Until last week, I was unsure whether or not there was poison ivy in Japan. Now I know the answer is yes. As a child I once thought myself immune to poison ivy when after running through a forest full of it, I was totally without blemish. Then something happened, maybe it was the strange brew of hormones brought on by puberty, maybe it was a hex by the local gypsy, but now, now I am a sufferer of the scourge of the three leafed demon. The rash first starts as an itch, then moves to full blown blisters by the next day. From this point it takes about a week for me to recover my sanity as the tremendous itching simply will not go away. The last stage is where my skin looks like the inner flesh of a pomagranate. Squeezing the skin is like pinching a grapefruit, it'll shoot juice several inches.

Just thought I'd let the world know a little more about my allergic reactions.