Well, looks like I saved myself from an infuriating defeat.
Oh... but Japan wasn't ready to let me claim pre-emptive anti-failure yet...
Took pictures around the school. My love for "empty stage" pictures makes love desolate people-less wastes and buildings.
Headed back to Nagai. Wow. Well, I'll go back to the base school later but first some things I've been meaning to do;
Okay, so I thought maybe it'd be awesomely easy to get contacts this time. I mean, last time the presecription was dead fucking on. All I'd have to do was point and say "mo ikai onegai?" and that'd be it right?
You don't even have to hear the rest do you?
They took me to The Machine.
The lying shitty ass Machine that they slavishly obey. I predict that if ever there is machine intelligence invented, Japan will be the first to obey its wily evil commands.
No one engages ANY brain cells and they blindly* believe it's random spewings.
So today, my eyes have dropped a whole fucking dioptre. Now my right eye was meant to be 2.00 and my left was meant to be 2.00 as well.
The Science part
Or in other words, the part to be ignored and skipped by Japanese medical health care workers.
Corneas. They're amazing. A clear lattice of living cells, transparent enough to let light through and with no blood vessels either over a vast area. They get their oxygen from the fluid in the eye and from the air. They are also incredibly reluctant to repair themselves.
Skin, designed to repair itself, does a spectacularly bad job of it. That's even with lucious amounts of nutrients and oxygen. So imagine what the cornea, sitting on the proverbial edge of the body going to fare?
This is why people get cornea transplants. You, and science presently, can't remake something as good as nature does.
So the fact that it doesn't have a good repair mechanism makes me think, perhaps correctly, that if there are genetic abnormalities that create a thicker cornea (astigmatic) and thicker lens (myopia), there's not really any mechanism other than shaving off the excess (or lasering it off) to reduce it.
So if you've got an astigmatism, and myopia... you'll always have it. Oh and then have long sightedness too cos your muscles controlling the lens will stiffen and weaken just like everyone else's when you're older. So we're going to be left with a teeny tiny window of focusing when we're older. Yay!
The cells may divide more and grow and reach a new plateau, but I refuse ot believe they'll ever shrink back down. Think about it. It'd be like a wasting atrophy. And how would the body know when to stop THAT, given that we've seen that millions of people produce TOO thick a cornea? This is an easily derailed mechanism. But you don't hear about people whose corneas disappear and their eyes puncture and deflate. I could maybe imagine the lens may find some ways to correct itself. It's being tugged this way and that all the time and needs to be repaired I'm sure form time to time, so maybe slight changes could happen... but nothing as drastic as a sudden improvement in vision..
The Rant part
... especially when THERE HASN'T BEEN A CHANGE!!
My glasses still give me pin sharp vision. My contacts did too. So now suddenly... er... better? Bullshit.
Then we do The Optician Opera.
You see, I think the dialogue and storyline would work well in a Opera. I imagine the struggle and the drama and the resignation and eventual triumph would fit in well with the impressive acoustics and presentation that you expect from an Opera.
So instead of simply FUCKING FOLLOWING the previous prescription and trying those first to see how they fare... no... no... we go with the Machine's decree.
So 6 pairs of contacts later...
... Sorry, lots of BEGGING later.
My left eye is finally wearing a 3.00 dioptre astigmatic lens. the exact FUCKING lens that my previous prescription was but off by 1.00 dioptre (and no astigmatism) that the Machine said on its fucking retarded little print out.
Perfectly clear. I can read all the tiny crisp black numbers on the calendar across the clinic room.
She gives me a 2.25 dioptre astigmatic lens for my right eye. Off by 0.25.
Tiny?
No. It's noticeable the difference.
Pin sharp left
Technically "sharp" but with blurring around all edges in my right eye.
Years of being used to blurs and having to decipher them mean that I apply an extra layer of thought and analysis to make it just as sharp as the left, but there's definitely a tiny moment of pondering and focusing and processing.
Okay okay, whatever... {breathes} ... Relax!
So I'm annoyed that I had to basically do a negotiation and "settle" on a slightly off presecription. Cos if I'd gone on I think she might have gone "fuck it" and just been belligerent and told me that I'd have to make do with a pencil in each eye right before she finally snapped and attacked me for daring to WANT CORRECT CONTACT LENSES.
But what I really want to rant about ("wait.. that WASN'T a rant?! WTF IS a rant in your book?!") are two little things during the 6 pairs of contacts and the fun test we did just to prove that I'm not a dumbass for asking for 3.00/2.5 dioptre contacts.
Okay, so the worst part? That really warrants the rant (because I LOVE and CARE about Japan you understand, and all its quirks)....
Right at the start: She tells me there're no astigmatic lenses. and tries me to use normal fucking lenses. it's got a blue strip on the container. astigmatic has an orange one. i can SEE (with my glasses) a fucking tray full of astigmatic.
I impressed upon her how.. important it was for the health of everyone in the building that she goes gets the astigmatic ones right the fuck now. Wouldn't want everyone breaking down with a bad case of jihaditis.
Still, I do TRY one of them in my left eye, as if they're hoping I'll be like "Oh wow! Now it's far clearer than before, I'm satisfied, despite the fact I can't really read the sharper black blues anymore"
Then she keeps telling me that she doesn't have a 2.5 for my right eye.... yep, you've guessed it... later when we're edging closer to the correct dioptre (round about the 3rd pair) she brings out... a 2.5 dioptre lens for my left eye! WTF
In fact... before, they told me there wasn't any in between values in the range; like 2.25, 2.75, 3.25. But I got two of those today...
6th and final round of contact testing... need I remind myself that my prescription WAS ALREADY FUCKING WRITTEN DOWN ON THE NOTES FROM MY LASTE TAIHEN VISIT?!?!?
Finally she relinquishes and puts a 3.00 dioptre in my left eye. Fucking Perfect. PERFECT.
I can even read the bottom most tiniest line!!
What does she say?? In amazement that my eye isn't melting Lost Ark style from my head?
"Tsuyoi!"
Japanese lesson
This means "strong". My eye... wait.. contact? Soul? Was "Strong".
Okay, if I ever become a surgeon or someone dealing with bone injuries, when I go to fit the metal brace that now needs to hold the bone together, I'll first try to convince the patient that a piece of balsa wood is fine, before eventually, reluctantly, admitting maybe titanium is better.
THEN as I slowly, reluctantly, consider adding 3 securing screws, 4, 5, until I get to the scientifically correct amount of 6, I'll try and fob the patient off saying "no.. this really IS good enough...". Then when we get to the correct size and amount of metal bracing I need to secure to the bone, I'll simply say "Wow, that's so much!".
Completely fucking retarded.
It doesn't matter if it's "SO MUCH!"/"Strong". It matters if it, the inanimate medical correction device, is CORRECT.
Hearing this, and realising they really just CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE ME OR SCIENCE, I called it quits at 2.25 for my right eye. I think they'd have fainted if I had gone "harder"/"stronger"/"faster" and tried a 2.5 in my right eye and gotten perfect vision.
Fuck it. It's clear and only a little fuzzy.
Revenge
So tomorrow I'll go back to get the prescription. Cos I realise that if I remained dissatisfied and pissed and tried to gaman through it, I'd only get angry, first at myself and then externalise that and hate Japan itself. Which I don't want to do in my final year.
So I'll go back and tell them I'm not happy with the right one, and we'll do the dance again but this time I'll point and ask to PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE WITH CATARACTS* ON TOP try the original prescription from last time...
Tire Man
A shorter rant.
Go to Tire man to finally get some natsu tires. They don't have any. I pop that 3,000,000Yen question (how much I get if I die from my car insurance.. well, not ME, but family, whatever).
Why is the left tire so much more worn than the other ones?
Sorry... lol. I'm sorry. I meant to say:
Why is the left tire, on the same wheel that you aligned last winter but, just as with the opticians, didn't go the full distance and told me that there was still an offset but that it was "daijobou", more worn than the others?
"The way you drive".
That's right.
I'm the fucking Zoolander of drivers!!!
I must only turn one way and so my left tire is way more worn than the others!!!
Of course!!!
I must be on a fucking Nascar circuit secretly! Why, yes! I DO only go in a big circle right. Doh! I'm sorry Mr Tireman! My bad!!
*puns!!! ha ha!
