My first-ever dental appointment in Japan

“Let’s enjoy brushing”

You can find kawaii-ness, even in a dental clinic in Japan. Why had I taken so long to get health check-ups in Japan? Well, the medical world is not a familiar one to me in the Land of the Rising Sun. I’ve got this paralyzing fear that if I cannot navigate my local post office with smooth savvy, then how could I possibly understand medical-related terms?

Thank goodness I’m in pretty good health, so I have never ever stepped into a hospital or medical clinic. But I thought my teeth could use a bit of attention because….I haven’t seen a dentist in, like, four years. I know I’m so gross but my pearlie whites seem okay. Really.

So my ward office kindly offers free dental check-ups annually (breast cancer check-ups, too) but I only managed to vaguely understand this type of mail more recently. If it didn’t look like a bill, I didn’t bother with it, but this is a work in progress. In time, I should be able to read all my mail on my own.

I chose this clinic because it said “English OK” on their website but it really wasn’t when I arrived. My trusty dictionary in my iPhone was a life saver though and now I know what “periodontal disease” is in Japanese.

There was nothing really to be nervous about as it looked like a nice and clean place.

There was a TV to keep me entertained while I waited.

A huge massage chair was squeezed into the waiting room, too. I wonder who uses it — maybe the dentist.

The questionnaire seemed fairly routine, except for, “Do you carefully watch your teeth or gums using a mirror?”

Fairly normal dental tools…

One thing I found a bit strange was that the nurses and the resident dentist wore the same uniforms, and I had three different people attend to me, but I guessed the most confident one was the dentist and she was the one who advised me to come back for scaling (to fight the small bout of gum disease I have).

I was surprised I didn’t get a polish because that’s part of a typical check-up in Singapore, so I was disappointed. Freebies are freebies — they aren’t that great. I had to chew dental gum to test if my teeth were sensitive, I think, and I had to gargle water for 30 seconds and then spit it back into a cup that was whisked off for a “cancer test”. I assumed it was negative because the dentist said that everything looked fine.

This is such a mundane post but it was quite a highlight in my week – haha!

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