I’d been told about having to go in for multiple visits by several different people, but this was not the case for you, which is probably good; at the same time, opinions differed as to whether having to have, say, a cavity take up multiple trips to the dentist was really a bad thing anyway. But you’re right, going to the dentist in Japan is wicked cheap, especially since, as you say, the quality of care is not that much worse than it would be in the United States for several times the cost.

Anyways, thanks for the comment. Stick around; I promise that I’ll actually post new stuff here at some point in the near future.

I’ve been to 2 dentists while in Japan. My first experience, the one with the cavaties, was spectacular. I called, made an appointment for that day, went in, had xrays, a dental exam, my cavity drilled and filled and an explanation of a possible root canal but he was going to try to do everything in his power to prevent it all within 70 minutes of the initial phone call. There was no multiple visits, other than he needs me back in to take care of other smaller cavaties, I never even felt the novacaine shot, and he used the white resin filling for my cavaties. All of this cost me less than $60USD.

My second visit, just the other day was a slightly different experience. I went in to have my wisdom teeth looked at, and the guy ended up taking one out while I was there. Novacaine only. No laughing gas, no happy pills, no sleeping, just a towel over my eyes to “protect me” (his english was limited). Still, I have to admit the place was really clean, he was a happy guy who kept telling me it’ll be fine and not to worry, and the whole extraction took less than 10 minutes from first crank to it popping out. I’m a bit terrified of my next visit for my next tooth, and I’m not sure I can handle getting my bottom ones taken out the same way, but overall I’ve been fairly happy with dentistry in Japan. Of course, I might just be one of the few lucky ones.

Japanese spirituality is a little different from conventional Western views of religion. Shintoism is like the old tribal religion of Japan, sort of like Hinduism in India, very tied to the land, not a lot of proselytizing or conversion. Buddhism was introduced to Japan at some point in the second century BCE. But the Japanese, being practical about these things, didn’t get rid of Shintoism. Instead the two religions have coexisted, often within the same people. As a result, to this day you will frequently see a Buddhist temple with a Shinto shrine in it somewhere. A tour guide I had in Kyoto described it this way: “Shinto takes care of us when we are alive, but does not care about us when we are dead. So when Buddhism came, it was very convenient. Now, Buddha takes care of us when we are dead. This is division of labor.”

So Shinto shrines usually have the torii (the special type of gate), certain carvings of deities, and other trappings that mark them as such. Buddhist temples have carvings of Buddha. To an outside observer, the differences beyond that are not all that noticable.