That's fascinating Kelley, no really, it is.

Just to make my life a little more complicated, my university forced me to open a Japanese bank account. Today I walked to the nearest branch and attempted to withdraw money from it for the first time. I found to my despair that the ATM had no "English assistance" option, and I was staring at a touch screen with twelve buttons, each button with about six unknown kanji. I had no choice but to resort to pushing buttons at random. After about five minutes the machine finally spit out some money, although I suspect it was just trying to get me to leave.

On my way home I stopped by the 100-yen shop, the Japanese equivalent of a dollar store. Dollar stores in the US can be kind of ghetto, but the 100-yen shop is actually pretty interesting. You can buy washcloths, origami paper, toys, dishes, flower seeds, makeup and even food. I've been to the 100-yen shop several times because there's almost nothing else to do in my town, but today when I stepped through the door today I saw a brand-new display case of KNITTING SUPPLIES! Score!! I bought some yarn to make a scarf for my new Japanese friend. Then when I went home I realized that the yarn I bought was really ugly.

Yesterday my new Japanese friend Ayako and I were walking to a restaurant when we passed by a bridal shop. "Kelley, what color is your wedding dress going to be?" she asked.
"Um....white?" I said. I think I even said it in English because I was distracted by wondering how a purple wedding dress would look. I don't really remember. Ayako told me that sometimes in Japan women wear colorful wedding dresses, or sometimes a white wedding dress at the ceremony and a colorful one at the reception. That explains why I've seen bright yellow and orange dresses in the windows of bridal salons. I just thought they were prom dresses.

Do they have prom here?