Car Talk (and more)
It's been a pretty crazy week or so here, which you may have been able to tell thanks to the Lack of Updates (TM Frodaddy's 2002). Today, it's raining cats and dogs out there, and I have a terrific headache **partially thanks my my neighbors burning some noxious leaves and rubbish, seriously people will burn anything over here. Just pick any random day, drive for a minute, and you'll see piles of smoldering crap. I guess it's a farmers thing, since everyone does that in some form or another out in the countryside. The worst is when they do it right next to the baseball fields. It sure smells awful, and it can't be good for the lungs either. It's a wonder the air is clean at all, actually.** So, not much going on today. Mostly just lying around and being lazy.

I did get my car fixed, however. See, Wednesday, after school is done, I'm ready to crank the car, and... nothing. It won't start. Thankfully, I had the foresight earlier to join JAF (Japan Automobile Federation, think AAA), and after about 30 minutes someone got my car started up for me. Anyways, it looks like the spark plugs were shot, plus the air filter was filthy, and I think possibly something was up with the carberator too. So, lots of stuff that needed to be looked at. I hope everything is taken care of for a little bit at least. Next big car deadlines- I need to get Shaken, which is like a super inspection, in May, and I'll need to take the Japanese driving test this summer (which I've heard is absolute, total, %100 bullshit). Grreeeat.

In other fun news, MEP #2 is up. It may be a challenge to keep it on time and monthly, but it seems like a good way to spend some of my extra time at work. You can check it out for yourself here:


http://angelfire.com/nc/frodaddy/mepost2m2.doc

Also, I realize I haven't put up any pictures of my experiences and travels in Japan... there's really no excuse for it at all. So I should probably do that one of these days.