So I cancel her ticket first, which was an award ticket so it was rather easy. Then looking at my ticket, here's what I find in the oh-so-buggy Air France website:

• It would cost me ¥650.000 to change my ticket, including the ¥15.000 modification fee

• On the other hand, I could cancel my ticket for ¥30.000 and buy a new one for the exact same flights for ¥175.000

I'm calling the reservation desk Monday to see what they'll say (because of course there is no way to cancel the reservation online) but I'm sure they won't even blink...

It says:

Official Declaration - YES WE CAN WEEK
Obama comes to New Daiei!? (that's the name of the pachinko)

The token black dude posing as a fake Obama in the photo reminds of Eddie Murphy's sidekick in "Coming to America".

A friend of mine who works in a cargo ship brokering firm forwarded me a market report written by another broker:

Following the American erections last week, it is expected that Mr. Obama will decrease the Japanese car import ratios starting next year.
[...]
Thankfully, most Japanese cars exported to America sport an automatic transmission as most Americans are not comfortable holding a stick, according to a poll conducted few hours after the erections.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out their website for more of the same and even a making-of.

Shamelessly stolen from Japan Probe, but it's too mind-blowing not to spread the word about it.

Special Tax Credit
Inform of special tax credit (deduction of housing loan) system like house loan etc. of residence tax. It comes to be able to deduct the amount of a special deduction like the house loan etc. that were not able to be deducted from the income tax is able to deduct from the residence tax in 2008 fiscal year.

Okay... As usual I'm going to stamp the paper with my hanko and give it back praying that I have not signed over my soul to the devil...

A tip about teeth
Winter is here.
Do your teeth feel sensitive when you bite into something cold?
It might be a gapalong the line between your teeth and gums.
This happens when you brush your teeth with a strong scrubbing motion from left to right.
Brushing this way can wear down your teeth.
Try visiting your dental clinic to ask which method of brushing is best suited to your teeth, before they become damaged.

Japanese people must really have weak dentitions, seeing as most of the toothbrushes you find in the stores here are softer than mohair, I really doubt you could damage your gums with that. Not as funny as the last one where they we're looking to cash in on any opportunity to remove my teeth...

Although this will only start from Thursday 1st, I already began receiving the Health Insurance's newsletter which has an English version for us foreigners. This is where I found this little gem:

A tip about teeth
We are now in the autumn.
You see, I would like something nice to eat.
Is everything fine in your mouth?
If plaque or tartar has formed on your teeth, let's use this opportunity to remove them.

Remove what? Plaque or teeth? Poor grammar or barbaric oral surgery practices? I let you be the judge... Anyways, this does nothing for my fear of Japanese dentists...

I might understand that car maniacs who import the cars from Europe might keep the plates for style, but this is a Mazda Premacy with the wheel on the right!

The place is called S-Air and is located in 所沢 in southern Saitama. You can get there from Tokyo in around 45min by train and the full day pass + rental of everything will cost you 8,300¥ (or 7,000¥ for 2 1/2 hours).

This was really really scary and even though I probably never cleared 3m, it felt really high. I had never taken a real jump on a snowboard before, and I will probably never do it on snow now that I know how it feels: I had so many potentially-fatal-crashes in that pool, I'm scared for life now...