Ouch

Today was a day I'd been anticipating with a bit of morbid curiosity...it was time to fill up the gas tank. They recently raised the gas prices here to 180 yen/liter. They upped it from about 170 overnight; about a 10 cent difference. That translates into a little more than $6/gallon for all you non-metric Americans (myself included). A few weeks ago, just after they increased the price, I spent about $50 to fill up half a the tank. In the last week or so prices have gone back down to about 175 yen/liter, but I was still expecting a pretty big hit today. The damage:



7500 yen, about 70 bucks, to fill up. Mind you, we drive a Honda Civic. They're forecasting that prices will eventually top out around 200 yen/liter, about $7/gallon.

This sucks, for sure; yet another downside to driving in Japan. The one saving grace is that since we are moving to a place that will require a commute to work (albeit only 15 minutes), the school will kick us down some gas money. Not sure how much but some is better than none. I'm curious what kind of cars you are driving in the States (or where ever you are), and how much it's costing to you tank up.

Also I put up what I consider to be some fairly bitchin' pictures on the rice blog. Check it out.