Health Insurance Japanese Style

Today I checked out the Japanese medical system. My right ear has been weird lately and I've been kind of wondering about it. Then on the weekend there was stuff gooping out of it and the inside was all swoollen, so I decided to go get it checked out. Today was the day.
We ended up going about half an hour before the clinic opened after the lunch break because we missed the part of the sign that said "thirty" after the 2. I was wondering why we were the only people there. They finally opened and took me in. I was the first patient to be beckoned into the back room. The deep dark back room. No just kidding. It wasn't that bad. But I walked in and there were about 5 or 6 doctor type employees all just standing there, watching me. Then they led me to the big chair in pretty much the middle of this wide open room with all these masked and garbed people standing around. I felt like a bit of a specimen.
There was also a huge big screen TV in there, a couple of feet away from my big chair. I wonder what it is for. Maybe the ear doctor sits in that chair on his lunchbreak and watches TV while he eats his obento (boxed lunch).
It was really neat because after sticking ordinary tools in my ear and poking around, they stuck a camera in. So I got to see the inside of my ear today. (My ears are a little bit hairier than I had imagined...) I even got to keep a picture of the grossness they found inside of it.
So I have some sort of something trauma inside and some sort of something medicine I have to apply twice a day (which only costed about $2.00 - yay health insurance).
Somehow I seem to find the doctorish places in every city I live in, but the clinics here in Japan are no different...except the hospitals here have flower arrangement vending machines (which I think would be a real hit in Canada) and there are no Sports Illustrated and People magazines to read over and over.
I'm finally making good use of my Japanese Health Insurance.