Thank you for buying the 55th volume of Gintama!
I turned thirty-five the other day. At this age, if I were Ryoma Sakamoto*, I would have been murdered long ago! After accomplishing numerous feats, starting with the alliance between Satsuma and Chosu’s domains, the restoration of imperial power, etc., while eating a chicken dish cooked directly at the table, I would have been attacked by an assassin and would have gone down in history after shouting, “Don’t worry!”. Instead, Hideaki Sorachi, a nice guy from the North Sea, even though he’s already older than Ryoma, doesn’t even have a friend… So much for establishing an alliance between Satsuma’s and Choshu’s domains! Furthermore, while I’m eating chicken dishes cooked directly at the table, not only am I not assaulted by any assassins, but no one shows up, despite the fact that I’ve made several phone calls, so there’s complete silence. There is so much silence that my ears are ringing, so I end up shouting to myself, “Don’t be afraid!”. As crazy as I am, I found this strange, so I decided to have a general check-up. I thought I’d have my whole body checked once and for all, telling the doctor, “No matter how much I look, I can’t sanction the alliance between Satsuma’s domain and Choshu’s domain. What does this mean? There’s something wrong with my body, isn’t there?”. Also because it may be that a killer is approaching from within in the form of some disease. So I found out that undergoing a general check-up requires several preparations. There are a number of things to do, for example you should not take any food from the day before. In fact, if chicken dishes came out of the gastroscope, you wouldn’t be able to see the dawn of modern Japan or anything else. Well, normally fasting like this doesn’t weigh me down, but as always I had a lot of work to do and didn’t sleep for about three nights to complete the boards, until the day of the check-up. On top of that, I came down with a fever and couldn’t eat in view of the exams. In short, I was forced to face the check-up in such a condition that anyone would have diagnosed me with a fatal disease without the help of any instrument.
*Samurai who overthrew the Shogunate in the 19th century.
I felt sick, sleepy and hungry. I was in very poor physical condition, so I thought about canceling the appointment because it seemed impossible to have the check-up. But at the hospital, they told me that since they had already arranged everything, I would have to pay forty thousand yen as a cancellation fee. I wanted to tell him not to talk nonsense… With that kind of money, even Ryoma could have been saved when they tried to assassinate him. If he had told them to let him escape in exchange for forty thousand yen, he would have escaped assassination. Forty thousand yen would also have made it easy to seal the alliance between Satsuma and Choshu’s domains.It was enough to give twenty thousand to both Katsura and Saigo, which anyone other than Ryoma could have done. I mean… why should I have to pay forty thousand yen just to cancel the appointment? Inciting my broken body by sheer force of will, I went to the hospital shaking like a leaf so as not to lose forty thousand yen. It was as if Ryoma had gone for a general check-up with a sword stuck in his head. When I examined my eyes, my eyes were blurry and the letter C looked like an O, duplicated and superimposed on top of each other. “Indicate in which direction the symbol is open.” “Well, it’s closed in all directions. Let me out of here! Help… Otome**, my sisteeer!” I even started to hallucinate like that. On top of that, they forced me to swallow the gastroscope. I wanted to tell them they were monsters. I wanted to tell them that they were monsters. “Gargle with this to facilitate the entry of the gastroscope” … With this excuse they put some kind of creamy medicine in my mouth. Since I was hungry, I felt like asking for a few sips, so I drank about half of it. “Then lie down here and we will insert the gastroscope into your stomach”. At these words, as soon as I lay down on the couch, I lost consciousness. While I was snoring, they inserted the gastroscope and when I woke up my face was completely covered with drool. The nurses were giggling, and no one said “An extraordinary man has come for a general check-up. He is the reincarnation of Ryoma!”.
*Otome was Ryoma Sakamoto’s older sister.
Having said that, the special ‘General Check-up’ in Volume 55 ends here.
I thought I was going to undergo medical examinations in that condition, almost on the verge of death, but the examinations found that I had an enlarged liver and was consuming too much fat. Although I tried to show that I was ill, pretending to have slightly hollow cheeks, they turned me away by calling me a pig and ordering me to stop eating so much. So, I went home with my face flushed with shame. Well, it’s only natural that I should have the liver of a goose if I even drink the liquid used for the gastroscopy.
New topic: “I ate too many chicken dishes cooked directly at the table.”
Yorozuya Shinigami 