At this time of year, just after the start of the new term, students have to do health checks at school. This are usually pretty routine, with students giving blood and having their eyes and teeth checked. It’s a pretty good system in general, and allows poorer students a free check-up and any necessary treatment (ie glasses) that they might need…although it doesn’t seem to have done anything to help stem the flood of interesting and original teeth formations that you see in the average Japanese Junior High School. Anyway, this year, I figured everything would be pretty much the same as usual; students would be called out of class for their health check and would return a few minutes later in tears, to be greeted by the world-wide custom of the post-injection-dead-arm. This was not to be the case. In our pre-class meeting today, I found out that in my new city, not only the students have to have a health check, but the teachers do too. Obviously, being foreign (and therefore almost non-human in the eyes of the Japanese), I don’t have to do this…but the rest of the teachers do. The thing is, not only do they have to do the usual blood, sight and dental checks, but everyone also has to do a urine-test. As if that wasn’t bad enough, when they donate their sample, it has to be collected in the mosy obscenely small tube, about the same size as a thick biro, which is named, appropriately and yet ridiculously enough:

A "Pee-pole". Wonderful! I’ll try and take a better picture tomorrow when I have my proper camera.