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Weird things JD and I have noticed this week about Japan:
Knee extenders to make you taller (essentially "cartilige builders")
Penis reshaping tools
cream to remove almost nonexistent facial hair
(These first 3 things were found in a fasion magazine left at the climbing action park) In the magazine the cartilige builders had pictures analogous to those seen in weight loss adds with before and after photos of completely different people. If you took the cartilige enhancer, you could grow up to 18cm taller in 6 months!!!!!
oh, and on TV today we saw a class showing woman how to prevent a vaginal prolapse.
There are more weird things but thats all for this week!

driving miss daisy

So, after months of bumming rides off of Joey D and co, I am somewhat reluctantly acquiring a "free" car. Nicole asked if I wanted her car for free, and I said yes. Its not really free though, because I have to pay the shaken that comes up every 2 years, plus car insurance. Not to mention other hidden costs. Lately, I've been remembering why I didn't want a car in the first place. Mainly because of enviornmental reasons, secondly, I don't want to become lazy and I want to continue to ride my bike the hour to school, and lastly, because roads in Japan are narrow and I have a tendency to get lost. But it will be very convinient for next year when I work more English camps and do CCM stuff. I can't keep going back and forth about it and at this point I am in so deep with the paperwork that there is no backing out. I should have the car by the end of the week! I drove it on sunday for an hour and that was fun. It was really weird to drive though. It has taken over a month for the teachers to help me with all the paperwork. And just when I thought things in Japan couldn't get any more ridiculous, Haga sensei pulls out his measuring tape to measure my parking space. There needs to be a map of the place where my car is parked he explained. "OH! of course!" I should have known. If only I could remember all of the absurd WTF moments of my life in this country up until now. Actually, its probably better that I forget some of them. Yesterday would be one. I went to the wrong school. It was opening ceremony day and I didn't know I was supposed to be at my base school. They called me. But everything worked out ok. There is always a lack of communication with things that they assume I know but I don't. For example, I went to school once only to discover it was a holiday and nobody told me. Anyways, I met one of the new teachers I will be working with. She is really good and smart so I am excited to be working with her. I haven't seen the other part time teacher yet though. I will post a couple of pics from the morning of the ducks with Kyoko.