I didn't really know what each procedure entailed. There weren't any signs or arrows guiding us through the building; we were supposed to already know where to go next. If I had done this multiple times already, I'm sure it would've seemed less confusing.
We all went from station to station, shifting over one chair at a time while we waited for vacancies in each test booth. They tested my vision and hearing first. Everything was fine, except for when I stared into some weird eye machine, not knowing what to expect. I asked the doctor what I was supposed to be doing inside the hooded enclosure, and he just told me to be patient since it was all going to be over soon. Out of nowhere, a bright light flashed and my eyes went crazy. I think I may have killed a man in the ensuing daze. Or maybe I just couldn't see straight for a bit. It was one of those two things.
They measured my height and weight, and then calculated my BMI score. I got a chest x-ray, had some blood drawn, had my waist measured, got my heart and lungs checked out with a stethoscope, and even got some weird electrodes stuck to my chest for some sort of heart reading.
I heard a story of one foreign teacher who was so hairy that they couldn't get the electrodes to stick. They had no idea what to do with body hair and ended up forgoing the test altogether. Luckily, my chest is more badlands than jungle--so I had nothing to worry about.
All in all, the procedures weren't so bad. It's probably good for people to have regular health checks. But I definitely could've gone without the "data" extraction procedure.
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