Doctor Doctor

On Friday Chad took the day off so we could go into Tokyo and visit a doctor for a checkup and some new prescriptions. (Although conveniently, I came down with a terrible summer cold a few days before our appointment.)

Tokyo Medical and Surgical Clinic

I picked the Tokyo Medical and Surgical Clinic for our appointment.  Of course there are plenty of clinics here in Ota and we were provided with a list of ones with doctors that speak English.  However, you have to be careful because while the doctor may speak some English, it is rare that the nurses and receptionists do.  A while back I tried to make an appointment at one of those---it did not go well at all.  The receptionist spoke no English and all I could make out was her telling me I need to get a Japanese-speaking friend to help me.  But although we have plenty of helpful friends and co-workers here who I'm sure wouldn't mind, Chad and I are way too independent to ask someone to go to a doctor's appointment with us. 

The other option was to go into the city where there are many options for English-speaking clinics and doctors.  (In case you're wondering about what we would do in an emergency, we have been provided numbers for emergency translators and I'm pretty sure the equivalent of 911 here has English-speaking operators. Also our company rep is awesome and I would totally call her in a second in such a situation.)  Anyway, at Tokyo Medical our doctor was British and very nice.  She gave us some good information on how to get our regular medications here and looked us over and gave me some prescriptions for my cold.  There was a pharmacy conveniently located on the ground floor where we got my prescriptions filled and made sure our other meds would be available quickly when we need them.

A major plus to Tokyo Medical is that it is located right across the street from....Tokyo Tower!  Even though I felt like a zombie I still wanted to go up and spread my germs across the city.  So we bought tickets and did a quick trip up.  We didn't check out all the souvenir shops or the attractions in the ground floor (did you know there's an aquarium and wax museum there?)  but that's the nice thing about living here....we can always go back!

After that we went to a hotdog place called Doggie's Diner for lunch (somewhere south of Roppongi).  The hotdogs were OK, still not quite right, but I think that's just the way it's going to be here.

this is from a little landing between the
two observation decks...I liked it because you
can see the tower parts when you look out

there are several "look down" windows

odaiba and the rainbow bridge--the pamphlets they give
you are really good and show you what is in each direction...
but it was too cloudy to see Mt. Fuji

Doggy's Diner...it was decorated 50's
diner style...note the American flag



my plain hotdog came with miso soup and a salad with
a lump of tuna on top...you gotta love Japan