Teeth (歯)

My teeth hurt. 

Japanese is interesting in the amount of idioms that involve body parts, including the head, the mouth, the nose, the shoulders, the heart......but also, surprisingly, teeth. 
Some listed here. 

1.) 歯が立たない- literally, can't chew or hard to chew: I'm no match for the Japanese language.

2.) 歯がゆい - Teeth are itchy- meaning to be impatient. One of my biggest flaws, and possibly a killer one for any future relationships I have. I value time a lot, but kind of obsessively so, so that I'll get impatient waiting in traffic, waiting in line, or any kind of waiting whatsoever.



I floss not nearly enough, I don't like going to the dentist, and my lower jaw hurts sometimes because I have a nervous habit of biting down on my teeth during sleep (my dentist says to alleviate stress created during the day. I've started wearing a mouthguard, but I find that I dream a lot about food if I do wear a mouthguard and find myself biting down on it more, it's almost like a bone for a dog. Dunno which one is really helping. I also have a pretty severe underbite, which is pretty unusual but caused by the structure of my jaw. Can't get it fixed without "major" surgery anymore and it doesn't really cause any problems except aesthetically, and when I smile I have to try to actively just my upper jaw out so that it matches the lower jaw. I don't have a great smile. 

親知らず (oyashirazu) - wisdom teeth. I've never had my wisdom teeth pulled out, and they're just sitting there on the side of my mouth, always a threat to cause a cold sore, never helping in the cause (as far as I can tell) of gnashing up food. Really useless. My dentist told me to have it removed earlier, but it's really not causing any damage right now, so I decided not to. Possibly a bad move? Could be a scam by dentists to create more work for themselves (lawyers do it all the time!), but if it does cause a problem, I'll probably have to get them removed. (In Japanese, wisdom teeth are literally translated as "not knowing your parents." Weird. 


Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan