I have never had blisters before, but this trip, it was my hinderance.
I decided to use my barely used Adidas. I have these comfortable Puma (mesh type shoe), but them being cheap.. they make a squeaking sound at times… so I decided to use my other shoes.
Well, with the heavy walking I was doing in Japan (30,000 a day), I developed blisters underneath my toes. I had a big one on my left foot. I decided to poke it and drain the fluid. I thought I drained it enough, but the top of the blister still had fluid in it and when I walked all day, it pushed the fluid in between my big toe and the index toe.. so much that it felt like a pebble was there.
It was like a small balloon. I again, released the fluid. Yup.. that hurt when I stepped into the shower!
Here is the tip I learned the hard way.
The next morning with my feet sore.. I went to the 7-11 in the morning to get supplies. They didn’t have much besides basic bandaids. So I covered the bottom of my feet and in between my toes.
The adhesive part was on top of my foot and after walking all day with the tugging… the bandaid started pulling the skin so that small blisters formed around the bandaid’s adhesive.
My feet were sore and I was worried about infection. While I was in Kyoto, I asked Ishii-san to see if we can go to a pharmacy, in which we did.
*Convenient stores in Japan don’t cover much medical supplies. You will have to go to a pharmacy.
I was able to get a cream that was antiseptic and inflammatory…. which helped, Gauze and bandaids that were gentler for my skin. This sufficed until a couple days later when I ran out of the gauze and proper bandaids. In which I went to a pharmacy again and got the right stuff.
Now that I have experienced this, I will always pack that cream, gauze and paper tape incase it happens again.
*also note that my middle toe hit a bed frame corner, so that was sore as well.
