Unconnected

In Japan, you can buy beer in vending machines. You can also buy cigarettes. I've yet to see one where you can buy food.

The escalator in the train station is motion sensitive.

60 degrees is really cold.

At cooking school we made an omelet (good!) and then coated it in a sugar/vinegar ketchup sauce (bad!).

It weirds me out to see kids and teachers with box cutters and other small knives.

The amount of touching between staff and students is also, at times, disconcerting. Those times are usually when a teacher is reprimanding a student for a dress code infraction while helping them tuck in their shirt.

How to tell Japan is a safe country: after the midterms the school ran a drill where a "dangerous person" enters the school and attacks a classroom. Apparently, the proper response to such a scenario is to have all the students walk to the gym, and have two teachers with large poles (I have no idea) go apprehend the "dangerous person," who, despite being so dangerous, took the time to trade his outdoor shoes for plastic indoor slippers.

There is no 104 or 204 in my apartment building.

A scarecrow in a neighboring rice field is a white faced fashion manikin.

Before becoming a vice-principal, my VP used to be a chemist and a geologist.

This map of the US (as viewed by Japan) amuses me. “This map is basically what would happen if you got a bunch of Japanese guys in a room, got them drunk, and then asked them to draw what they could remember about America on a bar napkin. Hell, that’s probably how this game was originally designed." -Andrew Vestal