Getting HIV in Japan – A True Story

Dancing jgirlsA friend of mine living here in Japan wrote this to me yesterday. Read it right to the end. It will chill you to the bone. You won’t be disappointed, and may even rethink a few things in your own life, or maybe make a different New Year’s resolution than the one you had in mind.

〜★〜

Well it’s coming up on another year here in Japan; hard to believe seven or eight years have gone by already. 2006 was a great year as was 1999-2005 here in Tokyo. I’ve got a great life here. Great friends, great job, great fiancée (oh yeah I got engaged to Kyoko last month in Italy) and low-stress which is key to having a great life! Tokyo continues to be a fabulous city. Sure it lacks in architectural finesse (I suspect it was much cooler looking before the Yanks burned it to a cinder 60 years back), but it more than makes up for it in entertainment opportunities, quality of life and the bizarre. Where else can you have thousands of people lining up for the opening day of Japan’s debut of Krispy Kreme!? There are already two huge chains of donut shops in Japan. Why another? And this one is even more fattening! Or canned oden (Japanese chunky soup) from a vending machine- a camera crew and a snaking line 20 people deep waiting for their turn at the machine (these people are so patient!), or a 500-person Japanese orgy flick that is circling the internet (not one of them wearing a condom). I wasn’t in it! Next time.

This past weekend Kyoko and I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) for about 4 hours southwest of Tokyo to Fukuyama, near Hiroshima. We were visiting Kyoko’s family (also visited some of the dead relatives’ graves) whom I have met on a number of occasions, and to meet the father’s side of the family whom I hadn’t met before. Our first stop was at one of her uncles’ house. The Japanese tend to really take to foreigners for the most part and are quite accommodating to them in their homes. We all hit it off right away and had an enjoyable time. Prior to eating, Kyoko prayed in front of the family’s Buddhist shrine (仏壇, butsudan) where the deceased members of the immediate family are honored. These shrines are found in most Japanese homes and are incredibly beautiful, ornate fixtures that are often built into the wall like a niche. There is usually some fresh fruit offered up for their souls and in this case a couple of large red and green apples and a pack of OREOS sat on a metal tray which really got my mouth watering. We had an enormous feast. Temaki zushi, which is kind of a Japanese burrito minus the beans and gas; basically sashimi (raw fish) that you roll into a sheet of dried seaweed along with rice and maybe some salmon eggs, sprouts, etc. also had oden atsukan (which is HOT sake – by the way the bad quality sake is usually heated up) and all kinds of other goodies.

MotownI was seated next to Kyoko’s uncle whose name escapes me… we’ll call him Jessie. Simple man, has a farm that he tends, filthy fingernails, (his thumbnails looked like small inverted teaspoons absolutely caked with dried dirt from the garden) a dog tied-up in the front with muddy paws and mine-like excrement piles surrounding his limited tether (I’m assuming this was the dog’s excrement and not Uncle Jessie’s, after all he is pretty outdoorsy), a wife and three grown children, and two grand children that he just can’t get enough of. Crazy about his grandkids! For some things there just aren’t any cultural divides. Oh and he wouldn’t be seated at my mother’s table thats for sure! We immediately became drinking buddies and I could hardly get one gulp of atsukan down before he filled my glass back up. Granted, sake glasses are thimble-sized but nonetheless it was always spilling over the edge. The more he drank the funnier he got and the more embarrassed his wife looked. But I thought it was great. It was a very memorable time with my future in-laws (wow that gives me the chills) and after we said our goodbyes we were off to see MORE relatives…dead and alive. Basically the entire day was spent going from house to house to grave to rest home making introductions, offering up prayers for dead folks I’ve only seen black and white photos of, and chatting.

Gaijin BarTowards the end of the day while in the car I received an e-mail on my phone from an old girlfriend from a few years ago. We’ll call her Keiko. Scratch that, that’s her real name, uh… Kumiko. It was a short message. ‘Hi how have you been?’ I hadn’t heard from her in probably a year and a half or so; we occasionally mail one another to touch base. I wrote back with my regards. And then she wrote back again with a message that rattled my inner core. ‘I have really bad news, I’m 6 months pregnant and I found out I have HIV’. This can’t be real I thought. I mean Kumiko is an office lady who is 26, educated, barely drinks alcohol let alone take drugs, and doesn’t sleep around. She has only had a handful of boyfriends with whom she was monogamous while she dated them. She doesn’t fit the profile. She said she was trying to determine where she got infected. I then began to fear the worst. My God, I might have it. We didn’t always practice safe sex, in fact I think we rarely did. She then said she’s already checked with her other boyfriends who all said they were tested and are HIV negative. I’d never had a test before. It was this that really made me take pause. I could be the carrier of this death-wish.

I had a very difficult time maintaining my composure for the remainder of the weekend. I continued to e-mail Kumiko for the next day trading information about her current boyfriend, who is the father of her unborn baby, and as to whether or not he has it. He doesn’t. Basically I was the only link missing from the ‘who’s got it?’ I was a mess. In my mind, life as I knew it was done, finished, in the 9th inning with 2 strikes 2 outs. My first thought was Kyoko and how could I tell her I have HIV/AIDS. This would end our marriage plans for sure. Then my mom – that would absolutely break her heart. Then the thought of calling the other old girlfriends and telling them they may have been exposed was horrifying. Then me. Lifespan with the currently available drugs for treating HIV is 24 years. From the time of infection. So that would mean I have a max of 20 years left on big blue, if I contracted this evil from Kumiko 4 years ago. I started to rethink my life’s direction. Nothing had value in my eyes anymore. Everything was superfluous. I started to think about the horrific images we’ve all seen of people dying of AIDS. Skeletal, gaunt. I couldn’t sleep at night and had the sweats and shakes. Literally every waking moment whether I was teaching a class or narrating a job, it has been at the forefront of my thoughts. We all have to die but this just wasn’t in the cards for me, I thought. George has AIDS. Mortifying! I didn’t like the ring of that one bit. I imagined myself having to clarify every time someone learned about my illness that I’m NOT gay and I’m NOT a drug-user. I got AIDS from unsafe heterosexual sex. I envied some of the people I saw on the street. A young mother with her young children in the supermarket; I’m sure she’s safe. Kids playing in a field near my apartment; they don’t know how lucky they are. But I also thought, jeez they could be HIV positive too.

Stippy.com AIDS in JapanI went to a Catholic church that is on my way home from work on Monday evening and prayed like there literally was no tomorrow. This went on for a couple of days (not the praying but the fear of God) until I could get an appointment to see a doctor yesterday, the 19th Dec. I went to an English-speaking clinic here in Tokyo which I usually visit for other life-threatening illnesses like the common cold and having stitches removed. I had an HIV test done and I figured as long as I was there and as long as the needle was in my arm (which by the way this was the first time I didn’t get light-headed or completely faint from a blood test) I may as well get some more blood drawn and have some other general check-up tests done as well. Never thought it would come to the tune of 50,000 yen! There are free AIDS clinics in town but the wait (one or two weeks) I think would’ve killed me. These results were promised in 24 hours. After the tests were all done I left the clinic and my blood and fate was in God’s hands. I told a friend I hope He (God) switches mine with some nun… certainly not a priest!!

The past 24 hours have been nerve-wracking as you can imagine. I’ve been absolutely on pins and needles. The doctor told me to give him a call after 4 which I did at precisely 4:00:01. The call was transfered to him and he didn’t even say hello, all he said was ‘the test is NEGATIVE.’ He knew how anxious I was about this. I could’ve hugged him. Or at least bought him tea and crumpets. An enormous weight was lifted from my shoulders. I never felt the word negative could in fact be so POSITIVE!

I immediately called Kyoko and told her the good news. She knew I had an AIDS test which I told her was just a ‘routine check, nothing to worry about.’ She doesn’t know yet just how afraid I was, or the REAL reason for the test. I’ll tell her tonight. I also mailed Kumiko. She asked that I not call her because she cries on the phone when she talks about her terrible predicament. She was relieved to hear the news. She has since pinpointed who she believes gave her the disease and has yet to hear back from him. He also is a foreigner living here in Japan. Perhaps he doesn’t know he has it? Perhaps he refuses to get checked for fear of learning he has it. Kumiko is also being rejected by her boyfriend now. They planned to marry after she got pregnant, that was until a month ago when she got the bad news from her doctor. He doesn’t want anything to do with her now that she’s been diagnosed with HIV. She told me that she will give birth to the baby and live in Tokyo for a year before moving back to her hometown to live with her father. She said ‘what about my life?’ I wish I had an answer for her. I told her to focus on the beautiful baby that she will have in a few months and that will help relieve her of the other pain.

Japan. It’s a beautiful place. The people are beautiful and kind and some of the most generous folks I’ve ever met. But these past few days have jaded me a bit. I used to think of Japan as a special place where the evils are forbidden from entering. A playground where you can laugh and sing and play along with life in a carefree and careless way – a Disneyland as such. It’s not that way. And I learned this in a very personal and frightening way. This has been an INCREDIBLY valuable lesson for me and should be for anyone who takes the time to read this. Sorry, I know it’s long but it’s important that we realize just how real HIV/AIDS is! We read about it in the papers. We see it on TV, but folks, this is mainstream. If Kumiko can get it so can I and you and your children and anyone who doesn’t practice safe sex! PERIOD! Take heed people. Please feel free to send this on to anyone you feel would benefit from it.

Oh and I almost forgot… Happy Holidays! Stay safe.

61 thoughts on “Getting HIV in Japan – A True Story”

  1. Well, this is certainly a shocking story to read in this so called silly season no? A time when I am sure many of us like to treat our yellow fever with a little “nama” action. Did you have to make us feel guilty at this time of year.
    I have to go and get a HIV check now, damn it. But thanks for putting this up, it did make me think about a thing or two.

  2. It’s absolutely horrifying to me how irresponsible people are not only about their own health, but the health of the people they supposedly care about, (their sexual partners). It is paramount that if you are sexually active, that you are also responsible about it, and yeah, that means the not-so-fun annual STD bloodwork. Is it likely that any of us would have it? Probably not, but like this story illustrates… you NEVER know. Always check. And remember, one test isn’t enough; (four years after is usually pretty reliable, but generally speaking…) you need to get a follow up test 6 months later.

  3. Gee, thats a aweful story. Glad to hear the guy was okay, and thanks for sharing this experience.

    I was discussing this with a friend the other day, and we had never even thought of HIV or AIDS as a worry. The main reason was that we had never heard of it happen around us before. But I guess now we have, and as well as that, Japanese are probably good at keeping things like this very quiet. STDs seem to be a fairly secret issue, not something thats talked about very much, if at all.

    Reading this is bound to make many people pull the reigns in on some of their activities..

  4. It seems the level of AIDS awareness has never reached the same levels we find in the West. Since the late 80s there were numerous campaigns trying to highlight the dangers of unprotected sex at my high school it was just common knowledge to use contraception and eveyone seemd to know that HIV infection was highest among homosexuals and intravenous drug users and that blood and bodily fluid exchange was the reason.

    Then came the kickback about how homosexuals were feeling discriminated so along came more politically correct campaigns. Even prostitutes found that advertising how safely they worked in the evenings was a bonus for their business.

    But in Japan, even all through the 90’s, HIV was considered a “foreigners disease” and so not of concern for the Japanese public. The old rumours of how it came from men screwing monkeys in Africa etc. seemed to be the standard knowledge.

    This tied in with the general reluctance of authorities to release information that may avoid public panic. That includes incidents of tainted blood transfusions and even Nuclear power plant accidents….Hell, the doctors in this country don’t even tell you if you have cancer!

    My favorite conspiracy theory was that companies connected to the World Health Organisation were developing and testing viruses in Africa and it accidentally got out into the general populous ( a similar theory as with SARS)

    A few years studying Biochemistry also revealed that the nature and action of the virus itself was completely misrepresented in public education and others say maybe its not actually a Retrovirus at all!
    . It was then I heard that some scientists were saying its the medication which is causing it to become full blown AIDS, not the HIV alone!

    In 2000s it seems the general level of awareness and education has decreased all over as the public may have grown tired of the news. It also seems some societies have just learned to live with it as we live with a disease such as hepatitis B, while actually Hep C,D,and E etc are more dangerous…hmm…..perhaps the AIDS hype was opportunistic marketing by medical companies exaggerating the dangers and numbers of infections?

    Recently campaigns have also begun in China, 20 yrs behind the West, to show how they are also doing something to address the problem (which has infected whole villages who were selling blood for income). However the emphasis seemd to be on non-discrimination of AIDS patients…stil, its a step in the right direction…

    Im still shocked today in Japan when I here that guys dont like to use protection and that many girls also dont take this matter seriously. Everyone likes a good Shag but a bit of common sense goes a long way!

  5. The first person I ever met with aids was a lovely gay Japanese male. He’d been the lover of a friend. They broke up, and later he found out he was HIV positive. (My friend didn’t have it.) It turned into full blown AIDS, and he died. Treatment wasn’t very good at all back then. This was way back in, I don’t know, the late 80s. It was still considered shameful. His death certificate reported the cause of death as pneumonia.

  6. Wow. I can only imagine how scary that would have been for the writer. And the whole scenario for poor Kumiko.

    Sadly, yes, the unprotected sex thing is really rife here isn’t it. Though I never would have prefixed with “sadly” a while back. But had a scare and had the tests.

    Oh, how things have changed and this article just reinforced my desire to be a perfect family man from now on. Perrrrrfect.

  7. Wow, deep story. The one thing I didn’t like is it seemed to me you blew off the girl with AIDS. You had a taste of the meal she eats every day and I think if you took the time to be a friend you could really help her. One other thing I was wondering, how did your girl react to the news?

  8. Last year, as I came back from a photography trip to the north of Thailand, I was sitting in the plane next to four young Japanese guys who, according to their lively conversation, had been on a sex vacation to Bangkok. They didn’t think I understood Japanese so they freely talked about their sexual exploits. To my horror, they boasted about having unprotected sex with the Thai prostitutes – ‘nama’ they said, meaning without condoms. It’s this kind of stupid young guys that get infected in Thailand, infect their girlfriends in Japan and so it spreads. They don’t think of having an HIV check up and neither do their girlfriends – and it keeps spreading. And then it’s the foreigners in Japan that get blamed for AIDS.

    The level of awareness about HIV (and everything else) is extremely low in Japan. Adult males still behave like junior high school kids – reading porno comics in the train and molesting teenage girls when they are drunk. When will this country grow up?

  9. I used to have a colleague who met a girl in Thailand through his business trips. He married her however a few months later, the girl was tested to be HIV positive. Fortunately he didn’t get it. The girl caught the disease before they got married. They lived together for a while and he tried to help her with the medical treatment. But he was living in scary of getting the disease. He divorced her eventually and sent her back to Thailand.
    We all know that people had AIDS need help and we should offer our hands, however it is not as easy as we thought.

  10. Is this an issue for married men? I mean men who are ‘happiily married’ to Japanese girls? After reading this and the sexless article on your site, I gotta wonder. Has anyone asked their wife to get a test? How often should one do so? Or should I just do it on the sly? (have a test that is)

  11. Yeah, it’s really a truth in Japan .
    Most of Japanese guys don’t wanna use c****ms. They don’t like using it .
    I was stupid before when I got along with Japanese guy …
    Maybe Japanese hasn’t recognized how terrible that HIV is …
    Americans or Europeans don’t do that silly thing , (maybe it’s because HIV is more popular there than in Japan ) but whatever the reason is , the recognition is different … at least I think …

  12. gaijins need to watch out! better chill out on hitting up those aids receptacle clubs in roppongi!

  13. Hey what is interesting is how lucky all these Guys who had sex with the Aids girl are.
    God is great!

  14. Yeah this story is horrible. It really pisses me off how every foreigner goes to japan thinking japanese girls are easy, spreads some disease and infects these poor people. someone should drop a bomb on roppongi and it would probably eliminate most of the aids in japan.

    glad to hear you didnt get it though. talk about a life’s lesson that should have been foresight not hindsight.

    I wish aids would work faster though. kill off people who dont care enough to even be monogamous and get checked for themselves and their partners. Then guess what, no more aids! =O

  15. I am a male and have had only one sexual partner in my life so far, and have always used protection (condoms). When people don’t use anything, and from this story I am assuming she wasn’t on birth control either when they dated (especially since female-use of BC is really low in Japan), how can you have sex and not worry about getting the girl pregnant? Or do you just not care, and hope that the odds of not getting pregnant will favor in your direction? I have always been curious about this approach that people take.

  16. Chris, I think it is a combination of the rhythm method, haradashi and gan’men shower. Perhaps Mitaboy can help out?

  17. So, if his girl he mentions in this article was 6 months pregnant when he wrote this article, that means she should have given birth by now. Do tell us the rest. I am hanging out to find out if the baby is ok or not!

  18. Terrifying story.
    Whenever a friend of mine is getting with a new or even old partner, and I hear them saying they don’t use protections I freak out.
    And the “he/she is safe, I feel it” sentence ? Can you see who has AIDS just by looking in her/his eyes ? What about if she/he has a not risky life, but just got it from blood transfusion ?

    Well, be safe, do test before leaving the condoms out the bedroom…

  19. AIDS is not as likely as most people think. Statistically your chances of catching it are pretty low, no matter who you are. If you are outside the risk groups (I.V. drug users, homosexuals) your chances are even lower.

    However, your risk of contracting other nasty diseases is higher than you may think. And, as we all know, there are some countries in this world in which AIDS is really an epidemic. So, efforts to promote condom use are more than worth it. I used them when not in relationships, then switched to haradashi/ganmen (thanks Richmond) when in more steady relationships.

    By all means, get tested, but don’t freak out over statistical improbabilities.

  20. http://www.virologyj.com/content/4/1/29

    Replicative Homeostasis III: implications for antiviral therapy and mechanisms of response and non-response

    This paper is a bombshell! The author appears to have unlocked the control of hepatitis C replication, and by implication that of other viruses, demonstrated how interferon and ribavirin probably work (previously a matter of some conjecture), explained their immunomodulatory properties, and opened the door to new antiviral treatments. If you have any interest in hepatitis C, HBV, HIV, West Nile, Dengue, or any other clinically important viruses, or their treatment, or prion disease, or how viruses may cause cancer, this article is important to you.

  21. http://www.virologyj.com/content/2/1/10

    Replicative Homeostasis: A fundamental mechanism mediating selective viral replication and escape mutation

    If you do nothing else, read the last paragraph of this paper; it describes a new mechanism of RNA regulation possible relevant to your work. For researchers interested in viruses this paper is a bombshell the author has utterly destroyed the ‘error catastrophe’ theory. The paper also demonstrates how interferon and ribavirin probably work (previously a matter of some conjecture), explained their immunomodulatory properties, and opened the door to new antiviral treatments. If you have any interest in hepatitis C, HBV, HIV, West Nile, Dengue, or any other clinically important viruses, or their treatment, this article is important to you.

  22. I just wanted to thank you for your post and share something. I was teaching English in Seoul when I was called by my doctor during class and informed that my HIV test was positive. Promptly, the immigration officials showed up, drug me out of class, arrested me at the school, took me to the immigration office and threatened to deport me. From what I understand, deportation is the norm in such cases but they reiterated the word “gracious” when they told me of the rare opportunity given by the “big boss” to let me go and to spend my last 12 hours in Korea gathering my things. Normally, they would have been gathered for me. I was also allowed to leave on my own without deportation but I am NEVER allowed to enter their country again. Your words about Japan being a place of beauty turning jaded really rang true to me. I had a love for Korea that went back as far as I could remember. I studied the language in school and had studied Korean music for 10 years prior to living there.

    Does anyone know the rules for such cases with foreigners in Japan? Are foreigners with HIV (known) allowed to live there? I am very curious.

    Thanks for anyone who read this

  23. I’m sorry to hear your story BJ, talking about going against human rights and the right to patient confidentiality. Just a sad mirror of ignorance. Shame it happened in a developed country like Korea too. With proper antiretroviral treatment, you can live just like anyone else for several decades with the virus and possibly even have noninfected children with in vitro insemination.

    As a med student taking the career in Mexico City, I’ve only seen 1 HIV positive patient (very briefly), but I’ve met several people that got Hepatitis B and C. One of the people that has Hepatitis B is a teacher of mine who doesn’t even know how in the hell he got the virus, just that it probably happened during his internship year and it was probably by handelling contaminated blood. Luckily he was of the 70% of people that managed to fight the virus and his liver won’t get ruined because of it. Makes me feel kinda icky in the insides because I’m not vaccinated yet, I just don’t have the cash right now.

    The two patients that got Hepatitis C got the virus by blood transfusions and one of these two people didn’t even know she had the virus in the first place, she only came in because she had a very bad case of skin petechiae and protruding blood vessels in the abdomen, along with a bad case of ascites that appeared just a few days before she went to the hospital.

    I’ve heard rumors that a resident of Ear-nose-throat got infected with HIV treating a patient in one of the hospitals I go to. Just to show you don’t have to be a floosey to get the virus.

    No matter where you are, educate people about STD’s, they are more common than you think. Hepatitis B and C infection is like 100 times more infectious than HIV and the disease kills you a lot faster. There’s some treatments for both, but getting the deadly chronic form of the disease is like russian roulette. There’s over a 95% chance of getting chronic hepatitis C infection and there’s no vaccine for it.

    Mexico isn’t the eden of sexual activity responsability either (mexican males think using a condom makes them less macho for some reason), but at least they try to teach the generic dangers of getting HIV in schools here.

    I feel sorry for the poor girl who got dumped when her boyfriend discovers she has HIV. Just shows how little love he had for her in the first place. The worst that can happen to a person with a disease like this is to be socially outcast and living in a hut waiting to die as if we were back in the days when antiretrovirals didn’t exist. Hope the fianceé of the author of this article didn’t leave him; and I’m sure the experience has taught him a valuable lesson about safe sex.

    You’d be surprised to know how many faithful mexican women get infected with HIV from their spouses who went cruisin’ when they were illegal immigrants in the US and come back when they get deported with the virus as a good-bye gift.

    As for those medical articles, I’ll enjoy reading them (it’s 2:30 am right now, so I’ll read em when I’m more awake).

  24. If i have unprotected sex just once is it possible to get AIDS/Hepatitis B?
    Also, you said you can take these tests for free in Japan, where can i take these tests ?

  25. after reading i felt tt we only live once until when we felt close to death then we start to wake up.is normal for human beings but how many of us really lucky to escape n given a new life or rather another chance?i hav some regrets in my life if time can rewind i can be a better person…..life is GREAT there r many things waiting for mi to do i really treasure my life i love my family.
    im stil learning everyday tis is how i gain my lifetime exp in future if i hav children i wil teach them how papa had gone through.thanks for spending time reading.im happy for tt guy is negative.

  26. Look around and see how many of these girls are going around with Africans…no wonder HIV is spreading.

  27. It is a scary story- and so true. I myself contracted HIV from a Japanese guy last year. Sure, I am a gay male and statistically more at risk of contracting HIV or STDs, but in regards to HIV awareness in Japan heterosexuals are far behind the gay community. And it worries me a lot.

    One of the major barriers I have found so far in Japan is the lack of understanding of what HIV is and what it can do and what it can not do. I told one of my female Japanese friends (mid 20s) that I was HIV+ and she freaked out as she though that it was AIDs and I was going to die before the end of week. I couldnt believe it. In fact she didn’t know there was a difference between HIV and AIDS.

    Ironically despite such a lack of public awareness of HIV and a lack of sex education, Japan actually does treat HIV patients well and like normal human beings. There is extra support from the NHI system, and it is classed as a ‘disability’ so that you can be eligible for various discounts, and tax exemptions.

    Anyone else in a similar situation? I would love to hear if anyone else has gone through the same thing.

  28. women in Japan should stop lying and PLEASE get tested once in a while even though its an imbarrasing thing and fucking stop being shy and ask for a condom! Japan is not safe anymore. The HIV rate is rising like a bitch!

  29. @PINK,

    Kumiko is going to be just fine. I urge you to give her to read my message. HIV test are unreliable. Tell your ex Kumiko demend the HIV test disclaimers, ALL of them ELISA, WESTERN BLOT, PCR. She needs to read them carefully. She needs to read the small print. They all say they are NOT design for diognostic use, they are not design to detect the presence or the absence of HIV infection. She is pregnant. One of the 60 well documented conditions and diseases result in false-positives is PREGNANCY, because when a woman is pregnant she dvelopes massive amounts of antibodies against her own body thus resulting in false-positive HIV test. HIV is harmless passenger retrovirus and has nothing to do with AIDS defying diseases. There are thousands of people called “dissidents” who are 20+ years “positive” and live normal healthy lives without toxic HAART’s drugs. Antiretroviral drugs are DNA chain terminators and often times mimic AIDSyndrome. Please, please, please tell her not to take toxic drugs and read read read before she makes such decission. There are AIDS people who are HIV negative, newethereless they also die. Much questions remain about HIV=AIDS hypothesis. She can learn about it at perthgroup.com, rethinkingaids.com, virusmith.com and such. There are at least fourty websites of AIDS rethinkers.

    Yes HIV+ positive people die from AIDS, however the number of those positives who remain alive after 20+ years without taking medications and never develop AIDS far outweights the number of those positives who die of AIDS and those who on HAART’s. That alone raises the question of just how lethal HIV is and if the eversoevolving virus is a sole cause of AIDS. AIDS in Africa is a totally different from AIDS in the West and Europe, but you need to research that on your own and I promise you’ll be amazed at the differences of HIV=AIDS in different countries!

    Fighter, I urge you to read Vladimir Koliadin’s hypothesis about The distruction of friendly microflora in the gut as a main cause of AIDS in homosexuals. Google Vladimir Koliadin or go to virusmith.com and read about his work very carefully!!!

    Good luck to all and stay healthy. HIV is far from a death sentence!!!

  30. @Shade

    so because some japanese girls go out with Africans they re going to spread the virus ??? How many Africans people do you see in Japan ?
    How many Japanese and foreign men go on those sex expedition in Thailand ? The thing is japanese girls themselves favor white men , so there again your argument is wrong.
    If you wanna be racist , please be ,but don’t say that africans are spreading aids in Japan .

  31. Why were you so worried? I’ve heard it’s pretty difficult to contract HIV from regular sex. It would only be something to worry about if you had hundreds of partners, which would increase the risk. There’s probably something your ex didn’t tell you about her social life going on.

  32. Thanks for sharing your touching story in detail. I’ve been studying Japanese for almost 6 years now, been to Japan several times. I got in contact with a girl when I first visited Osaka. I’m a careful person so I insisted on using condoms, but one of them actually ripped. I realized it in the same second and stopped immediately. Young as I was I didn’t think about HIV or other STD’s.

    Now it’s been 4 years since that incident. I found my love last year in Akita. We are so close so connected, that I’m actually thinking of marrying her and having children. Playing with that thought I got reminded of that one night in Osaka and got myself tested (will get the results in a week.) Even though the risk of infection of HIV itself is very low and I interrupted the intercourse right away, there still is a very small chance and I simply don’t want to risk my beloved ones life because of my stupidity in the past. I also agree with some of the other people who posted here. If you really care about the person you are sleeping with and not just came for two weeks to see Roppongi/Shibuya, you should get yourself and her/him tested. As for me, I will wait about my own results before talking to my Akita girl. She donates blood every year and I heard they check right away for HIV and other diseases. Does anyone know the situation in Japan? The doctor today said, she would already have been told if she really had HIV herself (she also used to date a Japanese guy who refused to use condoms).

    @pink Do you still have contact with “Kumiko”? How is she doing with her child? Did she really have HIV or was it like irishadobraja posted, that her pregnancy influenced the results? If she was I’m pretty sure she is either concealing the truth or living stigmatized… as beautiful as Japan can be, it can also be very cold and cruel.

    @irishadobraja: good post!

  33. Great blog! Really brings the message home. But as some one says above Hepatitis C may be a much better reason to be sensible. 1-2% of Japanese people in their 30’s and 3 percent of Japanese above 50 have it and *34000* people die of liver cancer in 2004, 80% of those Hepatitis C related. Be scared, be good.

  34. I’m positif HIV . I have relationship with Japanese guy for 7 month and he was never use condoms , and now I check my blood for medical check and for get stay visa in Singapore but the blood result I have positive HIV I was angry with my boyfriend but I cannot hate him co’z I loved him … I was regret …

  35. I am an African man 24 years old living in Japan. I am a godfearing person and have never involved myself sexually with anyone. Sadly, there are African people who are less reserved than I am, but reading that we are the reason HIV/AIDS is becoming rampant in Japan was hard to take. I can not think of any one country in the world where African people are respected. If the same comment had been made regarding another continent or country, I am sure there would have been more people chiding the poster for the irresponsible comment. I see Shade tried to say something about it, but even he/she argued that that is because there is not enough of us. I hate to be soliciting sympathy, but Africa is a really easy scapegoat. I find people to be more promiscuous in Japan than in my own country, but, sadly the HIV is more prevalent back home. There are probably reasons for that, but I just wish we didn’t have to always explain we are just like everyone less.

  36. HIV is widespread in Africa not because of promiscuosity but because of genetic factors, just as other races are more susceptible to other diseases than others.
    If someone gets HIV through unprotected sex, you have no excuse, you have to take responsibility.
    Blaming Africans in tokyo shows how racist and dumb you are. Morons like you if given the opportunity to work in a genetic research program will not hesitate to wipe out the African race just as speculations are mounting about the origin of the virus.

  37. Nodgren, although blaming other ethnic group of human race is sure prejudice, to say HIV is spread in Africa because of genetic factors is just as prejudice and racist. HIV positivity widespread in Africa, because Africans suffer with multiple and repeated infections of Malaria, TB, Parasitosis, Intestinal Worms, STD’s that don’t get treated in the timely fashion. Their bodies lack essential nutrients, minerals, clean water. They live in antisenitary conditions being susceptible to persistent diarrhea, fever, womiting. Being bombarded by all the factors I just have described make their bodies produce enormous amounts of antibodies that flash up against bogus supposedly unique to HIV proteins. Remember many get tested by poorly produced ELISA tests that only test for reactivity for HIV. Western Blot or simply WB is not even used to determine whether poor Africans are truly infected. In other words WB design to confirm seropositivity. In US WB is a must or else law suit can be filed if it is not performed to confirm. Alas, Great Britain find WB unnecessary and dogmatic. It is not even applied for diagnostic tests. Go figure, right? So, Africans are easy targets for pharmaceutical companies like Gilead, for instance, they are ginea pigs for Big Pharmacutical Corporations that dump thousands of tons of chemotherapy ARV’s onto the infested with poverty and famine African countries further damaging their already weakened immune systems by factors I have previously stated. AIDS is a phony construct design to put people in fear and submission to expensive lifelong chemotherapy HIV drugs ARV’s treatments that in themselves result in severe life threatening immune deficiencies. And last time I have checked, one of the best specialists in the sexual promiscuity of so ever evolving killer of the lose virus HIV, Nancy Padian who has done largest in the world 10 year long study on sexual trabsmisability of the killer virus on the lose amounts discordant couples, HIV is THE HARDEST to transmit ( if it even exists ) lol.
    In her own words, madam Padian stated this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liLT2Mb11ao

  38. My apologies for the grammar mistakes. iPhone kept diligently auto-correcting everything I’ve typed lol.

  39. HIV doest care who u are…Black or white,rich or poor,Japanese or African…So please stop makin excuses and start and gearin up and takin responsibity for your own sexual behaviour and health..

  40. Does anyone here catch hiv from blowjob? Websites in US say oraL is low risk but who considers it risky and other countries also. I have been sick for 3 months after blowjob and the n vaginal using condom with sex worker from Brazil. Doc said I have ngudue to urinary symptoms and all my test being negative. I will repeat ab and pcr tests but I have had a non responsive penis rash no doc or dermatologist has any idea what it is and nothing has helped. You can see it better when I am erect and I am very scared. I think I have mycoplasma infection but we do not even test my Dr just wants me to take more pills. Or tell me nothing is wrong I am cured and or it is in my head. Now my girl is sick too. I think if this continues or gets worse I will consider suicide, and this is all coming from a medical school student who should have known better.

  41. stilldown420,

    Ya gonna be fine. It is extremely hard to catch HIV( if exist) 1,000 coituses are necessary in order to catch it. Watch a video I have posted previously. It does not require reading, just watch. Suicide is never an answer or an exit. Ya gonna live, rush will go away and your girlfriend is gonna be honky dory as well. Prolly Genital Herpes is what you have, but doctors will determine what is it that you have for sure. There is no sufficient scientific evidence “HIV” can be caught via oral sex. So relax, chill and enjoy life. I have a friend – former junky who was diagnosed in 2009. He is not on ARV’s and healthy as any normal person. HIV=AIDS hypothesis is a mind f…ck invented to terrorise people and make millions of dollars off of predominantly homosexuals, drug addicts, hemophiliacs and black folks. If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to post then here. Take care 🙂

  42. …not to be disrespectful, but do you subscribe to any other conspiracy theories, such as the deliberate creation of AIDS to wipe out Africans, UFO secrets of US, the make-believe holocaust…just wondering what type of things you are suspicious of, no disrespect intended. Thank you for the references though…we can always look deeper into a matter.

  43. hi Irish,

    Yeah what you say makes some sense. I cannot speak for your friend as I do not know anyone personally who has told me that they are HIV positive, but have you heard about the book about people who have AIDS yet are negative for HIV?

    I am not sure if what I Have is herpes, since I have had HSV type 1 on my face and I am familiar with it. My scarlet penile discoloration is not like a typical herpes lesion or outbreak that eventually scabs or heals over.

    I did get results recently for HIV 1/2/O ab test , was negative at 14 weeks post exposure, along with a RPR (Syphillis) and a Chlamydia IGG antibody and a standard urine culture – all negative, so that is good, but I still do not know what is causing my problems here.

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