aka. The Tooth Hurts
aka Visting a dentist as a foreigner in Tokyo, Japan, since I need a more SEO friendly header
After minor face explosion due to wisdom teeth over the weekend, I eventually decided I should go see a dentist rather than try to wait it out until after my upcoming trip to the US. I am extremely thankful to Mike and Nao for taking me to their local dentist, and translating forms and conversation for me. It's nice to have W3C family all over the world :)
We dropped by about 3.30 in the afternoon, without calling ahead, and I was seen within about five minutes, after filling in (or mostly, as it was all in Japanese, Nao filling in) a form. They estimated the prices upfront (without being asked) and to check that I was okay with it, promising for sure less than 10,000 JPY. This is about what I expected following extensive googling yesterday.
First was an xray. The xray machine played like 8bit elevator music, and I had to stop myself from laughing. Then some waiting around, and then I was seated in a dentist chair. Then more waiting around. Everything seemed to happen at a very leisurely pace, but staff were friendly and smiley and chatty (in Japanese). The dentist talked to Nao for ages while I was in the chair, and Nao periodically gave me one-sentence summaries. I was reminded of the "moar... intensity" scene in Lost in Translation, and again had to stop myself from giggling.
The xray was produced, and I got a detailed explanation of everything wrong with my wisdom teeth. My left side is infected right now, but the right side is just as at risk. The dentist noted that were she to be removing them, she'd take the top ones first. She showed me the best angle at which to clean the emerging tooth, and put some gel on it.
She produced antibiotics and very strong painkillers. Yay! And if I'm still in pain on Thursday, I'm to go back.
This came to 7,790 JPY - less than expected, though not something I had budgeted for. I'm going to see if I can claim any of that back from World Nomads. I was in there for probably just under an hour.
