Food Poisoning

The lowest point of my birthday weekend in Osaka, happened on the night of my actual birthday. (Last year, on my actual birthday, I spent a chunk of the evening with my dear friend H in the emergency room. The cough that I had developed over the week had somehow managed to turn itself into an evil form of bronchitis, and I literally thought I had cracked a rib…so to the emergency we went…a couple of cuties, dressed for a night on the town, sitting in the emergency room…on the plus side, the drugs they gave me were so strong, that at my actual birthday party, I was legally high as a kite.) This year’s only goal was to not end up in the emergency room 2 years in a row. And stuff was going great…until I woke up in bed (at Kiwi-boy’s old host family’s house) and immediately started puking (unfortunately, I have been on such hard core allergy meds lately, I have not been able to drink in weeks…so this was not an alcohol-induced illness.) Turns out I had gotten food poisoning from a burger at Wendy’s (long story short, the Wendy’s employee managed to wander off for a smoke break in the midst of my order then completely forgot about me…yeah, if I could properly communicate my anger to the manager, that man would have gotten an earful…instead, the food service community managed to do what I have noticed is typical in Japan, when someone manages to fuck up your order…or forget about it completely …which I am sad to say has happened a bit too often to be coincidental… there are no apologies…just here you are, by the way you are a foreigner we have no respect for you.) Oops, I did not mean to digress into a bitter diatribe about shoddy Japanese food service employees….Anyhow, I woke up on a futon in a 3rd floor bedroom…aware of the fact that the closest toilet was on the 1st floor (miles away). So I did what any self-respecting girl would do when she is aware of the fact that the tatami mats she is sleeping on, cost a mint to replace (and replacement would be the only option if I were to vomit on them.) I blindly grabbed a dirty t-shirt from my bag, with the intention of spewing on it, then placing it in a plastic bad and disposing of it at the train station the next morning. Unfortunatly 2 things happened…1) I finally got around to turn on the light and realized that I had accidentally used one of my favorite shirts…which meant I wasn’t going to toss it at the station. 2) I was actually getting sicker…but was pretty immobile, so there was nowhere I could go. So I text messaged kiwi-boy to check on me… His initial response was, we have to get you to the Emergency Room!! After pleading with him, not to move me, or involve the Japanese medical community in any way… He agreed to give me 30 minutes to have some sort of improvement, or go to the hospital.

I hate to say that the worst part about the whole ordeal was not the sickness or the stomach cramps, but the fact that I had to confront the kind people (whom I had just met a few hours before) with the fact that I had managed to completely soil a t-shirt, and that I was a MESS. Luckily, they were extremely understanding…but man, I still get a bit embarrassed when I think about the whole thing.