Miss Piggy-style karate chop

Going for gold at the gym recently (and not even getting bronz’d), I somehow managed to make my back warrant a trip to the chiropractor’s this afternoon.

It felt like quite a quintessentially Oriental experience, as ridiculous as that may sound.

First I had to find the place, and wandering through the wooden back streets of Ishibashi at dusk was a bit of an adventure in itself. It was the kind of place where you wouldn’t have blinked twice if you happened across a samurai sword shop. Not that I did, mind you, but it’s one of those romantic fantasies you sometimes have. Like when a kimono-clad woman comes and sits next to you on the subway and wafts herself gracefully with her retractable fan. I never retract to those kinds of moments. Never. In fact, I relish in them like the relish on a hot dog does.

Finally found this rickety old house that was all, er, rickety…in an old school charming kind of a way. Extra relish on the side, please.

There’s nobody there, so I’m waiting in the reception area and I’m watching the telly randomly. As you do. There’s this news feature on about the economic crisis and how it’s supposed to be hitting Japan, but how can they say that when the exchange rate of the yen to the pound is so unbelievable? It was beyond me, but it was interesting to see the reactions of all these stall owners in the local market and shopping precinct that the news reporter went to interview. They were saying how they’d, like, never sell any more daikon radishes and origami paper if things carried on the way they were and stuff. Oh yucky, let’s so hope Nippon so doesn’t follow suit with the rest of the world. This really isn’t the time to copy America, you know.

So anyway, this absolutely lovely old man that looks like Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid with a gravelly voice suddenly manifests from behind a curtain and greets me by getting me to get horizontal on a mat on the floor.

Konnichi wa.

Yoroshiku ne.

Eeek, too late…

Next thing, he yells out for assistance and suddenly this old lady does this enter-stage-left routine (again from behind a curtain, but this time a different one) and my knee’s being twisted over one side of my body extremely slowly and then…

Cue a Miss Piggy karate chop: “Hai yaaaaaa”…

then an ALMIGHTY YAAAAANK…and…

C*R*U*N*C*H!!!!

Feels like my spine is being snapped in half, and then lo! Exactly the same thing on the other side of my body!

Then he’s like, “OK, so now sit up straight, we’ve only just begun, chuck.” And I’m all like, “Good grief”, and before I know what’s happening he’s got my head in a rugby lock, and I’m thinking, like, “I hope you’re not thinking what I’m thinking”, and he’s like, “I so am, ha ha.”

C*R*U*N*C*H   A*G*A*I*N!!!

So I’m nearly decapitated, and he’s acting like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Which is why it would’ve been so inappropriate to cry.

I’m getting the feeling that’s not even the half of it, and I’m so right and my wishful thinking’s so wrong. Which I why I next find myself on a table being pierced with a whole bunch of needles like a human pin cushion. And then these suction cup thingies that started vibrating like a contraption from Frankenstein, and I’m getting right into the spirit of Halloween and stuff. 

This is what acupuncture is really like, yeah.

All the contact info about this marvellous place is in the previous post entitled “Ohh, me achin bones.” Itte’rasshai!