What is a cold patch?!

A common university entrance examinations "center test" were held in last weekend at 721 locations in Japan. The center test work as "entrance exam" for many national university, and for a few national college and private college, the score can be the pass-fail criteria. Since this year, they take listening English test. I couldn't find the listening test, but every year we can try the test next day of exam. Here is this year English test. (first page is accent position. choose a correct pair.) Would you try it?

By the way, in this post I wrote "a cold cataplasm" and some asked me what is that? I checked "湿布"(shippu) on online dictionary and they say it is cold cataplasm, hot compress, cold compress. But some people wrote it is very hard to find them in other countries. Then I realized they are so Japanese stuff?? Cold cataplasm, cold/hot compress is like a gel patch containing a substance to reduce pain or swelling.

I found so many site about heating pad in the U.S, you will imagine it. The difference is Japanese patches are disposable, and not only herb, some medicinal component are included. When we have shoulder stiffness or alleviate the tension in your shoulders, we use cold patch. Cold patch is work fine to set up inflammation or acute pain. And when we have chronic pain or stomach pain, we use warm patch.

Salonpas is a major brand of those patch, you may check patch in their ad videos, here (.mpg video) and here (.mpg video). Since we can buy it easily at drug store, in winter season, it is very convenient for sudden fever. Baby (cheek like an apple :-) I can see she has fever!) and adult, we all use it.

Not for pain, we use it for healing and relax. Especially women (of course me too!) use them for leg fatigue (.mov video). After taking bath, cold and good smell patch is very comfortable for bloated legs. Even a office, we may use for small one for neck. If you like it, I heard they started it to export it to the US. Please check drug store.

Anyway when you have a light ankle sprain, you may try instant handmade patch by yourself. Knead flour and vinegar together, it should be ear lobe like consistency. Spread it our into 1/3 inch on the part. Then covered it with saran wrap or wet rag and hold it more with cotton gauze or something. In this way, curiously the paste will be dried in only inflammation part. You can try as much as you like it, usually in next day the light sprain will be better.

So this patch was originally this. Now you see :-)

Comments

[Jack]

Esther, I thought the old Japanese language of western trading was Dutch... the Dutch were the western country that traded the most with Japan before the Edo period, even though the Portuguese were the first to land on Japanese shores.

As for the English test, it's a bit misleading I think - in the phrase "ecological changes", an English speaker would put the biggest accent on the first syllable of "changes", but the test only asks for the accent on "ecological". I think the best way for this sort of thing is learning by doing; the academic approach can only get you so far. Not least because the English way of thinking about syllables is so alien to the Japanese in the first place.

I don't think I've ever used a cold caterpillar ;-) Maybe a bag of ice, though...

[Esther]

According to Merriam-Webster.
Etymology: Middle French cataplasme, from Latin cataplasma, from Greek kataplasma, from kataplassein to plaster over, from kata- + plassein to mold.

I've read that the Japanese have historically been interested in learning internationally-used languages. Before English, the international language of commerce and scholarship was French, so I expect they have incorporated a lot of French terms into everyday useage.

[Sausage]

A more common name for these things out of Japan would be 'deep heating patch/bandage'. I don't quite know how they came up with the term 'cataplasm'. That sounds slimy!