Medicine Delivery

Around 11 this morning I learned that I can hear my doorbell through my practice room door.  I set aside my cello and the soviet chill of the third movement of Shostakovich's cello sonata to find a friendly Japanese man waiting for me outside.  I was a little befuddled by the transition and it took me a minute to realize that he wasn't selling internet or religion or offering me a package from Amazon but offering me a box with medicine.  He seemed very insistent that I take it.  I asked several times if I had to pay and he assured me that I didn't.  That's where my current understanding lies.

I believe myself to be entering into a dangerous zone of Japanese comprehension and communication, one in which I know and understand enough to start interacting and garnering responses from my trusting Japanese bystanders.   It's a dangerous zone and it will probably last for the duration of my time here.  One of my greatest Japanese studying inspirations, a friend of mine who has learned an incredible amount in the year-and-a-half that she's been here, recently joined us for dinner still upset over an encounter with trying to use an ATM in Japanese.  All's well that ends well, but as we gain proficiency we become like awkward middle schoolers or long-haired kittens where part of us is fully grown and other parts are still a bit patchy.  Hopefully we'll fill out.

And now I have this box.....

The worst case scenario that I imagine here is that I will be charged for a supply of poisonous arsenic maliciously sent to Akuradanchi by North Korea, the payment being used to fund their nuclear weapons development.  Perhaps I'll receive a bill in a few weeks that I won't understand and I'll put it in the paper garbage; and then maybe a few weeks later someone will come to my door but I'll be at rehearsal.  

However in this case I think that this company is just distributing these products to try, along with a price card, carefully produced in the box that tells the cost for each if one should wish to get more.  This is what I understood from our exchange.  And now I have a mystery box of Japanese medicine.  I don't really use medicine in general and while I can understand most of what these things are (simple cold medicines and bandaids costing very little), there are others that I'm not so sure.  I feel like this is something that my mother would say not to do–taking strange medicine from strangers.  But I also feel like my mother would be curious, too, and something about Japan makes it seem ok.  That being said, I'm in no hurry to get sick to see what happens.

box of medicine