Japanese Eye Doctors

So today I went to the optometrist in my city for the first time. My JTE had called them and they said there was someone who did a little bit of English (which, when I hear that, means that they speak pretty decent English but are really shy about it).

It was really interesting. There were a lot of the same things, like those giant large things that you look into and they make your vision go woaaaah - even if you're there without glasses or anything. The one where they ask "one, or two. One or two. Three or four... three or four."

Their vision checking thing though... where we would look at the letter chart, the japanese optometrist has a circle with a segment of it gone; either the top, left, right, or bottom. So instead of squinting to look at Ps and Qs and Ds, you're trying to say which way the circle opens to.

Turns out, it makes for a much easier time when the patient can't speak Japanese really well. I ended up pointing for a lot of it.

There was also this machine that sounded like an old video game or something the way it moved - in chunky blocks. Very mechanical, a sharp contrast to the way everything else smoothly operated in the office. And they would get it up really close to your eye and then... blast a huge puff of air straight at your eyeball making you go "WTF?!"

Then they'd do it again. So glad we don't have that much in the states. It's quite annoying.

Oh yeah, and my eyes are fine. The people in the office were super nice, so I didn't have to pay anything since they said my eyes were fine and all. I was like, hooray! Two of the staff members could understand a little bit of english, and one could speak it pretty well too. :) The main sensei/doctor though, he was very adament in his "I don't English" and I was like "日本語大丈夫。少しわかります。”

Hooray though. Oh, we had to do it twice because I forgot to mention that I wore contacts. Woops. And they told me I'm near sighed. Yep. :D