My tooth hurts. And I think, when I look closely, I can see a cavity. This terrifies me. Maybe it's because I've seen one too many Japanese street-fashion magazines, with their pages of crooked and blackened smiles, but I don't want to go to the dentist in Japan.

I've been paranoid about dental problems since I got here. About a month after arriving, I had a nightmare that my teeth were starting to fall out and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I know this is a common nightmare, one that symbolizes a loss of control, so it makes complete sense it would pop up after I moved to a new country with a language I could barely speak. Still, it's not as easy to dismiss this nightmare as it is my frequent zombie dreams because this one follows me into the morning, staring at me in the mirror as I inspect my possibly-cavity-ridden tooth. Just going to the dentist relinquishes a sense of control -- there you are, helpless, mouth wide open -- but to go to a dentist who doesn't speak your language, to have to have all information translated through your supervisor, a cringing and mostly-ineffectual man, is to feel completely vulnerable.

Not that I haven't had time to get used to this feeling. During my first months here, I had to bring all my mail to work so my supervisor could tell me what it meant and whether or not it was important. As someone who likes to assiduously read and file all documents which may be used in the future, this was a painful ordeal. In the U.S. I always had a carefully-ordered filing cabinet; now I just stuff all papers that may one day be necessary in a drawer. Once, when there was a problem with my internet service, I just dug out all the papers with the logo of the ISP and handed them to my Japanese-speaking friend to decide whether or not they were relevant. The excellent secretary in me cringed.

I've learned how to manage my day-to-day life through my Japanese lessons and the memorization of certain interactions (for example, when I buy sushi at the supermarket and the cashier asks me a rapid-fire question, even if I don't hear the words, I know she's asking if I want chopsticks because the first time this happened, I didn't know what on earth she was saying, so I apologized for not speaking Japanese and she said, "Chop sticku" in halting English and the whole vaguely-embarrassing interaction was indelibly burned in my brain). But when it starts to feel like there's a wobbling somewhere in the structure -- a throb in my tooth, a stopped-up drain -- I am suddenly afraid it's all going to fall apart. Like there's no safety net. Like terrible things could happen I'd have no control over their outcome. Like all my teeth could fall out or my apartment could flood or I could somehow accidentally commit a heinous crime and the only thing standing between me and certain doom would be my cringing supervisor and his highly questionable skills at negotiation.

I think I'm going to look up "toothache" in my Japanese dictionary. And then brush my teeth again.