FTL is not possible, but Dr. Jones proceeded to offer great insight with the words, 「ややこしいよね。」, and then gave a recommendation, to which the patient did not agree, but was curious, asking for more information regarding the recommendation.
The patient, Dr. Jones, and Dr. Yamada concluded their meeting with the patient asking him to return to the hospital on Sunday after he returns from his business trip, and making him promise that he would refrain from eating spicy foods.
The medical staff was left to wonder what is happening in this patient’s life that makes his body fail to regulate itself. However, Dr. Yamada, with the same 「ややこしいよね」, let the patient leave the hospital without receiving any further treatment. He only had one recommendation for him, to 「味噌汁を飲むことを」.
Dr. Yamada, at the time, didn’t quite understand the meaning behind the patient’s 「味噌汁を飲むことを」. But Dr. Yamada knew what 「味噌」, 「汁」, 「鍋」, 「飲む」, and 「何時」, and was a little better understanding of what this patient’s 「味噌汁を飲むことを」may be trying to say.
It may be a stretch to assume that Dr. Yamada tried to say, “please drink a lot of miso soup to lower your blood sugar,” because miso soup doesn’t have much in the way of carbohydrates that can negatively affect your glucose levels. It may be more likely that the patient was in fact saying, “Please drink a lot of [hot] miso soup to lower your blood sugar,” because miso soup is a soup, and when you prepare a miso soup, you heat it before serving it, thus raising its temperature to that of a hot soup. So he may have been asking for the doctors to give him some hot miso soup to lower his blood sugar levels. However, this is still conjecture, and there is not much evidence to suggest such.
Then again, there is a third meaning to be taken in this interaction between Dr. Yamada and the patient, which was also the last one communicated between them. If Dr. Yamada wanted to convey to the patient, “Please, drink a lot of miso soup to lower your blood sugar,” but wanted to say it in a way that could only be understood if the patient were a dog, it is quite possible that Dr. Yamada was communicating the message “Oh boy, I guess the dog is hungry.” Or more clearly, 「ねぎがぼーっとだね。」. Dr. Yamada is communicating the thought of 「ねぎがぼーっとだ」, which means, “Wow, he looks like he is starving.” Dr. Yamada could not clearly communicate this message to the patient, or for that matter, to anyone else, so he chose to communicate it by simply saying “You are hungry, right?”.
So it turns out that the interaction was pretty much a straight-up communication between a Dr. and a patient with the patient asking for his blood sugar to be lowered. And yet, what you take away from this exchange is something totally different.
You can look at the story two ways. You can decide that the patient did indeed suffer from hyperglycemia, his blood sugar levels were too high, and that Dr. Jones (Dr. Yamada’s son) managed to help the patient regulate his body’s responses to his illness (which ended with his being “okay” in a sense).
Or, you can decide that the patient did not suffer from anything, but is asking for the doctor to give him some more food because he really likes it, and that Dr. Yamada’s family business was doing quite well that particular day, making him the man with the most miso soup in his possession, so the patient wants more.
I chose the second scenario. I am assuming the patient in the story was a dog, since that was the only thing Dr. Yamada could clearly communicate to him. So, I am going with the second scenario.
That’s not to say I don’t like Dr. Yamada and his kind, but I like a story that is more open to interpretation, just because it gives us an opportunity to interpret things in ways that may not have been possible before.
However, the only thing I hate about this story, apart from the 「ややこしいよね」, is the fact that 「みそ」, 「汁」, and 「鍋」are listed under food. While I get the 「ねぎ」interpretation, it would have been much cooler if 「みそ」could be used as a means to communicate “blood sugar levels” to the human (me), when talking to someone. If it could be, this story would have been quite interesting. I like the idea of reading it, and then getting to see how it plays out.
After all, even 「みそ」is capable of being used to communicate to a dog, right?
Of course, if it does come out that the story is 「みそがみっとだね」, the second interpretation will never come to be.
But I still think it is interesting that such an ambiguity can come out of an interaction between humans and animals. I’ll admit that this is really, really stretching it, but it’s the only meaning I can come up with, and it’s pretty funny, too.
I am sure this is off-topic, but I could not resist. I was looking up a way to say “I don’t eat bread.” and I came across this. It said that for the sentence to be properly formed, you have to say, “I don’t eat bread, but I eat…” What? Eat what? Websites should really learn when to stay on topic, and this particular website seemed to have lost the ability to do so.
I found this site and I’m glad I did. I have several stories written about other topics on this site and I am hoping to create a few more stories based on the feedback I’ve gotten from my previous stories.
Thank you so much for this post. I actually really wanted to get my story about my cat’s allergies up, but I have read so many different articles, forums and sites about cat allergies, so now I’m thinking I should just not write that one down until I understand it better. It’s funny because I always get the same questions from family and friends like “Why do you let your cat outside?”, “How often do you clean his litter box?”, etc. I don’t mind though. I feel like I am finally starting to understand the intricacies of the cat’s body after reading this and the other similar sites, so thank you for these posts!
My cat, Hilde (female) has always had some allergies, for the first year. When we first got her, she had skin allergy (whenever we took her outside, we would use cream on her paws to keep her comfort), and she also had an intolerance to garlic (her breath and paws had this smell from time to time). Every now and then, she would have diarrhea (she uses the litter box at least 3-4 times a day), and her skin would get dry and itchy. I think that was due to the fact that she is a female cat.
We did all the necessary things to care for her (and our other cat – which we currently have) and we took her to the vet. They said to bring her back in about 6 weeks or so, to test her blood sample, and if it was okay, to do a skin allergy test.
She has been here about a week and her breath has stopped
