Japanese Cold Remedies

[Hatori]

Hello, everybody! Anyway, this whole week I've been having a slight sniffle and cough here and there and now I have a pretty bad cold. I was wondering, other than taking cold medicine or drinking hot tea, what do the Japanese do if somebody was sick with a cold? In some countries, I know that they do certain things to get rid of a cold that's different than America.
If somebody was sick with another illness, please post about what somebody would do in Japan for the illness too!
Thanks for reading!

[Mike Cash]

A lot do something my American upbringing causes me to find incomprehensibly odd; they go to the hospital.

And for some reason, it is verboten to bathe while one has a cold. Consequently, it is not uncommon to encounter some rather musty people during cold season.

[tōkai devotee]

I was told to go to the hospital everytime when I had a cold. I resisted, so my Japanese 'mum' put me to bed with electric blanket on, and fed me rice gruel. I thought it was pretty gross at first but I got used to it!

[Shirasagi]

Eat okayu.

[Infidel]

I can understand not going to a public bath when one has a cold...

[Mike Cash]

Infidel wrote:
I can understand not going to a public bath when one has a cold...

That would be the socially responsible thing to do. A pity it doesn't extend to not indiscriminately coughing all over everything. I can't count the number of times I've seen people (usually children) coughing all over stuff in stores. Don't even turn their heads.....

I was talking about not bathing at all while one has a cold.

[two_heads_talking]

Mike, don't the Japanese still wear those white masks over their faces? I was under the impression that they had medicines in the mask and that they wouldn't cough or sneeze on everyone else.

[katafei]

well, if nobody takes a bath when having a cold, I can understand the facial mask......


@Hatori:
One onion a day and you'll be right as rain within a week. Mind you, you will be anyway

According to my (native) Japanese sensei, the Japanese have a normal body temperature of 36 degrees. I wonder if this is true...?

[Yudan Taiteki]

That's one of those nonsense nihonjinron things like "only Japan has four seasons" or "non-Japanese people cannot understand the concept of mottainai". Ask him how long Japanese women are pregnant and see if he says 10 months.

[saraLynne]

katafei wrote:
According to my (native) Japanese sensei, the Japanese have a normal body temperature of 36 degrees. I wonder if this is true...?

I would have just assumed he meant Celsius and was seeing if you'd catch the difference...

[Yudan Taiteki]

but even in F that's 96.8 whereas in the US we usually name 98.6 as the normal body temperature. Rather than correctly explaining this as a cultural difference (since neither body temperature is really accurate as an exact measurement of a person's normal BT), they try to make it out to be a racial difference between the Japanese and other countries.

[katafei]

Well, yeah, 'obviously' it is in Celsius....
But as Yudan points out, it's still low. On the whole, the average body temperature is 37 degrees.
I've been a nurse for nearly 30 years now, and although I can't remember any Japanese patients, I've had plenty of Asian patients and never noticed any significant difference in BT.

So, to be honest (no disrespect to my teacher) I have some lingering doubts about his statement ^_^
Apparently, one day when he had a cold, he went to the doctor, who was not too impressed.
'But doctor, my temperature is 37!'
'Yes, so.....?'

This is how my sensei found out.

[AJBryant]

Yudan Taiteki wrote:Ask him how long Japanese women are pregnant and see if he says 10 months.

Well, WE say nine months, and we're wrong, too.

The human gestation period is typically 38 weeks. If you assume "four weeks in a month" that's 9.5 months.

Tony

[JaySee]

All months except for February have 30 or 31 one days though (as I'm sure you know), which is 4 weeks and 2 days or 4 weeks and 3 days. If you calculate it like that then 9 months is more or less correct. Isn't it 40 weeks though? Oh well, I don't know

(Incidentally, only 5% of all babies are born on the day they're 'due'...) Oh to have a sister who is a mid-wife.

[Yudan Taiteki]

AJBryant wrote:

Yudan Taiteki wrote:Ask him how long Japanese women are pregnant and see if he says 10 months.

Well, WE say nine months, and we're wrong, too.

Right -- these are cultural differences being interpreted as biological differences. It's an easy mistake to make because you wouldn't normally think of gestation time as something that could be culturally different.