The annual comprehensive medical checkup.
I managed to secure the slot in my schedule for the checkup between concerts this year too.
I always get it done at my alma mater, Keio University Hospital and am surprised every year by their constant replacement of medical devices updated with the latest models.
‶Wow, what does this device check? What should I do? Do I just stand inside it? ″
I kept bombarding them with questions with great curiosity, while I was getting my body scanned, my eyes looking around everywhere…
The examination centre full of modern equipment and devices is always a lot of fun, as I wonder‶What’s next? What am I up to now?″
When I was told that lunch would be served, I felt like a schoolgirl waiting for her favourite school lunch and the checkup became a fun time, thinking “How many hours, minutes, seconds until lunch? There’s sill one more examination left…” I think this is because usually, I am deeply immersed in music in my everyday life as a violinist, and the time I spend at the hospital for my checkup is out of the ordinary.
I undergo all sorts of examinations and I particularly like the stomach and intestinal cameras. I was actually quite disappointed when I was told that I didn’t need the test this year, so I had to voluntarily request them to the doctor in charge to get them done. No one has come into alignment with me so far when I mention it, and looks at me with a suspicious face.
What I like about it is that it feels like a reset to me. As I take the stomach and intestinal camera simultaneously, I feel like “saving time.” Going to the examination with an empty stomach and intestines, the whole process especially with the intestine camera feels like a real reset.
After the examination, I always think “I have to change my ways from today onwards…”
What I mean by saying change is the speed at which I eat. It seems that my speed of eating is really fast. I hadn’t been aware of it for a long time but people started pointing it out and TV programs started focusing on it, and I gradually became aware that I was a fast eater.
I find myself swallowing without even realizing it. Sometimes I am surprised and think “What did I just swallow?”
When I’m eating with my friends or with a group of acquaintances and work colleagues, I am often the only one finished while everyone else is still enjoying their meals.
But it seems that my managers or fellow artists whom I work with most closely have started to eat fast, almost at the same speed as me, and I feel a kindred spirit.
But of course, it is not good to eat so fast. So far, my annual checkup results are not bad at all, but I do understand clearly that I can’t be relieved about it. I am aware that eating fast is bad for you, and recently I have been trying to correct myself. I have started putting down my chopsticks to chew properly.
It is not at all easy to correct a habit, but at least I’m chewing more slowly and carefully whenever I remember.
The fact that I often eat alone may not be good either. I eat at my own pace and finish my meals quickly, finishing them without even noticing.
When I eat with other people, I try to eat at the same speed as them, feeling this small effort could be better than nothing…
I do pay a lot of attention to my diet, and consider myself to be very health-conscious, always thinking about the nutritional balance of what I eat. So now, my next target is my eating speed,
now that my stomach and intestines feel empty and clean after an endoscopy and colonoscopy.
I will change my ways from now on.
As I ate with this in my mind, trying to chew the food 30 or 40 times, I felt that it wasn’t so tasty. Is it strange to want to swallow food at my own pace? It seems that when I chew hard, even the delicious food doesn’t taste so good…
Does this happen to everyone else too?
While I was thinking about this now, I realized that I had finished eating already.