I am pretty sure that my Religions of Japan teacher is a feminist. I was surprised to find that a teacher with this mindset bothered me, although not for the obvious reasons. I've got no problem with feminists; what they believe is their own right and their own business. But it's very discouraging trying to read the text she gave us, which she herself wrote. When normally referring to individuals, the teacher uses the pronoun 'she'. But when referring to someone of ill repute, this is replaced with the pronoun 'he'. I don't care if you think less of men, just use consistency in your language! Geez! It's hard enough to read monotonous pages without having sentence structure suddenly altered, confusing me and probably everyone else (figures-I complain about grammar instead of beliefs. That's what studying language does to you).
I've caught up with grammar and vocab for Japanese, but it's the title of the course, Speaking, that is giving me trouble. Up till now, I've only had three native speakers to talk to, and they spoke Kanto-ben. Kansai-ben is much harder to comprehend, and the professor talks at ten miles a minute. I can get most of what he says, but we're expected to speak that fast too. It's impossible to get that good in just three more months!

Observations:
Well, the Japanese seem to outstrip us in everything, so smoking shouldn't come as a surprise. They've taken it up to the next level: electric cigarettes. You have electric filters that you attach to the inside of the box, which can be plugged into the wall to be charged. The part with the tobacco comes separately, but I suppose in the long run it would be cheaper. Just attach the two together, and a little light at the end will emulate embers when you take a puff. I'm not sure whether to be dumbfounded or just disgusted (I'll stick with dumbfounded for now, it fits the gaijin image).