Two tulips

Bought a pair of tulips for my girlfriend on Valentine's day.





I don't know much about flowers, but I find them having a quite interesting way of growing.

Together bending over, reaching out to get a bit more daylight from the window in order to prolong their lives.





Or maybe they're just trying to look at me when I'm sitting on the floor using my laptop.

If anybody wonders; I received the origami in the background when visiting an elementary school here in Sapporo, and the landscape photo is a place in northern Sweden :).

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.

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.

A thought about cabbage after a long time..

I'll have to apologize about my non-existing blogging the last couple of months. I'm having a great time in Japan with school and everything and had a great summer vacation with a trip to Kyoto. Haven't really felt much like writing anything, and when I do have felt like writing something, there's always 5 other interesting options to consider.
Thinking I should try writing shorter text and maybe I'll bother updating more often..
Looking at other blogs, at least in Sweden, the way to become popular is to write as stupid as possible and throw dirt on everyone else, especially famous people. Ahm well, I'm not really into that stuff, I will just try to wake up this blog again in my own way. Hope anyone bothers reading it.

Oh and just something I've been thinking about the last month or so..
The small small bugs that appear in the cabbage when it's getting old, can anyone tell me where they come from?
I keep the cabbage in plastic and not outside or anything, so it's not so likely the small bugs come from outside, so the bugs are in the cabbage when you buy it, right?
However, when the cabbage is still fresh, it's impossible to see any trace of eggs or small bugs, meaning they're probably too tiny to see. Then the next question is; do they disappear when you wash the cabbage with water a bit? If they're really tiny eggs and possibly inside the cabbage itself, probably they don't wash away that easily I guess. So my theory that you're eating these really tiny eggs everytime you eat cabbage, makes sense, right?

Doesn't really bother me, I'm not sensitive and can't see it anyway, but would be nice if someone could answer where these tiny little cabbage bugs come from. If anyone still checks out this blog that is.
Oh, and I'm happy to receive any requests on topics to write about from anyone who has interest in Japan or life over here in anyway. It'll give me some motivation to write something.