The Eighteenth Bank

My post title refers not to how many banks I've tried to send money home from, but rather the actual name of my bank.  It seems weird until you compare it to the American bank The Fifth Third Bank, and then you're like "Whoa America, what the heck?"

Anyway, I went to the bank again today, as you were expecting.  I had to fill out three forms (actually four because I messed up on the first one) and the whole process took nearly an hour and a half.  In the end, I'm still not sure if it worked.  They said they would call me if there were any problems.  The money has been withdrawn from my account (I confirmed) and I haven't received a phone call, so I can only guess everything went swimmingly.  That, or the bank teller took my money and retired.  Won't he be surprised in two weeks when that money runs out!

You've heard about the various vending machines in Japan, I'm sure.  Well here's one I almost forgot about.  I took a shortcut home from the grocery store tonight, and came up on a little back-alley corner with this vending machine where you buy rice!  Uncooked, plain white rice grains, by the pound.  Actually, not by the pound because they don't measure things by the pound here, they measure them in Japanese.  But you have to take your own bag because the rice just pours out of the spout like a one-armed-bandit jackpot in a truckstop in Vegas.  What this woman didn't know is that she was being photographed.  What I didn't know is that by the time I put the camera down, she would turn around and wonder why this car hadn't moved for 5 minutes and why there was a foreigner inside photographing her buying rice.  As soon as I realized that, I peeled out and fired my pistol into the air repeatedly shouting "Yee-haw!" repeatedly.

I've started taking pictures of all the "security" cameras in town.  In a week or so, I'll post a blog with pictures of them all just to show you why I feel like I'm in a movie.  And honestly, even if I'm not in a Truman Show-esque reality show, I'm sure that I get watched on those cameras more often than anyone else in town.  That's only because I'm extremely handsome and wealthy.

I'm thinking of having an American-style "house party" at my apartment, to show the folks at work how it's done.  What time do you think I should call the police and have them ticket us for noise ordinance violation?  Should one of my coworkers die from alcohol poisoning, or should it be from falling off the veranda?  How much would it cost to ship a monster-truck to my apartment from Indiana?  Are my Japanese coworkers tall enough for an American style party?  These are all questions that are running through my head.

Here's a picture of me running over a small child with a car: