Speaking of Missouri, I guess I should mention that I’m from the Bible Belt, and after I moved here and bought my first pickup truck here, the next difficulty, after getting familiar with the whole left-side/right-side confusion, was figuring out where to put my rifle rack. I first tried putting it the way I had it on my truck back home, but I just couldn’t get used to it that way, with the guns pointing in the wrong direction relative to me, the driver.

So I figured, hey, if I put the rifle rack on the outside of the truck, the guns will be pointing in the correct direction and everything will be fine.

Well, the same day I moved the rack, I drove down to the local Baptist church here, parked my truck, and went in for the service. (It was a good one — the preacher talked about how even though the Catholic Church is still the Great Whore of Babylon, at least it now has a Pope who decries the sins of masturbation and homosexuality as much as God does and we Baptists do.)

Anyway, after the service, I got back to my truck and my heart almost stopped. Where my rack had been, right there on the outside of the truck, there was now nothing. The rack, the guns, all of it, gone. Somebody had taken it. And right in front of the house of God. I couldn’t believe it.

So I guess my advice to other people in Tokyo is: Don’t put your rifle rack on the outside of your truck. Or your rifles.