Japanese TV, Yamaha, and mountains

Ok, today was a decent day. And it felt pretty good because I've been working 6 days a week, and this is the last one for a while, I think. I'm not gonna do anymore overtime if they offer, I just feel I really need 2 days off a week. So this is the last Friday of three that I've done, and this isn't overtime. I'm shift swapping with another teacher, so I'm going to get July 7th off. It'll be a nice break when it arrives :)

Today I learnt a couple of interesting things from my student. But before that, I'll tell you what happened last night. Simon has a Japanese friend (a girl) who came over last night. I was talking to her about my Japanese lesson, and saying I learnt some new words like yama, which means mountain. She then told me that her surname was Yamaguchi, which means yama-mountain, guchi-mouth. Basically her surname was Mountain Mouth. I thought that was hilarious. She didn't see the humour as much, because its a pretty common Japanese surname. I also saw something on TV that was pretty funny. In Japan, they have variety shows which just shows comedians, famous people, singers, idols, etc. doing weird and funny things. Last night, I saw one where a bunch of celebrities were blindfolded (this is one by one) and then led to a rollercoaster. The blindfold was taken off once they were secured in. They were given a microphone, and as the rollercoaster took off, music to some familiar Japanese song started to play. They had to sing while they were on the rollercoaster...it was seriously one of the funniest things I've ever seen. For one, some of them can't sing...and then when they started plummeting down the slopes (seriously steep), their singing turned into screaming! So like "Arewa shimode kaheAAAAAHHHHHHHhhiHHHHHAAHHHHHAHHH!!!!!!!!!!" By the end of the ride, they had saliva on the sides of their mouths and their hair was blown back like they were in a wind tunnel! Funniest thing ever! I should record some of these things.

Ok, my last lesson today was a voice lesson, so we ended up on the topic of cars, and famous Japanese companies and famous Australian companies. Australian companies are really not internationally famous. Well, the only ones I could think of are BHP Billiton and Telstra, neither of which my students heard of. I told them I had a Honda Accord, which amused them greatly for some reason... Then we talked about how much cars cost. Now get this. A new Honda Accord model here costs around 2.5mil Y. That translates to around $31,000-32,000AUD. In Australia, I'm pretty sure a new model Honda Accord costs at least $40,000AUD. The savings are massive! But the import tax for cars into Australia is pretty high I was told, so I dunno whether its a viable option, buying a car and then exporting it to Australia. Keeping a car in Japan is frickin' expensive, though. There's no such thing as free parking, so if you do drive it, parking alone will cost about $400/month. Crazy, huh?

We also talked about motorbike brands in Japan, since one of the students drives a motorbike. Basically, its Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki and Yamaha. I then said Yamaha's a weird company, it makes motorbikes, and pianos! Then what one of the students said next really shocked me. He said Yamaha makes golf clubs...AND....furniture! FURNITURE!?