Cell Phones

Alright, I'm going to try to write this while I have bit of leftover buzz from the drinking earlier. The day before yesterday was the day all of us CSU students got our phones. The day was surprisingly long and stressful.

The day started off with all of us CSU students going to our respective district offices, so we could all obtain our alien registration cards. The Waseda students also wanted to take all of us CSU students cell phone shopping later in the day after lunch, therefore we all had to go to our respective district offices relatively early depending on where we lived. I, of course living in Shinjuku, had to go the "busy" Shinjuku office very early, which turned out to be hardly even busy so early in the morning. Us CSU dorm students met up around 7:30 to head out to the office and arrived before almost anyone was there. It was lucky that we got to the office and hardly anyone was there. We filled out our sheets, and after some confusion about sheets and copies, we eventually made our way to the 4th floor of the same building to deal apply for insurance.

After I had finished applying for my insurance, an elderly gentleman near the entrance to the health insurance area suddenly got quite angered. He started a small commotion, however the workers at the bank were able to calm him down for a while. As he sat down to finish his application for whatever he was applying for, he started to smoke a cigarette. He was soon escorted to the smoking every, but upon returning, he started another small commotion and proceeded to remove his top to show his many tattoos on his body as if to say he was some sort of yakuza. We decided to ignore the odd gentleman and moved on with our group.

Following a bit of exploring and ice cream, the group decided to go eat. Almost everyone from the CSU group met up, so that we could all get lunch together at an "Italian" family restaurant. I must say tuna with tomato sauce is actually quite tastely, contrary to what I believed it would taste like. We finished eating and headed off to a Hanko (a family seal) store, so that we could all buy Hanko's and be able to open a bank account in case we all wanted to get SoftBank. I bought a Hanko with my family name on it, and after everyone selected their Hanko, we all headed to make our bank accounts. It was there that I first noticed that a lot of the Japanese students were visibly exhausted. They had to have been very tired as they had been helping us CSU students out a great deal since we stepped into the country. After we made our bank accounts, the students set off to check out cell phones!

As I entered the cell phone shop, a few of my fellow students had actually picked phones already and gone with the company AU. I personally was still considering between AU and Softbank, so I decided to check out some of the phones, so I could compare them. The AU phones were nothing special, though a couple did catch my eye. As nothing made a big impact on me, I asked one of the workers there if there were any other phones possibly available to which he responded by opening up a secret compartment under the available phones to show me 1 more phone. I was interested in the phone, but not particularly attached. That is, until he mentioned the phone would be free if I decided to get it. My decision was basically made for me because on top of the fact the phone was free and had a 8 megapixel camera, I would be the only CSU student with that phone in that color. If any knows me, I try to get electronics or anything that is or is more exclusive to one person. I ended up getting the phone, and trading numbers was possibly the best part of the night. (I originally stopped writing this post here, and I'm going to continue it now. 9/29)

It was really interesting how Japanese phones just use infrared to trade profiles between phones. You literally line up the infrared areas to trade profiles. After all the number trading, we went to dinner at some restaurant called Jonathan's, which wasn't very good and allowed smoking inside. Wasn't very fun. Some of the CSU students finished getting their phones when we finished eating, so they went to eat some Mcdonalds. Nothing else really happened, and I went home afterwards.