On being sick

I know I’ve been sick in America, but I just don’t remember being sick for months at a time. Something about Japan makes me just feel under the weather for the majority of the year and I’m not the only one. I’m not sure if it’s the lack of proper heating in the winter or the alternating arctic blasts/musty swamp weather in the summer. Something contributing to never getting better is the fact that no one will take a sick day in this country, so just as you seem to be getting better, some redneck comes to work coughing and sneezing all over the place. I can understand children, but some of the people I work with have absolutely no manners when it comes to expelling bodily fluids. I understand that sneezing is a usually unpredictable event, but you have a few seconds to do so many other things besides sneezing directly on your desk, and the desks around you. I think many people use the surgical masks as a crutch; they think that a mask is the only way to prevent from coughing all over everyone else. Since this is what the government tells them as well, people without masks on seem to think, “well there’s no way to cover my cough/sneeze from others since I don’t have a mask, I can’t help but to sneeze all over the person in front of me.” Replace a few words in there and you’ll have the same thought pattern that comes from Sarah Palin's Sex Ed classes.

Since I’m a dirty foreigner, and the powers to be know that in the rest of the world we take sick days, I don’t run into many problems if I do need to take a sick day. That being said, I haven’t taken many sick days. The problem with taking a sick day is that Japan doesn’t do the whole substitute teacher thing and even if they did, I doubt anyone could really fill in for my classes. Not that I’m some kind of irreplaceable messiah, but finding someone willing to dive into a tank of raw sewage to fetch a half digested rat-tooth earring might be easier.

I’m at the school with the gossiping office lady today. This morning, as soon as I sat down she began with her rant about that lady she doesn’t like. I guess the office lady got her pay stub today, so she showed me hers and explained how she gets paid about $500 less a month than “that lady”. Since the office lady comes in at the crack of dawn and doesn’t leave until about 6 every day, she doesn’t like that this disrespectful cow comes in late every day, doesn’t do anything and then leaves early.