Why one should never agree to having one's wisdom teeth pulled out

I had my widsom teeth pulled out on monday last week. My girlfriend, who's a dentist, recommended me to get them extracted, and since it's very much cheaper having it done here in Japan than in Sweden, I was foolish to believe that it actually was a good idea to get it done.

The clinic I went to (which is where my girlfriend works, but she's working under guidance from the dentist in charge since she started working as a dentist recently) actually has his own operation room. I had come from a quick walk for about 30 minutes to get to the dental clinic, on top of that already being quite nervous, so my pulses was already quite high. Arriving at the clinic I figured I'd lie on a normal dentist's chair for the extraction, so I was kind of surprised being told to put on a green shirt of the type that patients wear for a surgery, being led into an operating room and having a bunch of cables connected to my chest and a beeping pulse meter and being asked to lie down on an operating table. Lying there hearing that damn beeping of my own pulse of course made me even more nervous and the beeping became quicker and quicker.

The process itself was not too bad, just a strange experience. The dentist first started cutting away lots of meat in my mouth with a surgical knife, then taking out a small electrical saw to grind down the bone enough to be able to get a grip of the tooth. The first tooth had to be cut into two parts to be able to get extracted by some reason. At one point during the sawing I was convinced that he was actually sawing somewhere in the front of my mouth. I know that dentist are evil people, but I still found it a bit strange that he would be cutting my bone in the front of the mouth during the extraction of my wisdom teeth. Figured out after a while that due to anaesthesia, I couldn't feel at all what was going on in the back of my mouth, but my bone was vibrating from the sawing, causing it to feel exactly as if the non-anaesthesized part was being cut, just without the pain. Well, if it would be possible to get sawed in the mouth on a non-anaesthesized part without feeling pain that is.

Anyway, I can assure you that it sounds alot more nasty than it was. I had a green paper covering my face and kept my eyes closed so fortunately I didn't have to see what was going on. It was just about staying calm for the a bit more than an hour or so that it took.

What's been quite tough is the aftermath. Been waking up pretty much every morning for the first week like a soldier who wakes up on the warfield with both his legs blown off, dying for a dose of morphine. An intense pain starting from the back of my mouth and reaching out along the jawbone to the front of the mouth, a massive headache on both sides and a tense feeling in my neck. According to my girlfriend the different nerves are connected and brain nerve number 3 or some stuff like that does a good job in spreading the pain all over my head. Thanks for the info, sure helps me alot...

During the first 24 hours it made no big difference if I took painkillers or not, tried for one and a half hour to eat a bowl of soup but finally had to give up after eating half of it and went back to bed.
After withstanding the first day it actually got a bit better and the pain became quite manageable as long as I took painkillers, I'm just wondering how healthy it is to take painkillers three times per day for more than a week. My always troubled stomach has actually gotten a lot better after the teeth extraction though, so maybe I should stick to the painkillers. Or it might just be because I'm eating a lot slower and a bit less than before.
Now, a bit more than a week after the torture began, I'm actually getting better. I can survive with taking painkillers just twice per day. Still quite troublesome with washing the big holes left after the 'amputation' of my teeth and it will be like that for quite a while. Pretty big pieces of food gets stuck in there and I have this thing that looks like a syringe but without a sharp edge that I have to put into the opening of the holes to squirt in some water a few times per day, but I can live with it for a while.

So everyone, my advice is; if you're told by a dentist that you should have your wisdom teeth extracted, run! My girlfriend might not agree with me, but I am now convinced that dentists are evil sadist who loves to inflict a lot of pain on you and then take all your money. Sure, you MIGHT get caries and infections etc if you don't have your wisdom teeth pulled out, but to me it sounds like a piece of cake compared to having them pulled out.

I have to admit that it's quite cool to have your own big nice tooth in a plastic bag though, isn't it?




Finally, one should note that the text above is written after enduring a week of combined mouth, neck and headache, so if you really want to have your wisdom teeth pulled out, go ahead. Just don't come complaining to me afterwards.

So what's up 2009?

First of all, happy new year to everyone!

So what's been up lately?

Well I've had a long winter vacation, which ends today, so from tomorrow I'm back to school.
Did a trip over the new year's holiday to Hakodate on southernmost Hokkaido, from there we continued by train, passing through the longest tunnel in the world, which connects Hokkaido and Honshu, and went to the Iwate prefecture on northern Honshu. Had a good time staying at nice ryokans (japanese style inns) and eating lots of good food.

The snow is pouring down almost everyday, as usual in Sapporo. Nobody feeling like coming over for a visit of the famous Sapporo snow festival in February and go for some skiing and hot spring bathing? It's the last chance since me and my girlfriend will be moving to Sweden by the spring. The amount of snow that falls here in Hokkaido is just incredible. The snow that falls during a whole winter in Stockholm comes pouring down about every third day here. The ski resorts here on Hokkaido are also very nice.

Currently trying to make some plans for the future; what to study when I get back to Stockholm, finding a place to live and hoping I can get back to my former job at the airport in Stockholm for the spring and summer. In other words, I have some stuff to take care of.

If anybody happens to have a sublease apartment big enough for two persons in Stockholm, preferably around the Solna/Norrtull area available from April, please let me know! I will most likely start working at Sas ground services again, so I need to stay somewhere from where I can get to Arlanda airport easily. Since I don't have a car and don't want to spend money for buying one, it pretty much restricts me to the areas where I can get on the airport bus early in the morning, which is in the city, Norrtull and Solna/Ulriksdal.

I really wouldn't mind staying longer in Japan and especially in Sapporo, it's a great place to live, but I want to study at university when I'm finished with my Japanese language studies and other than getting more practise of using the Japanese language, there's not really any good reason to study at a university in Japan. For those of you thinking about studying at a university in Japan, I'll give you my reasons:

Firstly, Japanese universities are expensive, Swedish ones are free. I'm already taking big student loans to be able to study at the language school and it would not be reasonable at all to take more loans for studying 3-4 years at a Japanese university, furthermore, due to the financial crisis the Japanese yen has become about 45% more expensive in relation to the Swedish crowns compared to half a year ago.

Secondly, there's a big difference between a good and a bad university in Japan. If you have studied at a not so famous university, you'll have a tough time finding a job afterwards. Practically all the big companies in Japan only employs graduates from universities with a good reputation. The famous universities in Japan is not very easy to enter, especially for foreigners. There's a lot of tests and examinations, both of the Japanese language and other subjects to pass to enter a university in Japan.

Thirdly, Japanese universities does in general not hold a very high level. Entering Japanese universities is often difficult, but once you manage to enter the university, the courses are not very intense. This does of course differ depending on what you study, but most of the university students in Japan appear to spend more time on part-time work than on studying. This is a well-known problem in Japan and there's a lot of debates going on on how to stop the decline of the Japanese students knowledge.

To summarize it, there's not really any good reason to spend alot of money that I don't have anyway on an education that most likely is of a lower standard than what I can get for free back in Sweden. I need to get something back for those insane taxes I've been paying while working in Sweden, you know. Also, if I study at a university in Sweden I have the possibility of studying as an exchange student in Japan. Exchange students don't have to pay any tuition fee and the Swedish universities only have agreements with the high-level universities in Japan.

My problem now is just to figure out what to study when I return to Sweden. Slightly regret that I didn't study much at all during high-school and therefore have not too good grades, but I'll apply for what seems interesting and if I can't enter I guess I'll just have to study for the university entrance test (Högskoleprovet) and give it a new try 6 or 12 months later.

In other news, I had my wisdom teeth extracted a couple of days ago at the dental clinic where my girlfriend works, the extraction itself was quite tiring and unpleasant, but thanks to anaesthesia, manageable. The pain afterwards for the first 24 hours or so was quite tough though. It's however getting alot better quickly and I hope my slightly swollen face will return to it's normal slim shape soon.

That's it for now, thanks to anyone who bothered reading this long post. If you have anything specific you want me to write about, post a comment! I've got lots of photos and stuff that I could post if anyone's interested.

JLPT level 1 2008

So 2 days ago was finally the day of the JLPT (Japanese language proficiency test), the test that's been the goal of my studies pretty much since passing level 3 of the test 1 year earlier.

I decided quite quickly to skip the level 2 and go straight for the most difficult level 1 test. It's been a really good way of motivating myself. Knowledgewise, the step from where I were by december last year until where I am right now is, if I may say it myself, freaking huge. But to achieve that I've practically been living a strictly disciplined Buddhist monk life the last 6 months. Waking up at 5 every morning, strict discipline, no blog updates, no alcohol and no sex.
....Ehm okay well that's not completely true, but I can say without exaggerating that I've been studying for about 8-10 hours per day for the last 6 months and about 10-12 hours per day pretty much 7 days per week the last 2-3 months. I guess it's because I'm that kind of person. Give me a challenge and I will do almost anything it takes to manage it.

I can honestly say that I've actually been enjoying it most of the time though. It's a nice feeling to notice how your brain quickly adopts to learning tons of new stuff every day. The problem now when the test is over is that I've fallen into some kind of weird anticlimax.
What am I supposed to do now with all my time when I don't have to study like a mad man? My brain's not used to not getting an overdose of information each day. I certainly do have tons of other stuff to do that I've put aside for many months because of my studies that I can take care of now, but it's quite simply more fun to have a goal to aim for and challenge yourself with. So in some strange way feeling kind of lost now the days after the test. It's also been a satisfying feeling over the last months how quickly I can catch up to the same level and even pass many of the Chinese and Korean students in my class, who not only comes from countries with similar languages (Korea) or already knows the kanji characters (China), but also have they been studying Japanese at university for 3-5 years, while I started studying from first beginner level slightly more than 1 and a half year.


About the test, I feel quite sure I managed to pass it, unless I messed up the columns on the answer sheets or something, who knows. The results are not made public until the middle of February and you're not allowed to bring the questions with you after the test, so it's a long wait. However the entire test and the correct answers were leaked on the Internet only a few hours after the test was finished, so had a look at it yesterday and tried to recall my answers to check up if I was correct or not.

I found the listening part of the test quite difficult, other than that the test was quite manageable I think. No part of the test was extraordinary difficult, it was pretty much in line with what I had expected. I'd say it was slightly easier than last year's test, which I did for practise about 3-4 months ago and failed with only a few points, which led me to make my monk lifestyle training even more strict.

Now it's just a long wait until the middle of February when I get the result, let's hold our thumbs that everything goes well!

Photos from the summer vacation

Did some travelling during the summer vacation in August.

Firstly, here's a few pics from the Iwate prefecture on northern Honshu (the main island of Japan).

All photos are clickable for high resolution. Photos may not be used for any purpose without my permission.




A famous cave called 龍泉洞, Ryusendo. Pretty cool stalactites huh? (thanks wikipedia for reminding me it's called stalactites).





Signs in funny English are always appreciated. Luckily they can be found at many places in Japan. Even in caves!





Because of the high humidity and hot summers, the greenery in Japan is just incredibly dense. Just have a look at that tree, there's not just leaves on the branches, the whole tree is covered with leaves. The greenery on Hokkaido is a bit less dense because of the colder and more dry climate, but still more dense than in Sweden.
In the foreground, my dad, who came to Japan together with my brother to visit me and do some travelling together.




An interesting car in Morioka, the main city of the Iwate prefecture.





Two boys on bicycles in Morioka.





From Morioka we took the Shinkansen to Kyoto, the place where you will want to go to see the old Japan and visit lots and lots of temples and shrines. Here's one of the Buddhist temples and a more modern building in the background.




三十三間堂 The Sanjusangendo, a temple with 1001 Buddha statues lined up inside. Definitely a place worth visiting. No photos allowed inside the building. According to my brother, one of the monks inside the temple started hitting an old woman with a stick who didn't follow this rule.




My dad eating soba noodles. He clearly need to practise his slurping skills though.




Gion, the old parts of Kyoto.




Gion again. I have more nice, authentic looking where there are no cars to be seen. However I was really annoyed about Kyoto city allowing cars drive on these narrow streets with old houses packed with tourists. It's such an effective way to ruin the atmosphere that I just had to take a photo of it.



Gion, Kyoto.




Salarymen doing fishing after work.





Swedes eating their fill.




Number 1 selling sports bicycle at Bic Camera was a... Saab! Since when do they make bicycles?




Bamboo.




Kyoto station. Modern beautiful architecture in a city packed with old, beautiful temples and shrines.



The machine for cleaning the floors can be used in the stairs as well, how cool isn't that?



The Shinkansen.




Delays are unacceptable. We're setting off for climbing Mount Fuji, will upload photos from that adventure next time.

Swedish media on Japan

http://nyaijapan.blogspot.com/2008/04/same-old-same-old.html

I agree.

Sneezing in Japan

There's one thing that annoys me every time it happens here in Japan. When people sneeze. Not that they sneeze more than anywhere else in the world or sneeze in my face or anything like that really. Just the fact there's no word to say when people sneeze.

In Sweden people say 'prosit', which sounds like it comes from French or something, in English 'Bless You'. If I'm not mistaken there's some old belief that you're possessed by a demon/devil when you sneeze and someone needs to say these above mentioned words to help preventing anything bad from happening to you. Nowadays it's practically just used as a polite phrase.

In Japan, there's practically a word for everything, but no word to use when people sneeze. However, Japanese people in general insist on being very polite and show consideration for other people, so usually they just have to say something rather than not saying anything. This means when someone sneezes, 9/10 times their friend or person they're speaking to will say '大丈夫ですか' (daijoubu desuka) which means 'are you alright/okay?'.

Each time I hear it I find it more stupid. Why the hell would someone not be alright only because they just sneezed? Personally I sneeze every time I go out from a dark place and get blinded by the sun. I don't find it that dramatic. The next time I sneeze and someone asks me if I'm alright, I'll answer 'No, I guess not, after all I just SNEEZED so probably I've caught a bad case of lung cancer, but thanks for asking'.

Well, to not only be a whiner, I've decided to do something about this! I'm going to come up with some word in Japanese to use when people sneeze and see if I can spread the message. Anybody who reads this and speaks Japanese, why don't you give me a hand and figure out a good word to use when people sneeze and write me a comment!

About photos I promised to upload. Erhm well, they're on their way in a few days or so. When I've got time :P.

Spring holiday

Alright, now I'm having spring vacation for a few weeks, so by public request (erh well not really), I'm back with a new post!

If my English (and Swedish) seems to be getting worse, then that's probably correct. Seems to be forgetting alot of words lately. Studied the Japanese word for 'kitchen sink' a couple of days ago. I had the word in English and in Japanese in my book and in my electronic dictionary, but I ended up walking around a whole day trying to figure out what a kitchen sink (流し, nagashi in Japanese) is called in Swedish. Finally the word 'diskho' popped up in my head, should be correct, right?

Anyway, this starts to occur more often recently, I also notice that I've learnt the Japanese names of many vegetables and food products, but I have actually no idea what they're called in Swedish or English or if they can even be bought in Sweden. I've also become able to cook more Japanese dishes than Swedish. In other words, I lived with mommy before moving to Japan.

I was invited to a party last week and was asked to cook some Swedish food and bring. I couldn't think of any other Swedish food than pasta and meat sauce, pasta and tomato sauce and pasta and cheese sauce, which is not really Swedish food anyway, so I ended up cooking some Japanese food instead.

That's something else always occurring lately, I'll end up talking about food constantly. Possibly if I'd have a tv at home I've become brainwashed enough to start watching the 'food porn' that's always on Japanese tv. Ehm well not really.
If anybody's coming over to Sapporo, be sure to not miss out the soup curry, a local specialty here and possibly the most tasty stuff you can find on the planet. Spicy curry soup with vegetables and usually pork or chicken.




So what's been up the last months?
I've:

• Been to Sweden for Christmas holidays and back. The most striking thing I noticed back in Sweden was the non-existing service. In Japan, as a paying customer, you're a God and will be treated that way. In Sweden, a customer is practically someone who comes in to the store and causes trouble by wanting to buy products, demand service and possibly even rude enough to ask different questions. Kind of hard to get adjusted to the Swedish service after living in Japan I think.

• Been slightly shocked by the amount of snow that's just been pouring in Sapporo constantly from November until the beginning of March. Finally most of it has melted now. The amount of snow that falls during one year in Stockholm was practically falling every week in Sapporo. Also slightly shocking to see (old) people's devotion to clear the sidewalks and entrance to their houses of snow every day. The Sapporo snow festival in February was very cool, I'll upload some photos from it next time. Also went skiing at Niseko, the most famous ski resort in Japan, last weekend and had a nice stay at an Onsen (温泉), hot spring bath, I'll post some photos from that as well, I promise. Well sorry I don't have any photos from the naked hot spring bath, but from the skiing.
  

• Managed to update my visa! Quite surprised they actually decided to allow me to stay in the country for another year, I thought I'd disappear somewhere in the bureaucracy or miss filling out one of all the piles of papers and get kicked out from the country.

• Been busy with studying kanji characters and word. Seems like that that's the big challenge now. What we study at school now is mostly reading texts. Carefully going through all the grammar and special expressions in the text in the book until hopefully at least the students that has been listening understands everything in the text. The actual reading and grammar feels like it's just getting easier and easier lately. Since we've studied all the essential basic grammar quite long ago already, it's just about adding similar expressions and different types of special expressions. Not that difficult actually. The challenge is the kanji and words that's increasing in a high tempo. Lately each chapter contains about 50-70 new words which we have 3-4 days to learn before we proceed to the next chapter with about the same amount of new words again. I certainly can't say that I manage to remember how to correctly use all the words right away and especially not how to write all the kanji characters. However, usually I can remember at least how to correctly read most of the kanji and words and understand the meaning of the words when seeing them in the text. I hope then they'll be stored somewhere in the back of my head and after hearing/seeing them in other contexts a bunch of times, I kind of get the correct usage of the words confirmed and become able to use them myself. At least that how I feel like it's working. I have kind of stopped thinking about how many kanji I've studied, the amount is not that relevant really. Because the kanji characters has tons of special readings and differing meanings from case to case, it's alot better to just try to see it as learning words, no matter if the word you're studying consists of kanji characters you've already studied or if it consists of kanji characters that are new for you, what's important is to remember how to read it correctly, the meaning and finally which kanji characters it consists of. I've found it to be an easier approach than trying to categorize the kanji 'one by one' in my head. This might have been a change in my head while getting more used to seeing and remembering the kanji characters though, I'm not sure. What's for sure though is that both me and Japanese people in general tends to forget how to write alot of kanji by hand, it's kind of quite enough to remember how to read them and the meaning of the word in a society where everyone writes on computers and mobile phones anyway.

That's it for now. I'll be back with uploading some photos from the last months sometime this week! On Saturday I'm off to Osaka.