Allergies!

Remember that anti-drug slogan:

This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs?

Well, these are my eyes...on Tokyo allergens.

I feel like Ben Stein should be narrating this blog with a beach ball that looks like my distressed eyeball. On a daily basis, I walk into school after riding my bike along the peaceful yet allergy-filled gauntlet of a river path, and teachers constantly ask me if I'm all right. Now I'm used to it, but at first I didn't know that my eyes looked tear-filled and streaked with red on a daily basis. It actually even scared one of my second graders one day...they were that bad.

For some reason, Rachael and I both are highly affected by the allergens produced near the river, and since that's our only route to the train station, grocery shopping and work, we don't have a choice but to just go straight through it. Life on a bike does have its disadvantages.

I thought I would have to suffer through this epic struggle in silence and just deal with it with little help even from allergy medicine, but after nine months in this country, I finally caved and took a step towards becoming Japanese. Like so many others in Tokyo, this little system has kept me breathing clear and my scleras sparkling white. Luckily, I no longer need to impress the ladies, so I now comfortably rock this style on a daily basis.