Just Another Day

Nothing too exciting as of late. Last Monday was "Respect for the Aged Day", so I was really pumped about old people throughout my three day weekend.

So, I am currently an assistant language teacher at Yamabe Junior High School. Awesome. Yamabe is the biggest school in Ashikaga, and I think it is what you might call an inner city school. Now, a rough school in Japan is nothing in the US, but this place is definitely colorful. So, everyday I ride my bike a good 20 minutes to school. One day out of the good two weeks that I've been teaching, I forgot to lock my bike. Sure enough, some kid was caught riding it around the school property later during the day. No damage was done, but I was amazed at the efficiency of this hoodlum.. either he had been checking my lock everyday or just got extremely lucky.

I found what amounts to the Japanese two dollar bill in change a few days ago. I've been in Japan a total of more than half a year, so I was surprised that I hadn't even heard of this particular denomination. Of course I kept it, but it is worth more like 20 dollars, so we will see how long I will keep it before I break down and spend it on some flavor of rice.

Obverse

Reverse

In keeping with my current, yearlong theme "Japan: Everything is Small, Everything is Expensive", I have an example of both for your enjoyment.

This I can safely say is the tiniest enclosed motor vehicle that I have ever beheld. Three wheels, one headlight... a windshield wiper... This thing is golden. Inside it has handle bars like a motorbike. I was very tempted to try to fit myself inside of this thing, but I would probably get arrested.

I desperately want to know what the top speed of this thing is.

I need this.

Ok, now on to expensive. Pictured is the small selection of DVDs available for purchase at the 7-Eleven down the block from my apartment. A mixture of foreign and American movies are offered. According to the little stickers, a copy of Spiderman 3 has been marked down to the price of $31.71, and the Spartan action flick (one of my favorites) 300 has been honorably marked down to $30.35. Granted, the local convenience store isn't going to be the cheapest place in town to buy movies, but these prices are still pretty amazing considering how old these titles are.

Movie companies are even greedier in Japan than they are in the US.. Scary