Taxi mistakes

On Friday night Bre and I had a taxi adventure.  I should backup and explain that we went over to Tanya's (a visiting professor from Russia) for dinner.  Olga and her son Valdez also came to the dinner party.  When we were getting ready to leave Olga told us that she was getting a cab for the ride home and offered to give us a ride in her cab.  Our apartment is on the way to her apartment so we agreed. 

This photo of a cab is for illustration purposes only, it was not the cab we used.

Olga called the cab company with (what seemed to me) an impressive command of Japanese to request a cab to pick us up.  We waited a few minutes and got a call that the cab was waiting outside.  We went down and looked for the cab.   It was not outside the building.  We tried walking around the block to find it to no avail.  Eventually after standing around outside for 10 minutes Olga called the cab and asked him to meet us a the McDonald's down the street.  We saw a passing cab and waved it down.  All 4 of us piled in and gave him directions using Olga's Japanese and some hand signs to explain where we wanted to go.  As we went down the street what did we see but a cab on the street next to McDonald's blocking traffic.  This was the point where I realized that the cab we had jumped into was not the cab that we ordered. 

I am not sure what the moral of the story is, but I though you would enjoy hearing about it.

We went for a walk in the snow today (12-11-2011).  There was fresh snow this morning.

 We saw this on our walk.  I thought it was funny to see a man pulling a sled with a snow tire.   Though when I think about a sled seems like the most sensible way to carry a tire around in the snow.  Rolling a tire in the snow sounds like a way to build a snowman.

 Here is the answer to the age old question of where does all the snow go?  Apparently away a truck.

 I have received requests for stories about the troubles of getting coffee in Japan and the price of coffee.  As Bre and I don't drink coffee we don't have any good stories about getting it.  Just ask my old co-workers, they can tell you I am no expert on coffee.

For comparisons sake I photographed the Starbucks coffee at the grocery store.  It costs 890 yen for the regular house blend.  At today's exchange rate 890 Yen (JPY) = 11.45 Dollars (USD).  If you want to see a larger version of any photo just click on the photo.

That's all for now,

-Kyle (and Bre)