#92 With food poisoning in Japan, the toilets will save you

Transcript

Oh man, oh man. So the last thing I recorded was on a Monday. And it's amazing how fast these things hit, because that was just where I messed up on my recordings. And I just was like, hey I'm in the fucking Airbnb room. Here's the little update, here's what I didn't record. Everything was fine. I sounded fine, I felt fine. But then I got hit by food poisoning later that night. And yeah, that was Monday. It's Wednesday now. I have not fucking moved in the last two days. I've just been in my little Airbnb room in the throes of death. I mean I'll get into it more, but it really does feel like I'm traveling backward in time through how old I feel. Because at the height of how awful. I mean I guess it's only been two days, but it's really, really bad. Just having these insane, terrible fucking, super migraines every time I woke up and just a life of misery. And I remember thinking like, I wonder if this is how my dad felt. Like probably, right? Like where he was just kind of drifting in and out of sleep. And he said, food just tasted like metal to him. You know, they'd bring him like ice cream in the hospital and he said, you couldn't really taste it. It just tasted metallic. Any I just, you know, cancer treatments that didn't work just in pain all the time.

You know, that's obviously super depressing, but I was thinking like, geez, you know, I bet. I mean, that's how I feel right now. It's like, if I knew this was what life was going to be like from now on and it wasn't going to get better, I would want to be dead too. It's just like, what is the point of this so awful.

So that was the brink of death feeling. That was the you are whatever 99.9999 years old. You're just like a second away from not existing anymore. Just bull.

And then yesterday night, I managed to very slowly walk down the steps of my Airbnb and managed to go outside to the drink machines because there's two drink machines out there, which I'll get into that too. But I mean as awful as this has been, I was in the best possible place to have food poisoning with the fancy Japanese toilet and no one else around. Drink machines right outside the building. But yeah, that's where I felt like I was like, you know, 90 years old, just really slowly walking down the steps one step at a time barely able to move just such intense pain. But managed to go outside and get some drinks from the drink machine and get back inside and slowly walk back upstairs and pass back out to not move anymore. Where today, today I feel like I'm about 70. Like I managed to make it around the corner and up the stairs to the Rose Garden near my place. So I'm just slowly hobbling around the Rose Garden. I'm going to try to go do laundry. That's my adventure for the day. But being 70 is so much better than being 90. Being 90 and being 99.99 where I'm about the same. It wasn't that it was all just terrible. But that I'm progressively getting better. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll feel like I'm in my 40s again. And I can go do something. But yeah, just slowly walking up the stairs and now I'm at the nice Rose Garden. And I'm like, ah, how nice. Like how nice that this is so near my place. So they get the water thing going today. Nice beautiful day. Get to look out at the view. And it's like, yes, this is about it. This is about all that I'm going to do today. Hobble, another few blocks to the fucking laundromat. And that's it.

Yeah, it's an interesting feeling to fucking age and reverse. Totally unable to do fucking anything to just barely able to walk down some stairs to now. Like, ah, you know, this isn't so terrible. At my 70 year age, I mean, I could go off and do stuff theoretically. But it would be a very bad idea. I'm still pretty incontinent. Even this is probably not a great idea to go do laundry, but whatever. But, you know, maybe being 70 won't be so bad because, you know, you just kind of reduce the scope of what you do in a day. If this was it, if this was all I could do, just come walk up some steps and go to a Rose Garden. Hopefully I live somewhere near a Rose Garden.

You know, maybe I just hang out here and that's it. That's my day. That's my adventure. It's not so bad. However, being the 90-year-old version of myself, I can't go anywhere. That's a lot less fun. 5:00 And yeah, just being in the wake up every two or three hours with blinding headaches, that is the, I'm afraid there's no upside to that one. There's no way to put a good spin on that one. That is the one where you would rather be dead.

That is a weird start to an episode, but it's been a weird couple of days. Anyway, yeah, I'm more about my sickness, probably not today. I probably wait till tomorrow when I go do something. I looked up, what's it called? That really cool enoshima, maybe? That really cool looking island that I saw from the beach. And it seems like a total tourist trap, tourist trap island. So, I don't know, I think I might go back to that, that same beach I was at, and just instead of walking west toward the sun, I'll walk east away from the sun, toward that island.

And then, you know, I think maybe I'll go check it out, but definitely that island itself is not going to be the goal of the day, because it really doesn't seem like my thing. But I think walking there along the beach could be nice, but yeah, it's like literally there's escalators. You can spend an extra two or three bucks to take escalators up the stairs to the shrine. Like, it is just tourist trapby to a bizarre degree.

But the journey there should be nice, and then the place itself we'll see. So hopefully I can do that tomorrow.

And I'll tell you about the amazing adventure of being sick. I managed not to get sick this whole time, like I didn't catch a cold, but just still miraculous to me. Some of these places I've been packed in with so many people, like, COVID must have been fucking stressful in this country, because you just turn the corner and all of a sudden there's just people everywhere. So I managed to avoid that. And again, trying to look at the upsides. If I'm going to get food poisoning and diarrhea, I got it a week before I'm leaving. I didn't get it right before I have to travel, which is what happened to me in 2019.

And yeah, relatively speaking, is basically about 28 hours that I could barely move. That could be worse, but man, that 28 hours, that sure was bad. But anyway, yeah, I'll tell you about it if you care if you want to hear about that. Today I'm just going to soak in the rose garden and go do some laundry.

Man, I really do love this neighborhood. This little neighborhood I'm in near the bluffs in Yokohama.

And a laundromat with this machine is pretty common. This machine that costs $10, which is kind of absurd. That is too much to do laundry and dry. But since I find these machines so difficult and confusing and I got to pull up my phone and do Google Translate and all this shit, if I did sort out separate washers, dryers, you know, get my own detergent, whatever, I could do laundry a lot cheaper. But this thing is so nice because you just put in all your stuff, it can take 10 kilograms. I just threw everything that I could possibly even my towels from my Airbnb. Probably don't even need to be washed really, but I'm like, hey, why not? I got 10 kilograms of space in here. Just throw in every little thing. And you toss it in, you toss in your $10, you wait an hour, it washes, it dries, it does everything, and I just love it because $10 is worth it to not have to fight with the laundry machine. And yeah, when I was just up at that Rose Garden looking out over stuff and then I walked, just hobbled my way down the steps and then down these stone stairs down into this neighborhood and down through this little streets. And then the first laundromat, the one that I had said on my Google Maps, it was pretty small. It only had three machines and they were all being used. So as I got down it, let me try to find another one. So I found another one around the corner and this one is called like books and laundry. And it's even smaller. There's only one of these 10 kilogram machines and then there's a 16 kilogram machine, the cost $12 and some dryers. Really tiny, but nobody's here, just me. So even though it's essentially a one machine place, I think these really big ones are for futons, I'm not sure, but even though it's a one machine place, I'm the only one here, so that's fine. And it's still got like the little one of the thing where you wash your sneakers. I think that's so cool. You find them all over Japan and I've never seen that before. But it's so nice. It's got this nice calm lighting. And the book part is just, there's just shelves with magazines. 10:00 And nice little, nice little stools, like a little wooden table and you can just sit here and read magazines or whatever.

Here's some manga.

However, it's good that I didn't go on a bigger adventure today. I'm starting to feel a little better, but just felt the little rumble in my gut in there. I don't think I'm going to make it the whole hour. The only thing that places missing is it doesn't have a washroom. A lot of the laundromats around here do.

But I think I need to go look for a local washroom all I wait for my laundry. But of course there will be some. I know for sure there's some. I know where there's one not too close to where I am.

But not too far. Oh man, and I mean I haven't eaten anything in literally two days. I guess I should. I mean it's a good sign I guess that my stomach is not feeling hungry. But I really felt distinctly not hungry these last two days. Like don't you dare. Don't you dare fucking eat anything.

Or surely if I just forced myself to eat a little plain rice ball or something. It certainly wouldn't hurt. But it's just amazing that it's like two days and I just really don't feel hungry. Not the heck.

Oh man, I was a little worried too because I literally threw everything in that washing machine. All my coats and jackets too. So I've only got a t-shirt on and I'm like oh man is it going to be a little chilly? To try to venture out to a washroom but no it's actually super nice today. It's ridiculously nice. Not quite t-shirt weather but close enough. Yeah man I don't know if you've got to be trapped. If you've got to be trapped in a neighborhood for a day. I can't think of many better than this. I really love this neighborhood.

Alright it's the next day. Last night I ate a nice plain rice ball and a plum rice ball. And then one of those sandwiches that's like whipped cream and fuckin' different kinds of fruit or whatever I haven't had one of those in ages. Figure that's pretty safe but yeah I got some food in me. It all went down pretty good. Woke up today feeling better. You know I walked around actually quite a bit yesterday so I think I was already getting quite a bit better. Today feeling fine but then once I really got up and started walking around I did feel a little touch of just swimminess in the brain. I'm just like oh I think I'm okay but hmmm. But anyway I think that's good enough to go on a fuckin' adventure because you know being on the train that's relatively safe right? Here we go stepping out of the Airbnb, out into the chill brisk air of Yokohama. She's not too bad out. I checked the weather and it said it was only five degrees. But maybe it's gotten warmer because that was an hour ago.

Yeah this is definitely above five degrees and I figure how dangerous is the train really.

You know there's washrooms on the trains and in the train station and if anything did go horribly wrong I could just get on the other train that's coming back this way and escape.

Oh man I'm still it's still novel feeling to just walk at a normal pace and just not be afraid to move my head. I really can't believe how bad that she was. But yeah I'll give you the recap when I get somewhere else but I think the plan is I'm just gonna go back to that cool beach that I was at the other day.

Nice brisk day on the beach and then walked to Anoshima and my expectations for Anoshima are pretty light because it seems very touristy. But just going there and walking along the beach will be cool and then I'm sure walking there will be cool in some capacity. I don't know. We'll see. The other place around there that looks really cool is Hakone Mountain but it's a whole to do. Like it's quite a big like a Caldera and to get around it. 15:00 It seems like the best thing to do is like buy like a $60 rail pass that you can use to take like cable cars, and a little pirate ship across the lake at one point. Like it's a whole kind of potentially two day journey to circle around this area. And it doesn't seem like you can really do it without that. Like it doesn't seem like you could just go walk. Maybe though I don't know. The whole thing though seems a little confusing.

Maybe a bit outside the scope of this trip to Japan since I'm winding down. I only got a few days left. But it seems potentially cool. Walking by a Lawson's. I just smelled that fried chicken smell. Oh, never again. Never again. All right. Ishi Kowacho Station. Man, that was a live walk. Like man, this Airbnb I met is so awesome. It's right by the bluffs. It's right by a station. And I'm not going into Yokohama. I'm going away from Yokohama so these trains are always nice and empty.

And then whenever I'm ready to come back, every time I've done this so far, I've ended up on a train that's like a mega express that always just zips right back to Yokohama Station in like one go without stopping. Because I'm always coming back at sundown. It's pretty fucking cool, man. It just really works out well.

Okay, Nagishi Line for Ophuna. I'm pretty damn sure that's the right way, but I really should pull out my phone and make sure I know where I'm actually going. All right, train time.

I just walked by a machine with some tullies stuff in it and I never did find another tullies gassada, just that one can in that one store in Fukuoka, never again. So this turned out kind of weird, so being sick did sort of reset my sleep schedule temporarily, so that's kind of nice. I actually woke up pretty early today and it's such a short ride to get to the beach near Inoshima, especially from Yokohama, apparently even from Tokyo, it's not that bad. So yeah, I got there so quickly that I'm like, yeah, you know, let's just keep going. I got all day.

Let's explore a little farther on the fucking train line.

So today I happen to get on the Atami line, but the for real one that really goes all the way to Atami. So I thought, all right, let's go check that out and I'll just, you know, I can make my way back up the coast from there. See what there is to see on the way by, there were a couple other stations that stood out a bit as places that seem cool to stop, but then as I went, I mean, it's still only 11 o'clock, but when I had this plan, it was nowhere near 11 o'clock. This is way too far. As I was going, I'm just feeling it in my bones, like this is too far. This is really far. This is a lot farther than I thought it was. It's like two and a half times added to the journey. And there's a lot of pretty views out the window of the train, like a lot of really cool views of the water. And now that I met Atami, that sort of seems to be how it isn't real life, too. I'm looking out at the bay right now and it's fucking gorgeous.

But there's a big fence between me and the water and I don't actually know how to get down there. It looks like on Google Maps there's a little strip of beach that maybe I can get to. I don't know. I don't know. This is kind of fucked. When I got here, I was kind of thinking maybe I should just hop back on a train and go directly back because it just seems pretty obvious that this is not where I'm necessarily supposed to be. But as like, I fuck it up here. Let's just go check it out. $13 train ride. This is a little much because I'm looking at the map and I keep wanting to go even further. I'm like, ah, you know, just because from here you can go to here and then to here and then to here. And it's like, yeah, if I just went a little further from Atami, I could go down to this, like Peninsula. But I noticed that's where my pre-downloaded map of the area also ended. I can't even really tell what's going on down there. So that's another good sign to stop. But okay, I think I found a little side street that has no sidewalk or anything but somebody with a 20:00 stroller came up. It's so people do use this street to get places. And I think this is taking me to the beach. Oh geez, what the fuck is this? There's just construction everywhere and fucking walls. I mean, to be fair, it's January or whatever. Anybody who would be visiting here would not be visiting here this time of year. Damn, yeah, I don't know man. I don't know even how to get to the water. I think Atami might be this might be a temporary stop before I just head back up the coast.

Shit, yeah, now these steps are just going back up. This fucking blows.

All right, I managed to make it down to the seaside. It took a little check-in because yeah, that area when you first come out of the station, I'm looking at it now from the other side and it's all very much looks very resort-y, resort-y type hotel-y type places all in the way. And one of them in particular is being constructed and that was not easy to get down here. But now I'm at Sun Beach or Sunshine Beach. I don't remember. And it seems like this might be about it around here, but it's all right. It's not bad. This doesn't seem like a some kind of full day trip or something, but to just pop in and check out and then pop the heck out, I think this is all right. Kind of a nice little seaside town vibe as I walk down through the streets. There's some kind of a cool shrine building like one of those cool ancient looking buildings way up on a mountain. I don't know what the heck that is or how to get there. But I think that's beyond the scope of today.

Yeah, I've just got this little beach thing that's like, I don't know, four blocks long. Five, six, it's Longish. A lot of boats down here. Big Marina. But it is a very nice day. Nice little breeze, but I was kind of thinking like I just grabbed some nice easy to digest rice balls from a 7-Eleven. And I was kind of thinking like, why did I come this far? Like right after being sick, you know? That feeling, that little flag of energy where it's like, oh, do I really? But yeah, I think I'm all right. I'll be fine. But I did have that brief little feeling in the gut of like, what are you doing here? You silly man. Kien Kaku, K-I-U-N-K-A-K-U, I believe. That's what I'm looking at.

I mean, it's really high up. That mountain is super steep. And it's higher up than like the big-ass hotel that's right next to it. But it's not far. I don't know, I guess I'll wander over in that direction. But it's like super cliffside, like way up there. I don't know. I don't know how the fucking get up there. But anyway, as I walk along this boardwalk next to all these boats towards some magical building in the sky, a beautiful sunny day. Let me just tell you the tale of getting sick. So I guess it was Monday, the last proper podcast that I did. And I remember as I was coming home that day, I was pretty wiped, pretty exhausted. And it's this dumb thing of like, I don't know if you ever feel this way. But when you're tired, where it feels like work to eat, you know, like lately I have been eating a lot more just plain rice balls or plum rice balls. Just really simple stuff that you really can't go wrong with. Even yeah, just the salted plain rice ball is surprisingly a tasty thing. Or if it's not, I mean, you're not hungry enough. You know, just wait to your hungry. And then basic food is delicious. But in this case, I don't know, I just was like, I was just exhausted to that level that I'm like, I just don't want to like have to sit there and work to eat food. I want to eat something that's easy to eat. And nothing is easier to eat than greasy fried food. You know, you just shovel it in your face. You're just like, it's compelling in a gross way. So I found a Lawson's on my way back. I stopped deliberately, had a farther away stop. So I'd have more chances to walk by a Lawson's that had the self served fried chicken. And then I found one that had two pieces left of like just the fried chicken breast that's like two bucks each. These were their last two pieces. And this was who the heck knows what time it was dark out. So maybe not super late, but not exactly early in the day. So who knows how long they've been sitting around. And I got those with two rice balls. So the idea would be take a bite of rice, take a bite of chicken. And you know, just kind of, at least I'm not just eating greasy fried chicken.

You know, it's kind of mixed with rice. Shouldn't be as bad. And I looked this up because, you know, just casting about in my time of pain that came later. Just at a curiosity, I did look up like, does anyone have bad experiences with this fried chicken stuff in Japan? Because I also had kind of a bad time with chicken balls earlier at Lawson's. But that one wasn't as bad and was totally my fault because I didn't realize they needed to be reheated. But that one actually I got away with more or less. And basically I found like some Reddit discussions about like, does anyone else find it weird how long they leave stuff like fried chicken out in Japan? They just seem to leave this stuff out all day. Where in North America, it's like a two hour time limit and then you get the fuck rid of this stuff. And the replies were like, yeah, it does seem a little weird. But nobody really had any bad stories about it. And I mean, if someone had a bad story to tell, they fucking would on Reddit, you know, they totally would. So it was like this big long discussion that kind of came to the conclusion that maybe North America is being a little overly cautious about stuff. The Japanese method doesn't seem to be unsafe. And then there were even some conspiracy theorists saying that maybe the North American method was to try to run smaller food sellers out of the market because only big major corporations can keep up with this need to constantly refresh food all day every day. So who knows, it seems like I just got unlucky. I don't think you really need to worry about fried chicken in Japan. It does not seem like this is a common thing. I think I just got really unlucky. But I ate these two pieces of chicken.

And they were gross. I mean, that's a good enough reason not to do it. I suppose. I've never had this fried chicken in Japan and had a good time with it. It's always disgusting. But it's just, you know, fried food. We're just, we're just a gross bunch of grossies that just like that shit.

So then that night I got hit with pretty bad insomnia, which was frustrating.

Because I wanted to just spring up the next day and come do something like this. Come on, another weird adventure down the coast. And as like 2 a.m. hit and then 3 a.m. hit and I was getting pretty frustrated at my own body. And it's just like having to just kind of give up stuff of like, okay, never mind. That's not going to happen. Recalibrate the plans for tomorrow.

You know, you're just not going to do it whatever. And I don't know if that was just wrong.

That's the person I've actually heard about making noise around here. And this is weird too is I approached this crazy building. There's on Google Maps, it doesn't look hard to get to because there's streets everywhere. But since this does not, it's not an elevation-related map. It's like, yeah, there's streets everywhere. But the thing is fucking 200 feet in the sky. I do not think I can get there on foot. Yeah, I don't even know if there's much point in walking any closer. I'll look it up later. In fact, I think I've already seen what there is to see of Atami. I'm at the edge of the beach. There's a water park here with slides, a lot of resorts. It seems like this is a place to catch boats is mainly what this is.

Yeah, as usual, I mean, just the mountains. So beautiful. There's a lot of hotels around here, but now there's like hotels that instead of like small residential buildings cascading up the side of the mountains, like they do in Fukuoka and stuff, here it's hotels, like there's a hotel halfway up the mountain. And then there's another hotel, three quarters of the way up the mountain. I bet the views are really good from there. It's pretty pretty, but yeah, I can't say I would recommend coming to Atami Station. It's another classically, if you happen to be around here, it's pretty cool, but weird thing to travel to, but you know, just had to try it once. But anyway, this insomnia, I don't know if it was related to me being sick or if it was just bad luck that they both happened together, but it might have been that my body knew something bad was coming, and that's why I couldn't sleep. I really don't know. But I felt totally fine, even through the insomnia, till all of a sudden, I had to go to the bathroom and it was just water that came out 30:00 of my butt. But somehow, it just was still like, oh well, whatever, who that was weird, let's go to bed. And then just as I was starting to drift off to sleep, I had to go to the bathroom again, like not long after. And I still was like too stupid to realize what was happening, what I was in the throes of, possibly because I was sleepy, it makes it worse, make sure thoughts, processes, you know, not work as well. As a little frustrated again, I'm like, god damn, it's just put to fall asleep, and now I gotta go back to the washroom. And that time, it was evacuate soul, you know, was just every bit of liquid that could possibly leave my body through my butt did. And then I mean, I, you know, that's scatological enough, right? No need for excessive details. But it just went on and on and on and on and on and on. I just, let's try to look at the upside. So the upside is, I was in the best possible scenario to have diarrhea that I've ever been in in my entire life. So I'm in this little room, but it's a very nice little room with very comfy futon setup. Everything in the room was nice. There's a heater in the room where you can individually change the temperature of just that one room, which I've never had before when I'm sick. And that turned out to be very handy. No one else was in the whole place. So no one was around to hear my grunts and groans because one thing I've learned, I also learned this when I was hung over in Chiba. As I get older, I have a much harder time suffering in silence. As things got worse and worse, I'm like, audibly moaning and groaning and occasionally swearing and just like unbelieving that life is this bad. Where he's able to do that quietly. Now it's just like, oh, fuck. So no one could hear all that stuff.

And just outside my room, one step outside the room, turn to the left, immediate washroom. The washroom has the heated toilet seat, the bidet function, everything you could possibly want from a Japanese toilet. And I didn't need it, but I did have some times of feeling nauseous, where I was a little like feeling like I could possibly throw up. And I was wondering if that would help and should I make myself throw up, but it never came to that. So a little sink, it was a very tiny bathroom that only had a toilet in it, but there was a little sink in the bathroom that you literally could just lean over and throw up. And if you had to, it was fucking perfect for all that stuff. And then later, when I finally managed to hobble downstairs and get some drinks, right outside of the door, one right outside and one across the alley, were two drink machines. So it was the best ever scenario. If you ever need to have diarrhea, man, I can't recommend I fucking Japanese Airbnb more. It is the best. Like despite the fact that I just had water poops, minimum every two hours, usually more often, for the next fucking 28 or 30 hours or something, my butt has never been cleaner in my life. Like normally in these horrible situations in North America, first off the temperature is touch and go in your house. You're not going to be able to perfectly align everything to what you need at that moment. And you just get grosser and grosser till you eventually can sum in the wear with all to take a shower, where in this case, every single time, I just use the bidet and it was just like immediately cleaning everything every time. Eventually, I did have to turn the water pressure down from medium to low because I was just having so much time on the toilet that it's starting to hurt my butt a little is getting mind really sensitive. And that's it. So that was great.

Alright, I'm going to start heading back up the hill back towards the station because I saw I saw sun beach. I guess we're done here. I don't quite know where to go, but just walking between these rows of buildings up toward the mountains and toward all the cool resort buildings and stuff, I assume if I just go up the hill, I'll get more or less where I need to go, and I can figure it out from there.

So the temperature thing was pretty interesting because being sick, it really flipped flops my body upside down. Where normally I always want to be cold, you know, I want to set things as cold as I can because I just very easily sweat, so I don't I don't like that. But then when I'm sick, then I get the cold sweats. Like I remember when I was sick in Amsterdam, you know, I had all of my blankets piled up on top of me, but that house was cold, which normally would be good, but I was cold sweating under my blankets. So in this case in the Japanese room, I was in a very similar situation, and I only had to turn the heat up a little from the 14 degrees is the lowest it can go Celsius. I only turned it up to 16, but it was enough to just keep my body temperature at the point that it needed to be at that point to stop me from sweating. 35:00 So weird, like being cold would give me these weird cold sweats, but being hotter like that, which normally would be killing me because I was also wearing all my blankets and like my big fluffy hoodie under all my blankets, I would be sweating to death normally, but in this case it was perfect, it was keeping me from sweating, it was like the perfect temperature. I'm really trying to put the fucking, put those like rose-colored glasses, the tint, the rose-colored tint on this, but I mean it really was now that it's over. I mean any other situation would have been worse. This was the perfect situation to be sick like this, and the diarrhea part was annoying because I kept having to wake up over and over and over, so I couldn't really sleep. But again, with the bidet and everything, it wasn't the worst part. The worst part was this headache developed, and it was just the headache from a fucking hell. And I got to assume it's a combination of just whatever sickness I had was making me have a headache and dehydration and not sleeping and probably eventually caffeine withdrawal added to it. But it was so bad and it hit so hard and so fast, I could barely move, like getting up to go to the bathroom was very difficult. So I couldn't even hobble my way downstairs to buy some electrolyte drinks and stuff for over 24 hours, you know, it was just brutal. Now I'm on kind of a little shopping street on the way back up, but you can really tell this is probably not the most popular seaside town in the world anyway, and definitely not now, even though the weather's insane, but just it being January. Because at least half of these stores are just shuttered, just closed down, probably more than half.

But yeah, I mean, again, besides resorts and ships leaving, there really does not seem to be a ton here, unless I'm missing something. It must be tough too in a way. I mean, every place can't be a tourist haven, you know? I mean, every place in Japan kind of is in a way. You really got a lot of competition.

I'm only here because this happened to be the end of the line on the subway, you know? So anyway, that's kind of glossing over just, you know, 24 straight hours of insane misery, but there's nothing else to say about it. That's all it was, was just insane misery. Where I could never sleep, my headache was so bad I could barely move. My brain was just, just whacked out. For some reason I was thinking I was like three versions of myself, and I was keeping track of all three, and they each had different, different things that were going wrong, or different like status ailments if this was a video game. And then once in a while I would remember like, there's not three of me, there's only one of me, like that's how fucked up it was getting, it was really weird. Really stupid songs, we get stuck in my head and just play endlessly forever.

And yeah, I was trying to, well I guess I wasn't even trying so much. I did have water at my disposal. I wasn't really trying that hard to drink water at first, because my body was just like, don't do anything. Don't eat, don't do nothing. That was probably a mistake, I should have tried to force myself to drink water.

But I guess I was also under the hope that I'd be able to sleep longer if I had to go to the washroom less, which is kind of true, but not because I kept waking up anyway, I don't know. But anyway eventually, I hobbled downstairs, and I bought some bottles of that electrolyte type shit, just because you know, easier to drink than water.

Because it really was quite hard to force water down into my gut. And I also got this little, I noticed one of the machines had like the warm chocolate milk. You know, I bought the chocolate milk and it wasn't actually that great and it didn't help that much, but just the notion that it was there.

Well, it's 12 o'clock, that's what that chime is. It's nice to have a chime where it can immediately actually tell what it is.

But yeah, just the mere fact that there was warm chocolate milk available from the machine outside my door theoretically made me feel better, you know, didn't actually make me feel better at all.

But the notion that that was a thing available to me somewhere deep down kind of helped.

So then I really started fighting to drink liquids because I assumed this headache must have been dehydration based. So I really forced myself to drink a bunch of liquids and unfortunately because my body, I have a small bladder and my metabolism is really fast and I just process liquids like crazy. It's why I'm always looking for washrooms and stuff and it's no different in this situation even though I clearly needed the moisture and I needed the liquid. It's like my body is so fucking stupid that it's still just like, oh, liquids, alright, process process process, 20 minutes later, pee that all out please. It's like don't we need that, don't we need that liquid for something else, but it just made me have to pee all the time which made it even harder to sleep and more and more miserable. But I managed to get all the liquids down and that's where I mean obviously dehydration was part of it but I don't know how much because it just didn't help. This headache was so fucking intense and it just wouldn't stop that I started looking that up. Like how long is a dehydration headache supposed to last for? And the thing I found was like oh you know once normal hydration is resumed it should only last for one to three more hours. And it's like but it's over 12 hours later than that now and it's still hurting so bad that I can barely move. Like that's the point where her instead of just being miserable and adrift in the cosmos that's where I started getting angry. Whereas just like what the fuck is wrong with you my body? What do you think you're trying to accomplish here? I'm doing everything I can do for you. I'm going to the washroom immediately every time you want me to. I'm fucking sleeping as much as possible. All I'm doing is lying here with my fucking eyes closed. It's all I've been doing for two days. I drank a bunch of liquids. There is just no value to this level of headache. What are you trying to warn me about? What do you think you're getting out of this? Like I couldn't believe how much it hurt.

And it's just like what am I supposed to do? I've never had like painkillers do less. I think through the course of this I took like three aspirin or whatever tylenols or whatever I've got. They just did nothing. But it's just like oh I could not believe the pain. The pain of the headache was way worse than the diarrhea. The diarrhea made it so I had to stay home but the headache made it so I couldn't fucking stand up or move or do anything.

And anyway then it just eventually, about 12 hours after that, probably it's probably less than a full 48 hours. But it's like a full day and a half probably. Before I kind of felt like things were at least manageable. It was like the level of headache that you can just deal with and go on with your day. It wasn't just totally fucking insane.

And I don't know that the solid poops have actually come back at all yet but at least the frequency has reduced greatly. And yeah I think again just terrible luck but that's the end of my fried chicken adventures. Never again, never again. I'm just the unluckiest man in the world but I mean it was gross anyway. I can't believe I went through all that for something that was so disgusting in the first place.

So yeah that's my tail of being trapped in the same tiny room for two days. Again it is amazing how fast. Well even at the time, since it's amazing how fast you can start looking more fondly upon these things even at the time, even in the throws of this. Like I was still appreciative of the scenario because I was just thinking of like when I got food poisoning in Toronto and I had a creepy basement apartment. It was all chilly and cold and my bathroom was really far away and just that was way worse. Or being sick in Amsterdam. That toilet was on a different floor of some stranger's house. It was way worse.

The bidet thing man it's worse. I think that that YouTuber Dogen that was one of the jokes that he made once was some people don't want to get the washlet attachment for their toilets when they move to Japan because it is quite expensive. But you just wait till you get food poisoning the first time and it'll pay for itself and he is fucking right. Man he is right. I mean like it was bad enough let's just get slightly gross for a sec. It was bad enough that even with my vigilance I went through three pairs of underwear during this because just like a weird drop of mystery moisture would be on my fucking underwear and I'm like I don't even know what that is but I don't trust it. 45:00 Change pants, change underpants and I don't know because I'm so weirdly like I don't want fucking Airbnbers to have to do extra work because of me. Like I'm kind of proud of how many of my Airbnb reviews here in Japan have mentioned that I take care of my own garbage. They think that's just the best because I never leave garbage in the communal places. If they have a garbage can in here I don't use it.

I just take my garbage with me and I deal with it myself. So similarly there's a lady who comes into clean which I was so thankful she didn't come in that day. Thank God because they do clean excessively even if I'm the only one there they're there almost every day to clean. But I wanted to make sure there was no evidence of what had happened here and then I thought I should check the underside of the toilet seat and sure enough just there have been a bunch of mystery brown splash back. It was like kind of splattered all over and I'm like holy god gross. So I scrubbed it all off. I don't want anyone to be aware of the horrors they put their equipment through. The only thing maybe I wonder if she maybe noticed like how did this guy go through half a roll of toilet paper in the land of bidets because that's like the North American equivalent of like four rolls. That's insane. But I'm sure she didn't notice that would be a weird thing to notice.