Moments of understanding

I've always been impressed that people could ever understand each other at all. It seems like we, to this day, understand so little of how language works, but, have managed to teach each other most of the ones we've come up with. Yesterday's moment of understanding was brought to you by the word はっしん - rash - which is what we went to Sundays (a drug store) about yesterday. Thankfully, I have Sarah to handle most of the translation, though, I'm slowly learning the words to deal with some of the allergies it seems I have to things here. This is rather surprising, since I didn't really have anything I was allergic to at home, but, two days after I got to Sarah's apartment, my mouth swelled up and was itchy, and I was quite uncomfortable to varying degrees after that. I seem to also be allergic to fish - something I didn't plan on finding out because I don't eat fish, being a vegetarian, but Japan and the Nomura's had other ideas.

My great moment understanding for this adventure was when the pharmacist at Sundays was picking out a rash cream for me, and was miming rubbing it on his arm. (Miming is a rather important part of communication here) Just to make sure he was getting the full picture, since I didn't want anything that would make my nether regions more unpleasant, I gestured to my crotch and said "ここです" - "it's here."

The look of comprehension on his face was beautiful.

Sarah assured me his parting "get better soon" was really sincere...