Yesterday was a bad day. Yesterday was a really bad day.

To start it all off, I had to go to work on Saturday. Not really my idea of a good time. Despite my headache and nausea, I had a really busy day and had a lot to do before I could go home. I didn’t have time to dwell on my discomfort, which is sometimes a good thing.

By the time I was leaving, my headache was huge and my stomach was pretty unstable. I was hoping that everything would be better once I got home and had a little nap, problem was I had to get home first.

My real trouble started when I went to my shoe locker. In Japanese schools you have to change shoes inside. So, each person has a little shoe locker where they store their outside shoes during the day. When I got to work in the morning it was raining pretty hard, so I stashed my wet sandals into my locker and didn’t give it another thought.

When I went to retrieve my shoes at the end of the day, the smell that greeted me was foul. Foul enough to turn my already-sensitive stomach and send me running to the toilet. Unfortunately, I was able to accomplish little more than a few minutes of dry-heaving, so I decided to try going home.

I waited at the bus stop and, thankfully, one showed up mere minutes later. A total god-send. I scored the seat in the front next to the driver and spent the entire ride looking out the window, with a plastic bag in my hand (just in case), trying to keep myself together. The ride was swift and I made it to the train station in a little under 20 minutes, but I knew that as soon as I stepped off the bus my troubles were far from over.

My stomach started burbling and gurgling and I found myself running to the nearest bathroom. Now, train station bathrooms are notoriously foul, but I really couldn’t afford to be choosy at this point. When I got to the restroom I was greeted by a line-up of other women, none of them looking nearly as urgent as myself. I didn’t have the strength or energy to use my Japanese to communicate my problem so I waited, my plastic bag in hand, for one of the two stalls to open up. 

Finally one opened and I ran right in. It is a heavily used public toilet in the largest train station in our city. It only has two stalls and both of the stalls have Japanese-style toilets (squatty potties). The area around the toilet is the “splatter zone” and it is covered with urine from women that have had less than stellar aim. On the very best day, this toilet is enough to make your stomach churn. On a day like mine, it was precisely the catalyst I needed to really get things moving. I spent ten minutes in that stall, trying to rid my body of whatever it felt that it didn’t want inside. I puked and squatted, my legs growing tired. I tried standing and puking, but found that it was a bit difficult to control. Finally, with sweat dripping from my face and tears streaming down, I did the unthinkable. I knelt right down on the absolutely disgusting floor to finish what I had started.

All the while I was in the stall, women came and went in the other one. I couldn’t muffle my sound and it was obvious what was going on. When I finally finished and left the stall, the line was about twice what it was when I had walked in. I kept my head down, avoiding eye contact, as I made my way to the sink. I felt disgusting and humiliated. I got on the train and went home where I recounted my tale to my husband. If, throughout my pregnancy (and possibly life), yesterday continues to hold the title of “Worst Vomit Ever” I will be an incredibly thankful woman.