Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

While navigating the high seas of the Aomori blogsphere today, I noticed that super-blogger Jamie Patterson (who I have never met, as far as I recall) seems to have mysteriously added a link to this very blog on his site. In case you've never been, his blog offers a nearly endless quantity of humorous observations, as well as photos and videos. Quite rightly, it's currently the number two result returned for a Google search for "Aomori JET". Now, before you start fearing that a Lion King-esque pack of animals might diverge upon this very point at any minute, I have to inform you that the link is broken. Despite this fact, I've decided to return the favor with a permanent working link to his site on the sidebar. I even went as far as to test it out.

I've struggled with seasonal allergies my entire life, although I've often found it impossible to predict when I'll be affected. I almost never experienced them in Chicago but I always get them at my parent's house in Wisconsin, regardless of season. I know that I'm allergic to certain things (dust, ragweed, pollen) but my lack of super-human abilities has rendered me incapable of detecting these substances until it's too late.

Well, yesterday, out of the blue, something hit me and it hit hard. Ever since then I've been sneezing and sniffling like a madman. At first, everyone in the office was convinced that I had a cold but I kept telling them it was just allergies. So then they assumed it was a food allergy and started asking me what foods I've eaten lately, so I had to switch to using the Japanese equivalent of "hay fever". Despite this fact, I am still enjoying concerned interrogations regarding the content of my diet.

In America, Allegra-D was my savior but due to strict drug importation laws, I was unable to bring my stash with me. So I wandered around the drugstore section of Jusco yesterday, looking in vain for an equivalent. Unfortunately, I was having a hard time telling the difference between the cold and allergy medicines and when I'm feeling groggy like that, the last thing I want to do is ask someone something in Japanese. Plus, the katakanaized version of allergy is pronounced in some unholy way (I think it's something along the lines of Ah-Re-Ru-Gee) that would require an impossible feat of contortion of my midwestern tongue. I was beginning to attract a lot of attention in the store (I imagine there was a run on the face mask department the minute the tall foreigner entered the store and began sneezing uncontrollably), so I decided to go home, put on some Smiths and wait for the sweet release of death. Oh, Morrissey, only you understand my literate yet preciously melodramatic pain.

Anyhow, I do intend to return tonight and will hit up the real drugstore as well, if Jusco's selection proves insufficient. Japan is supposedly the "most heavily medicated nation in the world," so hopefully someone in this country will be able to dope me up to my satisfaction.

Barring my untimely death, I intend to catch a train to Hach tomorrow, so that I might hang out with Nambu's favorite son, that elusive troublemaker, Matt Cosnett. Maybe then I can write about something less nerdy than allergies and blogs.

I was just given what I was told is a edomame paste mochi-ball. The best way I can think of to describe this delicacy to you, the reader, is to say that in terms of both appearance and texture it closely resembles a large wad of chewing gum onto which someone has vomited generously.