I am at Tanigawa and there isn’t much going on. I couldn’t find all that interesting of stories in the paper, so I am doing some updating. I am really tried. I need to go to bed earlier. I have been going to bed about 10 – 11 but that is not doing it for me. I slept really poorly one night and probably need to just catch up, all the same it is hard to go to bed at 9:00!
In other news I am also blue because of money matters. This month I have to pay rent (56,000 yen) but what is worse is I have to pay taxes for August. I am not sure who this money is going to (The USA or Japan) but I gotta pay it all the same. It totals 60,000 yen, groan. I will get it back, eventually but the fact that I am shelling out 122,000 yen (about $1,220) on rent and tax has me a bit mad. I still had a nice chunk of money from last paycheck, but at this point I put a strong emphasis on had. The good news is my bills have not been all that bad. Internet is free for two months which will expire at the end of September and I will start paying around 5,000 yen total. But gas, electric, and water for August were well below what I originally budgeted them to be, so that is nice and helps cushion the unexpected tax hit. I need the IRS to get me a form to give to the Japanese government to exempt me from paying tax here and only pay taxes in the US. But the IRS form I had to fill out was obviously created by idiots or those “societies for creative anachronisms” because it was written in Old/Middle/Pirate English, and had directions like “Thy should checkth this if you be a resident alien in thine country. For more information lookth up form 867.” Consulting form 867 the “more information” is, “If you be a resident alien in thine country, they should checkth this.” Thanks IRS. Your arcane forms really made me happy. I am not one of those nuts that thinks we should do away with taxes or go flat tax, but would it kill these people to take a rhetoric and composition class so they can, you know, write with some degree of proficiency?
