All is right with the world

A recent strange-but-true series of escalatingly catastrophic financial events has left me poor. You wouldn't believe it all if I told you. And I'm not gonna, so don't ask.
So it was the final straw today when I went to the bank, punched in my pin code then 50,000yen ($500) on the keypad, took my card and receipt and left the bank.
Read that sentence again, let me know when you find the problem.
I left the money in the machine.
I only realized my mistake after a 1.5 hour Japanese lesson and 30 minute lunch. I went back to the bank, hopeful that if the do-the-right-thing Japanese nature didn't prevent anyone from taking it, then the security cameras and national fear of public shame might. I was wrong.
I'd forgotten that because 90% of Japanese people are engineers (the rest are children), machines here are vastly superior to us meatbags. The ATM, once it realized I wasn't taking the money, closed its plastic mouth, chewed and swallowed those clean new notes, then re-deposited the money back into my account.
It's times like this that I'm glad that I live in such a technologically advanced country. At a time when many fleshwalkers making bad business decisions cost me a lot of money, all it took was one smart machine to restore my faith in the future and my financial stability. I stand in Tokyo's grey center, arms outstretched, welcoming the coming robot apocalypse.

Home is where the toilet is

I moved into a new apartment about three weeks ago, because my old apartment was a company apartment, and the company went bankrupt. Anyway the new apartment's pretty nice. Cheap, clean, and I dont even have to clean the toilet. Every weekday a cleaning lady comes and scrapes my skid marks off the bowl.
I'm not rich, I live in a new style of apartment where I have my own room, but the showers, bathrooms, giant kitchen and living room are shared with everyone in my building. As they can't trust us to keep anything clean, all the public areas are cleaned by said cleaning lady. I really like living here, because I can socialize in two languages with 60 people from seven different nations. Eighty percent of the residents are Japanese, but other nations represent yo. Unfortunately we have one New Zealander.
It's quite a nice looking, somewhat upmarket place. Everything is white.
Which is why my feelings were hurt when my ex-roomate came for a visit and said "It's basically just a glorified backpackers." Fuck you Peter! You live in a shithole. I know cause I was responsible for most of the holes and at least half the shit.
But he's right in a way, because even though my toilet is cleaned, has a heated seat and a push-button operated nozzle for cleaning your asshole, it isn't really my toilet. Everything, from the little door with the latch that turns to red to show it's occupied, to the cheap toilet paper rolled up inside a shiny metal dispenser, points to the fact that everyday I have to shit in a public toilet.
Okay, so everyday might be a slight exaggeration. My whole family has this problem. My mother drinks boatloads of Metamucil daily to prevent what doctors call anal fissure. I myself didnt shit for almost a week when I was travelling in Germany, living off wurst and sour crout. My sister Melanie exclaimed on her wedding day that she hadn't taken a dump in four days, despite receiving suppositories administered by her soon-to-be husband. Saving it for the honeymoon I guess.
Anyway, even if I do have to shit in a public toilet, I really like my new place.