After our snack behind Godzilla’s head in Tokyo’s manga and anime shopping district, I went into a drugstore to buy some sore throat and runny nose over-the-counter medicine, and came out with remedies that did not work and my ego was crushed. 

The tourist advice websites had assured me that in Japan, the worst thing you can do is blow your nose in public. But I had a very free-flowing nose and had not brought any American pills because I wasn’t sure what was allowed through customs. I should have known no one was going to inspect an old lady’s bags. I’ve often wondered what I could get away with if I had more criminal tendencies. 

At the drugstore, a clerk magically appeared and I pointed to my nose and throat. The clerk seemed to understand and took me to what I figured was the cold medicine display. While I pretended to be able, I grabbed a package that looked promising, or at least not fatal. When I looked up, she had disappeared. (HELP HELP I am alone in a foreign country’s drugstore and I don’t have any idea what I am doing HELP.) Was I supposed to have followed her? While I was wondering what to do, another lovely young clerk came over to me and gestured to a different counter. 

Thinking she was going to save me—think of the Jurassic Park scene where Ellie is throwing the switch to get the park back online and is relieved to feel an arm on her shoulder (“Oh, Mr. Arnold!”) which turns out to be no longer attached to Mr. Arnold—I turned to her and she led me to some prettily packaged somethings, and smilingly patted the skin around her own, youthful smooth skinned eyes. She was trying to get me to buy some cream to cure or cover the hideous disfiguring dark baggy circles under my eyes. 

Fortunately, the other clerk reappeared with her hands full of paper and brought me to a checkout, where I had to sign forms saying it was safe to sell me these products, and that I had no nefarious purpose in mind. I think. Since the forms were in Japanese and I do not read Japanese, I was just making wild guesses about what they said. 

Now my self-confidence had had a thrashing, and even if the medicines had worked, I couldn’t stop thinking how I looked to the people of Japan, even after my son pointed out, “Mom, she was trying to sell you stuff.” Well. I know that. OK, I had forgotten for a minute. But it had still stung. 

But I needn’t have worried so much about my runny nose, or even my baggy eyes. As blatant tourists, we got a lot of leeway and not much obvious disapproval.

The interpreter at our private tea ceremony graciously said she understood that Americans couldn’t sit with our legs completely folded under as the Japanese did, because our legs were longer. I tried to joke, “and our knees are 96 years old!” She gasped and said, “Oh! I never would have thought . . .” I had to stop her quickly before she said, “You don’t look a day over 80!” (I’m only almost 70.)

Once I got home, did I rush to buy grotesquely expensive anti-aging stuff with labels I could read in English? I did. Do I use them religiously—the only thing I am religious about—though I can’t say I’ve noticed any differences? Of course I do.