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Optometrist

P

Park

後輩
Joined
3 Jun 2005
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Where can I find an English speaking optometrist in Tokyo? These megane shops that I have been to just have staff "trained" to prescribe glasses. I have had them totally screw up with the prescription and then of course deny it. And my girlfriend couldn't accept that a gaijin could point out the mistake of a perfect Nihonjin and so they tried to tell me it would take my eyes time to get used to the completely blurry field of vision....yadda yadda..and then I had to insist and then cause a scene and, in fact, it was bass ackwards.....da da da da....then she never said "I am sorry, you were right" or anything of the sort....mmm hmmm....but instead got angry at me...


And then, doubted me in the same way the next time....because gaijin are beneath Japanese and she doesn't want to hear anything to the contrary. Maybe you have been in a similar situation before, maybe not.

I prefer to avoid all of this the next time and go to a foreign eye doctor. Any nationality except Japanese please.

Thank you in advance. I appreciate your help.
 
You could probably see a lot better if you pulled your head out.
 
Any legitimate advice would be appreciated.
 
Alright....There is no such thing as an optometrist in Japan. You'll need to go see an ophthamologist. He/she will write a prescription which you can take to almost any eyeglass shop to have filled. Some ophthamologists may sell eyeglasses, but don't count on it.

Also, you're in Japan. Learn Japanese.
 
Go to a different shop. I have been to three different ones since I lived here, and never had a problem...and none of them spoke English.
 
Mike, I appreciate part of your advice. Thanks. As for the other, I do speak a little Japanese but optemetrics is a fairly obscure area of the language and since I have no plan to stay in Japan for the rest of my life, then the result of the cost benefit analysis tells me I shouldn't spend hours studying the language. If it were my plan to stay then I would. I also prefer not to take chances with a communication error.

Now let's say if I were Japanese, or Korean, or any other nationality then it would make sense to study English because, like it or not, it has become the most common language used internationally. Japanese cannot be used much outside of Japan.

But, anyway, I did speak Nihongo as much as possible and I did learn some terms. But, the mistake did not come as a result of a communication error as far as I can tell because they have a machince which can measure your lenses and give them a rough idea of what your prescription is. I believe this error was made as a result of incompetence, or maybe they say a foreign name and decided to screw them up on purpose. I told the story to a few of my friends and some of them suggested this possibility. This notion is offensive to some Japanophiles, I realize.

But, it was their arrogant and condescending refusal to accept that they had made a mistake that makes me gunshy about going to another Japanese place.

My Aussie buddy warned me of this when I first got here but I didn't want to listen because I wanted to see only the good in Japan, and I still do. But, it doesn't mean I will live in a Mr. Magoo fantasy world the rest of my stay. I prefer a foreigner.

You know that what I am saying is often true in Japan as well. I am not sure why you decided to forget that you know this. I think i will end it here with another thank you for your advice.

I will try to find a foreign opthamologist.

Cheers,
 
So you've had multiple shops screw up multiple glasses and refuse to admit there is something wrong? Or you've had one shop screw up and refuse to admit they're wrong and then you refused to have glasses made at other shops after finding out they don't have optometrists on staff? It isn't entirely clear which is the case.
 
What a surprise. NOT

An optometrist by any other name would not smell so sweet, eh? So was your typically asinine visit here before or after you soiled your other nests?

Oh well. Back to the topic at hand... Obviously, I'm considering getting some glasses, and non-obviously, there are some complicating factors of age and history that (yet again) push my poor Japanese to it's limits. It's not that I'm dissatisfied with the glasses I got from a local Japanese-speaking optician, but there are some unresolved questions, and they were kind of expensive and he was slow in making them, to boot. Getting lazy these years, so I thought I'd Google around a bit in search of tips...

Apart from the age of the thread, I'll just say this was not a useful lead. The most constructive one I've found so far is the old embassy list (but I'm not allowed to post it yet because of the spammers--so I basically have to approve of anything that hinders them). Not much there, which makes me wonder a bit. I actually had a reference from an ophthalmologist at Keio for a convenient shop in Shinjuku, but unfortunately I didn't get the glasses at that time, and now I've lost it...

If you have someone to recommend, well, it would be more useful than what I saw in the earlier comments...
 
Thanks. The first list was the one the system wouldn't let me link to, but as I noted, it's pretty thin. The second one looks like an interesting website, though the medical stuff was thin. I noticed Keio, where the English capabilities are rather scattered, and the Bluff Clinic, which was actually recommended by a friend...

Right now it looks like I'll spend some more time wandering around Shinjuku and Akihabara and trying eyeglass stores mostly at random... My experience is that those results are mixed. Even when you find someone who speaks English, you're lucky if they don't disappear within a year.
 
Quoting the list from : http://tokyo.usembassy.gov/e/acs/tacs-tokyodoctors.html

 
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