I moved to Japan 10 months ago and in that time frame I’ve gotten sick 4 times with basic cold symptoms. After Each time it has gotten easier to recover so my immune system is working. Back home I would only get a cold once or twice a year. Why do I get so sick easily in Japan? At first I thought it was because I was working closely with children in Japan, but back home I worked in a hospital so I was and have been exposed to all sorts of germs and whatnot. Is it air quality? 🤔
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Different country, different bacteria.
>Is it air quality?
Yes, our air is only compatible with superior Japanese 民度.
When I first moved here I had a different cold every week for months, it was miserable. By the end of my first year (and after a few months of working in a kindergarten) my immune system seemed to have adjusted, though!
I’m willing to wager that a hospital will be more sterile than an elementary school or preschool though, and you’re far more likely to have a student sneeze openly in your general direction than most adult patients, haha. I would blame working with kids!
If you’re using OTC medicine here, double the doses recommended on the packages, Japanese OTC meds are crazy weak, like, a quarter of what I was used to in Canada. They’re essentially useless. That or go to the clinic and ask for something actually effective if you have the time!
is it winter? or rainy season?
my nose is quite weak against Japan winter and rainy season.
And if I forgot to keep my neck warm, I often catch cold.
On contrary, I don’t remember the last time I got a painful sore throat and mouth ulcer in Japan.
Different diets matters also I guess.
Yeah, me too.
In my case, my eye was extremely itchy all year round and my nose was always stuffy. Sometimes during the night, my nose was so stuffed that I feel an extreme pain between my nose and throat that I have to wake up and almost feel like crying. I also got a lot of fever during winter month ( This is probably due to my tonsillitis and Hokkaido’s winter is too cold)
Funny thing is, Japanese air quality is way better than my home country.
My experience:
* Before covid: 2-4 colds a year in my home country, 3/4 in Japan
* During remote work: 0
* After coming back to work while keeping masking, but using the subway only 30% as much as before: 0
Could still very well be my luck; I assume using the subway to be the main driver on my side, so with a third of the subway exposure as before covid, 0 colds would not be unexpected without masking (just saying I cannot conclude that I have masking to thank for avoiding colds, not that avoiding the subway will prevent colds). People around me that don’t take the subway and don’t have children also seem to get sick much less often.
Edit: newlines
I got sick a bunch during my first year here, it settled down after that though…until I had a kid and they started bringing bugs home >< I just figured it was a new country and new dominant virus strains that I hadn’t been exposed to before.
I suffer from severe pollen allergies in Japan, which often presents like having a bad cold or flu and can completely incapacitate me, despite never suffering pollen allergies back home. It’s likely that this is just due to the fact my body isn’t used to the pollens here versus the ones I grew up in.
What do you do for work? If you are working as an ALT or Eikaiwa teacher and come into contact with kids alot, but didn’t do a similar job before coming here then it could be that. Working with kids often comes with many, many colds.
Same reason when kids change daycare or school they get sick more often. Different variations on common bacteria and viruses are in that population, so you get sick until your immune system learns the bugs.
There are diseases in some parts of Asia (Mainly Philippines, i think) – they are a minor cold when you get them as a kid, but they’re deadly as an adult.
Probably all the people open-mouth coughing on the train.
Me too!
I thought it was just not being familiar with the local bugs, but it hasn’t settled down.
Then again I never rode japanese style packed trains in my home country, so proximity with other people is probably a contributing factor
Don’t discount the children. When I started teaching kids classes I suddenly came down with one bad cold after another.
Do you eat Ramen and instant noodle often? or Kombini food? If so, you got the answer.
It’s probably working with kids.
This has nothing to do with Japan and everything to do with Covid progressively degrading the immune system which makes you more susceptible to more Covid plus other illnesses.
Any chances to be hay fever?
I got sick during my first year here. It sucked having no voice trying to teach English