My friend lent me a book that has letters written to God by children with Japanese translations to help me practice my Japanese. Here are a few of my favorites:
Dear God, When you wrote the bible you made up all the words and spelled them the way you like. That is great. Most of the time I do it like that, but I am not doing so good. Ron
Dear God, Do Plastic flowers make you mad? I would be if I made the real ones. Lucy
Dear God, I didn't think orange went very good with purple until I saw the sunset you made on Tue. That was cooL. Eugene
As an update to my money order adventures, I would like to report that I was able to cash it (with NO fees/charges) at the post office bank! (in Japan the post office is also a bank) The exchange rate is horrible right now though. But it wasn't that difficult to do....since I asked my Japanese coworker to come with me. We had to pick a number, then wait... and wait... then talk to the clerk... then wait while he searched the manual... then talk to him again... then my coworker had to write a bunch of kanji on the back of the money order... then we waited again... and then I got my money! The whole thing took about an hour.
I asked my coworker what she had to write on the money order and she told me that there's some law that says it had to be written and she basically wrote that we agree with the law that says we have to write down what it says in the manual. She asked the clerk why we had to write it, and he didn't know why but it needed to be done. So my coworker and I were wondering why they would make such a law because if foreigners wanted to cash a money order on their own (without any knowledge of Japanese), they wouldn't be able to. She said that the kanji used is even too advanced for jr high school students and the lower grades of high school.
Today I went to the bank to try to deposit an international money order. But after the teller patiently explained to me using hand motions, pictures, and an electronic Japanese-English dictionary that after the bank service charges I would be getting about 1% of the original amount back I decided not to deposit it. Depending on the service charge of the foreign bank I could have even owed money had I decided to deposit it. That's just ridiculous.
Sorry for the lack of updates!! (and I don't even have pictures for this one)
I wanted to share that I saw the busiest supermarket I have ever seen today. I think (I'm not exactly sure since I don't understand Japanese that well) that there was some kind of sale at the supermarket today. I believe that if you have a certain type of credit card you could get 5% off your purchase. And there were also other sales going on at the same time. So the place was PACKED. The lines went from the registers all the way to the back of the store, and then people were squeezing in between the lines to do their shopping. They were also giving out balloons to the kids (nice mylar ones), handing out samples of food and other products and there was some kind of blue animal/alien character you could take pictures with.
There were also specials where you stuff a small plastic bag full of certain products for a flat price. I saw people stuffing yogurt drinks in one part of the store and nori in another part. I wasn't sure if I could get the flat rate without the certain credit card but I thought I'd try anyway (because it looked like fun...haha). I managed to stuff about 35 yogurt drinks (they look like yakult) into the small plastic bag... but I think some people probably got over 40 in it. One lady stuffed 3 bags to take home, so I guess it was a good price. I was able to get the flat rate without the credit card and it was 198yen for the bag.
Mark Kanemura made it all the way to the semi-finals of So You Think You Can Dance. He was one of my sister's choreographers when she was taking dance at Castle. This is one of my favorite routines that he danced while on the show:
Cara Horibe is dancing with Fanny Pak on America's Best Dance Crew. When I was living in LA I went to a restaurant to celebrate a friend's birthday and happened to see Cara working as a hostess there. I recognized her because I went to a lot of 24/7 danceforce concerts when my sister was dancing, and Cara was always one of the top dancers. So I didn't think she would know who I was but I went up to her and said "umm... did you go to Castle?" and she said "yeah, aren't you Sharyn's sister?" She knew me! Haha...well, sort of.
Last but certainly not least, Bryan Clay is going to be representing the US at the Olympics in the decathalon! He was actually one of the people that helped convince me to run cross-country in high school. Although the year I decided to run I think he decided to focus on track so he didn't end up doing cross-country.
