el of service that you receive anytime you go to a restaurant. Even down to a fast food place like McDonald's the employees always seem like they are happy to see you and give you great service. Sometimes I think about the difference of service in the US and Japan and also the fact that in Japan you don't leave a tip really makes me realize the difference. In the US when the server is being super nice or friendly, people always assume they are trying to get a bigger tip; but in Japan the servers are almost always smiling, nice, and friendly without any expectation of a tip.
still celebrating their anniversary so they had a fireworks show again, they had some awesome ones that makes hearts, and smiley faces in the sky. After that had some Yaki Soba for dinner and headed to the theater to see Born Ultimatum, it was a really good movie but I think they used handheld camera a little too much.
achi. He rented some Mazda and we headed out to get some new footage for our project and have fun. After figuring out how to use the Nav system and get to the C1 loop, we did a couple loops on the C1 looking for cool cars and getting footage for our project. We pulled into a small rest stop that a lot of people with cool cars hang out at. We talked to one guy who had a 800hp Skyline and it was awesome and good, but mostly awesome. After we headed to Daikokufutou, which is a big rest stop in Yokohama near the docks where a lot of the cars are shipped out of Japan from. We took the back roads so we wouldn't have to pay the freeway tolls. We got to the intersection that we saw the drifting at before and talked to some guys that were hanging out there with their cars. No one really drifts there on Fridays, so we didn't see any. It mostly happens on Saturdays.
Yu, and I headed out to check out a Skyline that Mason had planned on purchasing. The dealer he found the car at was a little hole in the wall dealer and really wasn't much different from the crap dealers in the US. Mason had called yesterday to make sure that the car was still there and to let the guy know that he wanted to look at it. After about a 40min ride to get there we met with the guy who ran the place and the first question he asked was "do you have any money?" Then he told us that the car was at a different lot so we couldn't see it and couldn't drive it because it didn't have shaken which is like road tax, liability insurance, and all fees involved with the required inspection here. It 
lasts for two years and is transferable between owners. The costs vaires depending on the weight and size of the engine in the car. The way the car was listed on the dealer website it appeared that the car and 2 year shaken was about $1,200 but when we got there were told that the price was just for the car and it would costs about $3,800 for the car with shaken. The costs actually winds up being lower when you consider that insurance in the US for a similar car would be about $80 or $90 a month while here in Japan you're only paying about $15. It seems like more cause it's all up front for 2 year coverage. The part where the costs increase is if there are any repairs required for the car. Japan has ver strict regulations for vechiles and cars can't have any leaking oil, suspension parts have to be good, and the car basically has to be in like new condition mechanically. If something is wrong with the car, it would have to be repaired before it can be driven.
umes. After that I headed to work and did 4 lessons. Mason and I finished work at the same time so before heading home we went to the game center near work and played Maximum Tune 3. There was a guy there that was playing the Claw Machines (U.F.O. Catcher) and he was winning a prize every time. It was unbelievable, people never win when they play those but that guy was emptying out the machine and the guy working there had to keep refilling that machine and help him put all his prizes into bags, it was crazy.
sk Management, International Marketing, and International Trade. Should keep me pretty busy so I don't think I'll have time to take Japanese as a class but just have to study it on my own. I've been in Japan about 6 months now and before I left I did some investing and one stock that I am glad I got is Nintendo, it's just been going up and up. Starting to slow now but will definitely pick up more as Christmas gets closer.
here I met up with 4 other people that I invited to join, we checked in and headed to the bus. They had a couple large tour buses and they drove us out to Chiba, about 40 min out of Tokyo in the country. There were about 100 people. We arrived in Chiba around 7:00 at a large lot near the water. As people came off the bus, they were checked out and if the staff thought it was necessary they were provided with Nike shoes, shirts, and shorts. I guess they were ok with what I was wearing so didn't get anything but about half of the people there were wearing new shoes. They gave us all white earbuds so 
it looked like we were listening to iPods. There was a long strip taped on the ground that everyone lined up on and they messed around with the position of people for a while while checking the lighting and setting up the shot. There were about 10 people that just helped with directing people on what to do and they had 3 cameras. There was a cherry-picker truck that they used to get a high angle shot, a camera set up on the ground, and a handheld that they used for some other shots. When they called action we acted like we were stretching and getting ready to run, then they 
counted down and we all ran. We did about 20 different takes with different timing and different things. It was pretty cold in the morning but warmed up as the day went on. They had us pose on the line in a running stance for about 20 minutes or so while they took pictures and got some footage. Holding that position really hurt! They gave us lunch and we did some other things and headed back.
with a friend. We headed to a Izakaya style restaurant, which is a Japanese style bar/restaurant called Yu-Syoku Higashiyama-an. Long name but it was a cool place. To enter the place you had to go down some stairs with bamboo on either side and through a sliding door. They had a counter to sit at with water running down the wall and private tables with a shade that the server would open and close when they brought food or took your order. After we headed to Karaoke and then I went home and got some sleep.
