I really need to post about the whole pregnancy process in Japan - its been fascinating. However, the most recent adventure has been finding a dentist. When I went to the city office to report that I was pregnant, they made a big deal about going to the dentist and said that the city would cover part if not all of the cost of dental care.
I've always been regular about going to the dentist and take pride in never having had a cavity (can't last forever...). All of the documentation I saw about healthy pregnancies in the Japanese documentation (there was a lot) stressed the importance of visiting a dentist.
I wasn't sure whether this was just for a society that doesn't regularly go to the dentist (quite possible) or because there was some special dental treatment for pregnant women. It wasn't clear. In any case, I was happy to see a dentist, and was about due for a visit anyway.
The problem was finding a good dentist. Dentists are not hard to find in Japan. They seem to be on just about every corner. However, I've heard all kinds of horror stories about the quality of care you get. I have only been to the dentist once before - I thought I might be getting a cavity, so a friend found a place that looked modern and high tech. It was certainly that. After the dentist had determined that I did not in fact have any cavities, he dejectedly had me watch a fancy video on my personal monitor showing how they do root canals. They didn't ever suggest I needed a root canal - but I didn't go back.
Being nervous about the dentists in Japan has kept me returning to the US for dental care every year - even though I no longer have insurance to cover the visits. Unfortunately, this year, I will be too late in my pregnancy to make my annual trip home, so it was time to bite the bullet and find a a local dentist I could trust. Nobody around me seemed to have any recommendations - except for one dentist that was way up on a hill (and I'm too lazy).
I finally decided it was better to experiment when I don't have any pain or problems and find someone who can at least do a nice gentle cleaning. I noticed that the dentist across from my train station was open late, so I went and made an appointment for after work.
The result? The hygienists were pretty nervous about talking with a foreigner, but the dentist was great. She was very attentive and careful to explain things so I could understand. She didn't speak English, but she knew a lot of the dental vocabulary in English, so together we could work things out pretty well. The only problem I had was that there was no cleaning. She did check for cavities, congratulated me on being pregnant and asked if I had any questions, then the hygienist gave me this huge sales job with color graphs and charts about a special treatment they could do to keep my teeth looking like a 20-year-olds even when I'm 80 (they call it the 20/80 treatment), then they put some whitener on my front teeth and sent me on my way.
No cleaning.
I was really confused. Then I started looking at the packet of materials on the 20/80 treatment. From what I can tell, the treatment is just what I would consider a standard cleaning - scraping away tarter and polishing the teeth. I should have (and could have) asked more questions, but I was being passively confused, so now I have to go back again if I want a cleaning. Grrr. I'll probably just hide out for a month or so until I feel less dumb and then go schedule a proper cleaning.
I guess I should be happy that I found a nice dentist who isn't too pushy.
Thursday 27 June 2013
Saturday 15 June 2013
Scammed at Hard-Off
Its been such a long time since I posted anything... sorry about that. I have quite a bit to post these days, but I thought I'd start with a rant.
Russell and I have tried and tried to find decent second hand stores in Japan. It has not been easy. There are a large quantity of small shops that usually have decent large appliances (refrigerators, washing machines, etc) but its harder to find furniture and clothing. Finding it all in one place seems especially rare.
Now, Russell and I are cheap - very cheap. For our daily lives, we don't need much, and after 4+ years in Japan, we pretty much have everything we need - so our reasons for searching out a second hand shop had faded. A few months ago, however, we discovered that we were going to be having a baby. Hooray! This, however, meant we would need a few things we had not previously needed. While we have had family and friends very kindly asking to buy us things, our first inclination was to see what we could dig up for cheap in this neck of the woods.
A friend of ours tipped us off about Hard-Off. While the name strikes me as vaguely indecent, it goes along with Book-Off and Home-Off - a set of large scale second hand shops. Book-Off is everywhere, but it was the first we had heard of the others. Last week, Russell went with his friend and explored. He came back with promising tales of barely used baby supplies - strollers, bouncers, pack-and-plays, clothing... all super cheap. It sounded worth a closer look.
Today we had some free time, so we decided to take our wish list and see if there was anything we could do better buying ourselves. We started off at Home-Off on the second floor. Sure enough, plastic baby baths were a dollar, a wide variety of strollers were all under $100 - some were quite fancy at that - bouncers were $10 (this was something we had basically decided against since we wouldn't be using it long enough to validate the price). We were pretty pleased overall, though we decided to wait on making purchases until closer to the due date.
Then we went upstairs to Hard-Off. I think the name must be short for "Hardware-Off" - there were a lot of computers and electronics. We were browsing the kitchen appliances and we saw submersion (stick) blenders. Russell had just been wishing he had one after spotting a video on making home-made mayonnaise with one. There were three brands - a cheap T-Fal blender, another brand we didn't know for $40 (which turned out to be the new retail price on Amazon) and a Cuisinart submersion blender for $40. We checked the Cuisinart on Amazon, and it seemed like a steal, so we decided to get it.
Now, in the US, we would automatically have asked to plug it in and make sure it worked, but we have clearly become too trusting after so long in Japan. We bought the blender and headed home. Once there, Russell found the video he had seen before, watched it again, made sure we had all the ingredients and then opened the box. I think he said something like, "How is this a used Cuisinart?" I glanced over and thought he was referring to the fact that it looked brand-new. It was still in plastic with the direction book and everything. Then Russell pointed out the brand - "Twinbird". We looked it up. A cheap knock-off brand that sells new for about $20. We had been scammed.
We're going back tomorrow to call them on it and get our money back. To be honest, even if we had looked in the box, we may not have noticed the switch until we got home. Good thing Russell noticed before he opened any of the plastic. Sucks that the shop is so far away - easily an hour trip each way.
Grr. We definitely had better things to do with our Sunday.
Update: I waited until Thursday to take back the mixer. Hard-off didn't give me any trouble about it. They just asked if there was something wrong with it - I showed them that the brand was switched and they immediately gave me my money back. So relieved. Russell thinks the party responsible for the scam was likely the person who brought the mixer in. Anyone who looked inside the box would have thought it was the same mixer - brand new. So maybe Hard-Off is still okay... we'll just pay closer attention to to what we buy in the future.
Russell and I have tried and tried to find decent second hand stores in Japan. It has not been easy. There are a large quantity of small shops that usually have decent large appliances (refrigerators, washing machines, etc) but its harder to find furniture and clothing. Finding it all in one place seems especially rare.
Now, Russell and I are cheap - very cheap. For our daily lives, we don't need much, and after 4+ years in Japan, we pretty much have everything we need - so our reasons for searching out a second hand shop had faded. A few months ago, however, we discovered that we were going to be having a baby. Hooray! This, however, meant we would need a few things we had not previously needed. While we have had family and friends very kindly asking to buy us things, our first inclination was to see what we could dig up for cheap in this neck of the woods.
A friend of ours tipped us off about Hard-Off. While the name strikes me as vaguely indecent, it goes along with Book-Off and Home-Off - a set of large scale second hand shops. Book-Off is everywhere, but it was the first we had heard of the others. Last week, Russell went with his friend and explored. He came back with promising tales of barely used baby supplies - strollers, bouncers, pack-and-plays, clothing... all super cheap. It sounded worth a closer look.
Today we had some free time, so we decided to take our wish list and see if there was anything we could do better buying ourselves. We started off at Home-Off on the second floor. Sure enough, plastic baby baths were a dollar, a wide variety of strollers were all under $100 - some were quite fancy at that - bouncers were $10 (this was something we had basically decided against since we wouldn't be using it long enough to validate the price). We were pretty pleased overall, though we decided to wait on making purchases until closer to the due date.
Then we went upstairs to Hard-Off. I think the name must be short for "Hardware-Off" - there were a lot of computers and electronics. We were browsing the kitchen appliances and we saw submersion (stick) blenders. Russell had just been wishing he had one after spotting a video on making home-made mayonnaise with one. There were three brands - a cheap T-Fal blender, another brand we didn't know for $40 (which turned out to be the new retail price on Amazon) and a Cuisinart submersion blender for $40. We checked the Cuisinart on Amazon, and it seemed like a steal, so we decided to get it.
Now, in the US, we would automatically have asked to plug it in and make sure it worked, but we have clearly become too trusting after so long in Japan. We bought the blender and headed home. Once there, Russell found the video he had seen before, watched it again, made sure we had all the ingredients and then opened the box. I think he said something like, "How is this a used Cuisinart?" I glanced over and thought he was referring to the fact that it looked brand-new. It was still in plastic with the direction book and everything. Then Russell pointed out the brand - "Twinbird". We looked it up. A cheap knock-off brand that sells new for about $20. We had been scammed.
We're going back tomorrow to call them on it and get our money back. To be honest, even if we had looked in the box, we may not have noticed the switch until we got home. Good thing Russell noticed before he opened any of the plastic. Sucks that the shop is so far away - easily an hour trip each way.
Grr. We definitely had better things to do with our Sunday.
Update: I waited until Thursday to take back the mixer. Hard-off didn't give me any trouble about it. They just asked if there was something wrong with it - I showed them that the brand was switched and they immediately gave me my money back. So relieved. Russell thinks the party responsible for the scam was likely the person who brought the mixer in. Anyone who looked inside the box would have thought it was the same mixer - brand new. So maybe Hard-Off is still okay... we'll just pay closer attention to to what we buy in the future.
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