Japan- The Good and the Ugly

Over the last week we have seen some of the great things of Japan as well as some of the not-so-great things of Japan. I suppose we should start with the bad and progress our way to the more positive things.

Probably the worst thing about Japan is the fact that they still love their cigarettes over here. This means when you go to a restaurant you want to die because the smoke is so thick, and it billows over the "wall" that they put up to separate the smokers and the non-smokers. For some reason, unbeknownst to us, these walls always only make it to about 2 feet below the ceiling and have a huge open door that allows all of the smoke to make its way out to the non-smoking customers. Anyway, this trend of smoking leads to some pretty ostentacious advertising that would NEVER be seen anywhere in America! It seems for the Japanese that smoking will cause you to form large muscles and look good in mini-tight-jean shorts (a.k.a. jorts)--soooo sexy, I better go buy me some Winstons!

Moving onto less uglier things, but almost just as frustrating as smoke.. .the elusive oven. Since our microwave/oven (though not really an oven) has slowly been diminishing in power, we decided to ask our school to buy us a new one, and they were kind eniough to give us the money to buy one. So, we went out and bought ourselves a "real" oven/microwave. Though outwardly it still looks like a microwave, it doesn't have the spinning circle thing that microwaves have, so it must be a real oven, right?! Well, we still can't decide if it's a microwave or an oven, but unfortunately we're going to have to go with the former over the latter, even though it is an upgrade from our last hunk-a-junk!

Finally, we have something in Japanese culture that is truely neat and has no ugliness about it- 1,000 cranes. These cranes took one of our students about 1 year to make, and she very kindly gave them to us as a gift because we were so mesmerized by the weight and uniqueness of this craft! Though the cranes are very tiny, when put together they're actually quite heavy. This picture just doesn't do justice for how neat it is! If only all things in Japan could make us as happy as these cranes and the student who gave them to us!