Riding a bike in the snow is harder than one might expect. And one would expect it to be quite difficult. If one was intelligent. Unfortunately moi wasn't that intelligent until I was attempting to peddle my bike through a snow bank and fell over. ha ha ha. The snow gets stuck in the spokes and the wheels spin but you don't move and then "waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh" a little old Japanese lady is picking you out of a snow bank and asking if you are ok. A lot of bowing and arigatou-ing follows and you attempt to peddle away red-faced and glad that you don't live here.

I met a man from Peru today. He didn't speak English and I don't speak Spanish, so we had a lovely conversation in Japanese. By lovely I mean I barely understood what we were talking about. However, when he asked me out on a date I understood that and successfully used the language barrier to pretend I didn't understand and then I ran away.

John and I decided to order a pizza the other day. He had a Japanese friend give the pizza place his address so he only had to phone with his phone number. He tried talking to them, but because he doesn't speak Japanese he handed the phone off to me. I pretended to understand and thought everything was fine until I asked how long it would take, which started a 5 minute discussion on the other end of the line. After an hour when our pizza hadn't arrived I called again. There was some sort of problem, but I had no idea what they were saying. So I gave the phone back to John who yelled in English for awhile, and amazingly enough our pizza came. Delicious pizza. It was a cross between a taco and a pizza. But I'm not sure the pizza was worth the trouble it took ordering it. When we both wanted a pizza a few days later we decided just to go to Bear's Bar (where everyone knows your name) and have pizza there. Much easier to point at the menu in person.