Driver's test round 2 back on Tuesday, and again I failed. This time the guy said that while I looked left and right before the intersection, I looked a half second too late, so he couldn't pass me because I just barely looked. What makes me really irritated about this is that all my intersection crossings were at red lights, so I'm going to stop anyway, what does it even matter if I look left and right before I stop? The testers I believe are pretty racist, as I've heard before. Of course a white guy who was there passed on his first try. This will easily be the most aggravating thing I do in Japan.
The convenience stores in Japan are amazingly convenient! The main ones are 7-11, Lawson, and Family Mart, and there are others also. You can pay bills, make copies or send faxes, stand there and read comic books, buy concert and amusement park tickets, and buy really good lunches that the staff will heat up for you. I've been to convenience stores more in my 7 months in Japan here than I have been in all my life in the states. True story.
What's not so convenient are the ATMs. Japan is a cash based society. It is not uncommon for people to be walking around with hundreds of dollars (tens of thousands of yen) in their wallets/purses, and maybe with no credit card. Knowing this, you'd think that Japanese ATMs would transcend Batman! But they don't. In fact, Japanese ATMs CLOSE. That's right, in a cash based society the only thing you might be able to get money from closes. I think they close around 9 on weekdays and maybe 6 on weekends (in huge areas like Tokyo I'm not sure, but I think they have 24 hour ATMs). This is ridiculous. It's like saying credit cards are unusable after 9 PM. Does anyone understand this? It's even better that Japanese bank hours are from 9 AM to 3 PM, so basically unless you take paid leave off of work, you can never get to the bank before it closes.
コンビニ (conbini) convenience store
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