JAPAN LITE

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20030830cz.htm

'Hari': acupuncture or body piercing?

By AMY CHAVEZ

I had already tried massage, but my back and shoulders were still
hurting from a pinched nerve. So, I tried "hari." Hari is
acupuncture. "Hari," also the Japanese word for needle, but with a
different kanji, is almost always written in hiragana, perhaps to
make it seem less threatening. I had spotted the old, dirty sign
while walking in the city and decided to give it try right then. I
walked into a tiny room with curtains and a woman who greeted me.
She said she could give me treatment right away. No names, no forms
to fill out.
"Is this your first time?" she asked me. "Yes," I said, relieved
that an explanation would follow. But no explanation followed. "Your
first time?" I asked, referring to her treating a "gaijin." "Yes,"
she said. I offered no explanation.

She told me to lie on my back, and she leaned over me and submerged
the first eight needles into my body. Tap-tap with a small hammer,
two into each arm: tap-tap, tap-tap. Two into each calf: tap-tap,
tap-tap. Then she pointed a heat lamp on my stomach and left me.

The needles were sticking out of me in pairs. They were very thin
needles. If I moved my arm just slightly, they'd wave at me. Great.

After 10 minutes, she pulled out the needles and told me to roll
over on my stomach. She stuck at least 20 more needles into my body.
Talk about body piercing! Tap-tap, tap-tap. I wonder if she sells
silver hoops and rings too. Tap-tap. Maybe body piercing is really
just permanent acupuncture.

"Do any of them hurt?" she asked.

"Of course they hurt! They're neeeeeeedles!" I wanted to say. But
the more I thought about it, the more I realized they didn't hurt at
all. Even the needles in my head didn't hurt.

She left me again, this time for 30 minutes. There I was, displayed
like a butterfly pinned to cardboard. I wondered, should I spread my
wings out a little? Perhaps the lamp was for observation purposes
too. But so far, no observers. I guess I wasn't a very interesting
foreign insect after all.

Every now and then, the needles in my arm would wave at me. Did I
twitch a muscle? I don't think so. With the proximity of Mars these
days, maybe someone was trying to make contact. I didn't really know
how to interpret the waving needles, so I just smiled back at them.
You know, just in case.

Then it hit me -- was I was being used as a voodoo doll? Perhaps
foreigners all over Japan were saying "Ouch! Ouch!" as they felt
needles prick their bodies. Did anyone else out there feel your
belly getting hot? Tap-taps out of nowhere? Or maybe you looked down
and suddenly had a pierced belly button with a silver ring.

The woman (I never thought to ask her name) was still gone. Was she
preparing a chant? A spell? And why me? Why should she pick me to
represent the foreign population? Just then, she appeared from
behind the curtain.

She waved her hands over me: "A curse on you, tumble into smoking
stew. May a black snake catch you by the heel, and hornets get you
when you kneel. Bedbugs eat you by night, all goes wrong nothing
right, lest my daughter pass the English STEP test."

As she pulled out the needles, I woke up.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Great. The pain is gone." I thanked her, gave her 4,000 yen and
left.

I've had no problems with my back since. Of course, her daughter
hasn't taken the English STEP test yet either.