They were four simple words that I never wanted to hear: "Ha wo warimasu, ne (歯を割りますね, I'm going to split your tooth, OK?)."

That day was the third installment in the gnasher (not slasher) trilogy "My Date with the Dentist." Parts one and two were short, painless affairs with a local haisha (歯医者, dentist), who dispatched my oyashirazu (親知らず, wisdom teeth) to history with a minimum of fuss. Once the kyokubu masui (局部麻酔, local anaesthetic) had set in, it only took my sensei (先生, meaning teacher, but also used to refer to any authority figure) a few minutes to crowbar the upper-right and upper-left third molars from their sockets. Not much blood spilled there.

But the third visit left an entirely different taste in the mouth. My usual dentist had already warned that the extraction of my last wisdom tooth — the lower-right molar — would be taihen (大変, an ordeal). He had examined the rentogen (レントゲン, X-ray), seen it was yoko (横, sideways) and sensed kiken (危険, danger). Better to have had it extracted when it had first pushed through my gums in my early 20s, he said. In any case, he washed his sheathed hands of the task, wrote me a shōkaijyō (紹介状, letter of introduction) and sent me rubbing my jaw to a major hospital in Tokyo with an entire floor dedicated to oral hygiene. This place, he assured me, would be better equipped if my haguki (歯茎, gums) refused to stop bleeding or the dentists damaged a shinkei (神経, nerve).