Another Whirlwind Week

Whew, TGTIF (Thank God Tomorrow is Friday)! This week Tracy and I both worked seemingly non-stop, but furthermore:

*Registered for the National Japanese Language Proficiency Exam held in July
*Trained for our 'marathon' 13.6 km road race coming in May
*Cleaned house, requiring several trips to the city incinerator
*Took all our collected loose change to the bank
and finally
*Enrolled in Motorcycle Riding School!

The Susono Chuo Driving School is so very near our place that it is quicker to walk than drive, but it is hidden between large factories so has gone relatively unnoticed by us, until we decided to learn to ride medium-sized bikes. The process can be a red-tape nightmare, but going to the school first ensures we'll be well-trained before the licensing test. Surprisingly, we were the only two students last evening when we enrolled. Here's Tracy in the admissions office:

We then waited for the induction and aptitude tests in classroom #2:

The aptitude test was given in Japanese too, of course, but luckily we were shown some of the questions in English after the Japanese to confirm understanding (True or False: When I see a car in the rear view mirror, I believe I am being challenged to a contest of speed...) The rest of the test involved numbers, patterns and colors, so it was all OK even in Japanese.

Overall we are confident that we'll get good instruction here, but we need to wait until the weekend for our first practical training. The test bikes are heavy (Honda CB400F), so we are curious to see how difficult riding one will be. More on Saturday!