The snot hoover.

We arrived in Japan on Tuesday morning. All of us had colds, sniffles and coughs. Ríona had had hers for a week or two already.

On Friday, Midori decided it was time to get her checked out and brought her to a Japanese doctor. The doctor gave her antibiotics, cough syrup and aspirin. Japanese medical clinics all seem to include their own dispensary which is very handy but I wonder about the conflict of interests in terms of prescribing expensive drugs and also little things like aspirin, (maybe it's all regulated, I dunno).

The most exciting thing about the whole trip (and the bit I regret missing) was the doctor's use of a small vacuum cleaner to suck all the snots out of Ríona nose! You get to see what comes out in a glass jar too. Apparently she was not bothered by it at all.

So if that wasn't nasty enough, the doctor also told Midori that she should repeat the procedure herself. "How?", I asked, "by sucking her nose?". Apparently, yes, by sucking her nose, while giving her a bath for example. Just in case you haven't already run through the details in your head, you suck, nothing happens, you suck harder, nothing happens, harder some more... pop a torrent of hot, green snot shoots into your mouth, hitting you straight in the tonsils. Did you just gag? I know I did when I first thought about it. I imagine in real life that my mouth full of snot would quickly be followed by me puking up my own daughter's nose. Maybe if you're into live fish, sea-urchins' gonads and rancid soy-beans then it's nothing special.

Might be a good idea for Jackass...