Typhoon Lagoon

If you've been following the news you may have heard about the big typhoon that has hit Japan. A typhoon is essentially just a mix of wind and rain. Endless, habitual, incessant rain. Typhoons can be very dangerous and are nothing to sneeze at. Here are some examples about how life in Fujiyoshida has changed thanks to the current typhoon:

-This morning we had to cancel our monthly apartment complex meeting. Now we'll have slightly more dust in the stairwell as usual!

-I was inconvenienced because I had to go to my car to get an umbrella before walking to lunch. I got moderately wet.

-My laundry isn't drying very fast.

-We're thinking about canceling a trip to the lake tomorrow

-Some travelers that we were letting stay out our place had second thoughts about climbing Mt. Fuji in the typhoon, but proceeded anyway.

As you can see, this typhoon is absolutely horrifying. You can understand why all Japanese TV stations have become 24 hour typhoon news networks. The worst part is that tomorrow is supposed to be the worst day! I think I'll be extremely lucky to get out of this alive!

*On a more serious note, people who do live in southern Japan are been seriously affected by the typhoon, so I wish them only the best in recovering once everything passes.

The more you know

I finally got all of my car paperwork sorted out, thankfully. Now I have to worry getting my Japanese drivers license. The big problem is that my international license expires August 1st but I can't take the test until August 17th, and I'll probably have to take it 3 or 4 times to pass. The testing center can only be reached by car, so I'm either going to have to drive there illegally or hope that I have a friend nice enough to keep driving me there and back...


In other news, I just found out that the meat they use at the udon place I always go to is actually horse! I've eaten horse before, but I was still taken aback at the realization of just how much horse I've eaten. This means that I also tricked my poor friend Sam into eating horse meat when I sent him off to eat udon. Oops!

Update on my car status.

Well, so the shit has really hit the fan on my whole car situation.

The board of education, who was handling all my car paperwork, took too long to get the title changed over to my name and now the biennial car registration has expired (they had over a month and a half to take care of it and it can be done in 10 days). Last week they took my car to do the inspection/registration and then told me they couldn't because I haven't paid the car tax. I never paid the car tax because the title isn't in my name so they never sent me the bill!

So, to review:

I couldn't change the title because the registration expired.

I couldn't get new registration because I never paid the car tax.

I couldn't pay the car tax because the title wasn't changed.

Now there's a Catch-22 for you. Basically the solution is that I have to pay the tax on behalf of the old owner, which will probably take about 2 months at the rate the board of education handles things. At that time I can do the registration and the title change, get insurance and then become a legal driver; however, I still have the problem of my soon-to-expire international driver's license. I can't take care of that until I can drive legally, so I'll be cutting it really close, especially since it can take months to past the Japanese license test.

I am so screwed it's not even funny. All of this is costing me an arm and a leg too. The car place is also holding on to my car during all of this. ARG!