Chris and I are ambitious travelers. When we are going somewhere, we want to do and see as much as possible. We’re not check-box travelers since we do try to allocate ample time to actually learn, enjoy, and relish our experiences, but we certainly do not laze around or dawdle (well, he thinks I do when it comes to food and cute things, but I don’t agree…well, not fully). When we are traveling, time is always limited, so we want to maximize it and enjoy our surroundings as much as possible. So even though Chris’s feet were hurting today and I was having a really bad menstrual cramp, we tried not to let it slow us down too much. Well, that was until my cramp became almost unbearable, especially given the steady and gloomy drizzle of rain and humidity. So we decided to head into a pharmacy to see what the closest thing to Midol was.

We walked in, scanned a bunch of over-the-counter medicine, and chose a Tylenol and another medication that was labeled only in Japanese. I took both of them and walked up to a Japanese female pharmacy worker, and I greeted her in Japanese and motioned to the two bottles, faked a pained look on my face, then pointed at my stomach. She started speaking in rapid-fire Japanese, realized I could not understand anything she was saying, then started making hand gestures. One bottle, her hands said, was for a headache. The Tylenol bottle could work, but was it my stomach that was bothering me (she rubs her stomach in a round motion), or was it my stomach and my… lady parts? (makes a bigger circle with her hand to cover both her stomach and her crotch area). I quickly nodded at her second hand motion. Then she gave me the Tylenol and gestured that this was the right one for me. I thanked her in Japanese and went back to the wall of medication.

I figured she went back to doing her work. Without my awareness of it, she actually went to the back office area to retrieve a Japanese-English-Chinese-Korean translation book of pharmaceutical terms and medical conditions, and she brought it back to me. She spoke in Japanese and pointed at “menstrual cramps” in English, next to the equivalent written in Japanese, and asked if that was what I meant. YES, I nodded, and she said, good, then this is definitely what you should get. She helped ring up my medication and even looked up a translation for the dosage I should take and asked if I understood. I thanked her profusely, and we left and I took my pills.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more impressed in my life by anything that any stranger in a foreign country has done for me. She could have just left it at motioning to her stomach and crotch, and it really would have been fine. I could see how she really wanted to help me just looking at her face and different expressions. It was so touching to witness this happen and to know how women, regardless of culture or language barriers, can still relate to each other and empathize.