First of all, I'd like to give a shout out to my father who is now 50! He is officially an old man, so feel free to call or email him and harass him about his old age. This week has been fairly uneventful for me. I got sick on Saturday, and stayed home and slept most of the weekend. I'm still a bit sick now, but I'm feeling better. For some reason I get sick a lot more in Japan. My theory is that the virus strains are different so I'm less immune to them. Plus the over-the-counter medicine here is expensive and doesn't work very well, so whenever I get sick I just tough it out and drink lots of orange juice. Japan has really good health insurance, so most people just go to the doctor and get cheap prescriptions when they're sick, so the over-the-counter medicine just isn't up to the same standards as in America. I want the kind of strong medicine that knocks me out, but it doesn't exist here. Other than being sick, I was randomly confronted by both a Jehovah's Witness and a Japanese police officer this week. On the way to my kindergarten teaching job, I got stopped by a Jehovah's Witness (apparently they're everywhere) and given a lecture about love and fear and invited to church. It sucks cause when you're walking outside, you can't drive around the block and avoid them or pretend to not be home as we usually do in America. Luckily, she didn't keep me very long and I got to work on time. Then after work, I was just walking along the street on my way to the train station, and a police officer pulled his bicycle up next to me and said "doko ni iku?", (where are you going?) in a bit of a threatening voice. Then he made me show him my alien registration card, I guess to prove that I wasn't an illegal immigrant or something. He wasn't particularly mean, but I felt a bit harassed. All I was doing was walking down the street, on my way home from trying to teach Japanese children English, and I get randomly harassed and made to show proof of my identity, it was a bit unnerving. I guess it's good experience to be living in a country where I'm seen as an outsider and occasionally discriminated against. As a white person living in America, it gives me a kind of perspective on discrimination and the plight of foreigners that I didn't have before. I always get searched at the airport here too. I think they just see me and think "oh, she looks different, better search her". I could be a member of one of those young white girl terrorist groups that don't actually exist. They tend to overly associate negative events and traits with foreigners. Like whenever a foreigner commits a murder here, a big deal gets made of it in the news. "Oh, the horrible foreigners hurting Japanese people, should we continue to let immigrants into the country?". It's like one bad foreigner can completely taint the image of all the rest. When one foreigner commits a crime, all are seen as more likely to be criminals as a result. But when a Japanese person commits a crime, it's seen as an oddity, something that's strange and not really Japanese. I'm not sure if I'm explaining the attitude well, it's just something I've found here that really bothers me. So enough of my ranting about discrimination and the Japanese attitude toward foreigners. Tonight I'm going out for Indian food with some friends. Should be fun. Then on Saturday and Sunday, I'll probably be going out to eat again, shopping, etc. Somewhere in there I'm going to have to fit in sleep and the writing of a paper, but I'll manage. So that's my weekend. I'll leave you with this funny story from my Japanese class... we were talking about greeting expressions that exist in English but not in Japanese, and I mentioned that in America we sometimes say "peace out" when we're leaving. My teacher looked a bit shocked and said "hon to ni?" (really?), and it wasn't until later in the class when she repeated the phrase that I realized that she had thought I said "piss off". She eventually figured out what I had actually said, but I can just imagine my old Japanese teacher walking around America smiling and waving at people and telling them to "piss off", and it makes me laugh. Hopefully it makes you laugh too. Another thing that's different in Japan, is that they call a buffet a viking for some reason. I have no idea why. I wonder if Japanese people ever go to America and ask where the nearest viking is? They must get some strange looks for that question. Well, I must go do homework now, so I bid you adieu. Piss off, everyone! :-)