White Eyes, Yellow Eyes
...written on 2001-02-04, @ 12:30:46
Tales of Kim's Life in Japan
Sun February 4, 2001
Friday Manami and I went to get some contact lenses for me at the optical shop on the 5th floor of the train station. She kept saying "Hard up" and while, yes, I was on my last pair of contact lenses, I thought it strange that she was saying this, that is until I saw that the name of the optical shop was "Heart-up".
Manami helped me fill out the necessary forms and asked how much the contacts would be. The woman told her that they were $20 each! Not a pair mind you, just one contact lens. We both agreed that if that was indeed the case, I would get one pair and wait til I got to the States in March to get some more.
I went into the examination place and we were met by a tall, young, rather nice looking Japanese man. He asked me if I understood Japanese and with a big smile I wagged my head like a puppy wags its tail. He immediately looked nervous until Manami stepped in and offered her assistance. After a few questions, Manami told me he was going to take out my contact lenses.
"Whoa. Wait a minute.", I stammered. "HE'S going to take out my contact lenses?" Manami said 'yes' quite matter of factly and I dumbly repeated myself. Manami said 'Yes' once again and she told me to look down as the foreign index finger touched my eyeballs and removed my contact lenses. A little weird, my friends. A little weird.
I sat down in a chair about 20 feet away from an eye chart that would illuminate certain squares when the tall, young, rather nice looking Japanese man would press a button.
"Can you read this?" Press, light, press, light, press, light. "Can you read this?" Press, light, press,light. After all the lights I said 'no' and Manami and the tall, young, rather nice looking Japanese man both looked at me with expressions of concern and "My, but your eyes must be really bad."
"Uh, I can't read Japanese." I offered with an apologetic smile. The tall, young rather nice looking Japanese man blushed when he realized what was happening and picked another column of figures to illuminate. This one had almost closed circles that I had to indicate with a finger if the opening pointed up, down, to the right or to the left. I did better with that column.
As the tall, young, rather nice looking Japanese man performed more tests and asked more questions, I stared at his name tag. There were two kanji characters on it and one of them looked familiar. I thought about where I had seen it before. Ah!
"Mori", I said. "Forest". The tall, young, rather nice looking Japanese man jumped back. I asked Manami what the other kanji was, I knew it stood for rice paddy, but I didn' t know the sound. 'Ta' she said. So the tall, young, rather nice looking Japanese man's name was Morita. (Bet you're glad I found out, huh?)
Morita-san placed my chart on the head doctor's desk and asked us to wait until we were called. The doctor came in and was surprised to see a foreigner. He said he could speak a little English, but that he didn't like it. He began to look at my eyes with his lights and mirrors.
"Hmmm." he intoned existentially, "She is from a white race and we are from a yellow race, yet inside our eyes look the same."
I looked to Manami for a translation, but she said nothing to me then as the Doctor had told her not to repeat what he said. I was the first foreigner ever to visit that shop.
That little interlude over, Morita-san placed my new prescription contacts in my eyes. He said that the strength I had been using was too high and that both eyes were the same. He told Manami how I was to take care of my lenses, that the cashier was wrong, contacts are $20 a box (6ea), that he also spoke a little English and French, and then showed us to the check-out counter.
Manami ran off to class as I browsed the clothes, books, cds, etc. with my clear eagle eyed vision.