[steven]

Haha, I'm pretty sure I understood what's going on here, but just to clarify 機（き）is a counter used for airplanes? I can safely say that I have not encountered this once in a conversation. I guess we don't have airplanes flying around here, but still! 台 is something that I hear all the time though.

Sashimister, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask a question about counters. A few months back someone told me that when writing horizontally, in Japanese you use Arabic numerals (ie 1 2 3 4 5 6...). When writing vertically, Japanese use kanji. The person said that is the "general rule", but I've seen that rule broken quite a few times. Are there certain counters that just look better with kanji-numbers and certain counters that look better with Arabic numerals? Could it be a personal style thing?