They say the Japanese are very polite people, but this might be taking it to the next level. Police, in Western Japan, are looking for a robber who held up a noodle bar then paid for his meal and waited for his change before making off.

The robber ate a bowl of “ramen” noodles and a side order of fried chicken at a restaurant in the city of Osaka on Wednesday, then he produced a knife forcing a waitress to hand over takings of 46,000 yen ($393).

The waitress demanded he pay for his meal, so the robber gave her 1,000 yen and waited for his 100 yen change before running away.

Now isn’t that odd?

If you are a Roman Catholic and you’ve vowed to make the pilgrimage to Fatima in Portugal, famous for religious visions, but you can’t fulfill your promise you can now rent-a-pilgrim.

Pilgrim Gil will make the journey in your place for the low fee of 2,500 euros (1,671 pounds), and he’ll even send you a certificate stamped along the way to prove he walked your every step.

Carlos Gil, 42, is also a rent-a-pilgrim. He took up this practice four years ago when he suddenly “felt an urge to walk to Fatima” and said charging each client was simply a way to keep doing what he loves. Gil says “It is a romantic way for my clients to thank God for what they have, like buying a candle or a plaster statue of Fatima,”.

To guarantee to his clients that he made the trip on foot, Gil has a system of handing his customers a certificate after every journey with various stamps from places along the way.

Instead of selling 300 letters to God that he found floating in the Atlantic ocean, a U.S. man said on Friday he will donate them to a church. The letters which had been sent to a deceased Baptist clergyman, ended up in a sealed plastic shopping bag near a beach in Atlantic City, N.J.

Bill Lacovara found the bag while on a fishing trip last week. The letters inside the bag were addressed to Rev. Grady Cooper of Jersey City, New Jersey, who died in 2004. The letters included one from a teen-age girl asking God to forgive her for having an abortion, one from a man who wanted God’s help winning the lottery, and one from a prisoner who said he was innocent and wanted to be at home with his family.

The letters could have been auctioned off on eBay for up to $15,000, and says Lacovara, he would have given the money to charity. He has withdrawn the letters from the online auction because he said the move offended some religious people.

“There were a lot of religious fanatics that were very insulted,” he told Reuters. “They said they were disappointed in me, and I didn’t want to do something that’s going to create bad vibes.” He was urged to burn the letters by some or even to throw them back in the ocean or give them to a church.

Lacovara said about a dozen clergymen have offered to take the letters, and he is evaluating the requests to make sure the letters don’t fall into the wrong hands.

Are you a Do It your Self type of person? We are. We’ve been busy renovating our home since the very first day we moved in, I guess you’d call it a remodeling job. We got a lot done in the first year, but we’ve slowed down over the last two or three years. The last project that we finished together was the installation of a sunroof on our enclosed front porch. We did that so that a little bit more light might come into our living room since the front of our house where the living room is faces North.

It’s really saved us a lot of money by doing things ourselves. Of course we haven’t always known exactly what to do. I think our friends who are contractors and construction workers are sick of hearing from us because we’re always asking them- how do we do this, how do we do that? Or else we are researching techniques on the internet.

If you are like us - a DIY type person you might be interested in visiting this great site that I just found. It has a ton of information on home repairs. I only wish that we’d discovered this site a few years ago. It would have really helped us out.

I know it’s going to help us with the projects that we started a while back and haven’t finished yet, and also for the projects that we hope to start in the next few years such as redoing our kitchen and our basement too. Those will be big jobs.

This site is full of helpful tips for the DIY type of person whether you be a renter as we once were, or a home owner. There’s even tips for automobile owners there too. There are several categories to choose from such as carpentry, cleaning, decks, painting and flooring just to name a few.

Oh yes I also wanted to tell you that while I was visiting the Handy Household Hints site I discovered that they are having a $50,000 Extreme Home Makeover Contest. Naturally I entered. I’m a DIY renovator but I’m not stupid. If your home could use a makeover you might be interested in entering too.