Ouch!

Yesterday I had a nice little experience... I was cruising along at 68km / hour on the basically open road, when.... oh **** I saw the little man on his little chair with his little camera! Next thing I was pulled over by the next little man with his little flag and taken to the next little man in the back of a little white van and given a speeding ticket - less than 2 kms from our house! The speed limit here even on the open road is 50km/hour..... who on earth would follow that???? Even the highways have a speed limit of approximately 80km/hour. So now my gold drivers licence (which means I don't need to renew it for 5 years) will become a regular one again (needing to be renewed every 3 years..) and my bank balance will go down by 12,000 yen. Ouch! Mind you it is the first time I have been given a ticket despite speeding basically every day here for 11 years so I guess I shouldn't complain too much!

On a better note, we survived the typhoon with no real problems - the bee hives all seem to be still standing and the weeds seem to have protected the tomatoes from the heavy winds (I knew there was a reason for not getting rid of all the weeds!). For some reason even the crows have decided to leave the tomatoes alone for the meantime, resulting in many kilos every day.
We also had the guest house re-papered yesterday - cracks and muck all gone... for now!