As most of you know I wear glasses, and I only came over from Canada with about 3 months worth of contact lenses. I've been in Japan for just over 3 months now (I know eh!) and my contacts have all run out. I figured it was time for me to find a new optometrist in Japan.

So last weekend - the weekend of the Sapporo-dake hike - I decided to take a day of nenkyu (paid leave) on the Monday and spend the morning in Sapporo getting some errands done. The first thing I did was get my Japanese re-entry permit which lets me leave the country and come back. The Immigration Bureau building is only open on weekdays so I basically had to take a day of nenkyu to get it done. I went right in the morning at 9:00am when they opened so it only took me 10 minutes to do! I've heard of stories of it taking people hours to get it so I went as early as I could. After that I mailed off my newly stamped passport to the Vietnamese embassy in Tokyo so I could get my VISA for Vietnam.. but that's a blog post for another day ;) After that I walked over (more like walked around lost for 15 minutes) to the building where Eye City is and got there right when they opened at 10:00am.

Eye City is a huge eyewear franchise, like Pearl Vision back home, and the office I went to dealt specially in contact lenses. It was up on the 8th floor of the building (once I found it) and there was a doctors office right next to the store that sells the contacts. I had gotten instructions on exactly what to do and where to go from another JET, Chris who had gone through the same thing before, so with my piece of paper of instructions I went into the doctors office and navigated my way through the language barrier. My Japanese is alright, at best, but I didn't know any of the vocab to explain that I wanted to get an eye appointment done! I attempted to talk to the receptionist and, after spouting off a few nouns and verbs and using gestures to explain what I wanted done, she understood and gave me an application form. I gave her my health card, filled out the form and then she directed me up a spiral staircase to the doctors office where they conduct the eye tests.

There were four people ahead of me even though I had gotten there right when they opened so I sat down in the little waiting room and waited. There was a little reception desk at the top of the stairs facing the waiting room so I passed the time by watching the assistants work. It occured to me that my application was still downstairs and was wondering how they got them upstairs because I hadn't seen anyone walk up the stairs in a while. That's when I saw the receptionist open up this fridge-like box and pull out a big plastic cylinder. In the cylinder was a rolled up piece of paper and I realized they were using vaccuum tubes! Cool! As I waited I saw a few other patients come up the stairs so I watched and, sure enough, a few minutes later the fridge-box would emit a beep and there would be a new tube for the receptionist to pull out. She would take the paper out, put it in a clear white plastic folder and leave it on a rack for the assistants to call on the patients. When they called out my name I realized my application was in a clear red plastic folder instead of a white one. It was weird, I guess they color code for the language of their patients!

A male assistant who spoke passable english came and got me. I told him I was a new patient so he took me over to the machines to perform the standard eye tests. He did the eye focus test, the air puff test, and then took me over to another machine to get my acuity test done. This is the test that everyone knows where you have to read of the alphabet letters as they get smaller and smaller. It's a bit different in Japan though. Instead, they have black circles with notches missing from one side, like in this picture here. Each time he would show me a smaller and smaller circle and all I had to do was point in the direction of the notch! It was brilliant.

After that I had to wait a few minutes again and then he gave me a pair of contacts to try on. I put them in and then did the visual acuity test again. Then I had to wait again to see the actual doctor who signed off on my prescription and that was it! As easy as pie. I was in and out of there in less than an hour and I only had to pay 990 yen ($9) for the checkup because my health insurance coverage paid for over 70% of the costs. Normally it would've cost me 4000 yen which still beats the hell out of the $80 I used to pay for a checkup back home! I bought a few boxes of contacts at the store on the way out and that was that. They gave me a card with my prescription digitally imprinted on it so next time I want to buy contacts I just have to give them my card and the number of boxes I want. I even earn points on the amount of yen I spend so I can get discounts when I use the points, w00t!