3 Days 'til I Own a Car!

I have now procured paper and delved into the depths of the drawers of teaching materials left by former ALTs. I found sticky sheets of printing paper and now have nearly 8.5x11 inches' worth of Texas-related stickers. Now I shall proceed to make The Most Awesome Texas Poster Known to Man. Those Japanese kids won't know what hit 'em.

And I found a car! Or more accurately, Tomoko with the help of Takamoto san found a car! I was a little unhappy with the idea of having a station wagon. The roads and the parking spaces are just a bit small for a normal-sized, much less a Texas-sized car. So this is a nice one. It looks like a shrunk van, basically. Almost guinea-pig-esque in shape. And it was definitely designed with Japanese passengers in mind. Anyone taller than 5 foot 6 inches will have to sit sideways. But it's cute, and it's basically the Japanese version of an enery efficient car, with a smaller engine and lighter build I think. Oh, and guess what! It has a CD player with English labels! Woohoo!

One important thing to consider when buying a car is this thing called a Shakken. It's basically a mandatory biannual car inspection + tiny bit of insurance that can cost anywhere from ￥50,000-120,000, which translates to about $500-1200. So, if you buy a car in August for $1,000 and the Shakken runs out in January, you will actually be paying $2000 for the car, because you didn't get much use from the previous shakken. This car come with shakken, which is getting renewed the day I get it, basically, so I'm good for two years. Great deal! Other cars were being sold for $1000 more and with shakkens that would run out in 6-8 months. What's up with that?

Then I exchanged money. That was painful, since the Yen is basically as strong as it's ever been. Hopefully, it stays that way for a couple months and I can take advantage of it when I start to send money home.

So I have learned that it is possible to make bread and cakes in my rice cooker. WOW! I'm kinda excited to try that out, maybe tomorrow night. But I need butter. I found a simple banana bread recipe from a blog written by someone who is, would you believe it, cooking in Japan. Yesterday I successfully used my Scary-Killer-Death-Oven-Microwave to bake chicken. I call it my Scary-Killer-Death-Oven-Microwave because when I first saw it, I just assumed it was like a normal microwave. When I went to use it four days later, inside it was pitch black inside with a thick microwave plate, some sort of heating element up top, and virtually no space to maneuver. It looks like you're about to put your hands inside Death. It can be used as an oven (takes a bit longer than normal ovens) or a broiler, I think, or a microwave. It's a complicated little gadget.

Also, my rice cooker is also a clock. I wondered why it always said my rice needed 20 hours to cook.