Shopping Spree

I finally got my bank book. Which meant, I was finally ready to get a keitai. And also, I thought, I would take a stroll through Akihabara. It was interesting, all around. I went out in the morning, and came back in the evening, and I had no idea where all the time has gone, except for about an hour and a half at SoftBank, and why my feet hurt so much. But I've took a nice photo, bought the first part of Death Note (which I'll probably be reading the next month or so), got a rice cooker in Don Quijote (now if only someone would tell me how it works!), collected a thousand flyers and promotional handkerchiefs (or whatever they are, I still haven't opened any), managed to do what I set out to do (buy a keitai, remember?), eat an oyakodon, forget about matcha cream mochi till home, down a can of pulpy apple juice from the vending machine (yummy!), look at maids, procure a bedsheet and a mug (tired of drinking water from a used PET bottle), and probably also something I managed to forget in the meantime.

Those who don't know about Akihabara should now really read the Wikipedia article. Really. Because explaining what I do takes quite a lot of time, even without explaining about all the rest of the world. It's explained already, more clearly and concisely than I could ever manage to do. Also, Google Images, there's loads on Akiba (and if someone now asks me what's Akiba, I'll smack them in VR) on the 'Net already. And it's a fun read, and funner look.

On my way back, I guess I thought five bags of Stuff wasn't enough, so I stopped by in Shibuya to pop into BicCamera and finally buy a computer. This blog post is a direct consequence - I'm writing on my own hardware! Yay!

As I said, the best laid plans and all that, so I couldn't get a huge iMac, and I didn't want to get the expensive MacBook Pro (oh, maybe I haven't said - macrumours talked about a defect in the nVidia chip, and also, it would leave me begging for rice in the foreseeable future). Thus I settled for the medium MacBook - I would have taken the best MacBook, were it not for the superficial observation that they didn't make the 250 Gb MacBooks in white - after I already color-coordinated all my other electronics! Rude.

So now I'm connected in our dorm's common room. My room's connection shouldn't be expected till about Thursday. It's a funny story, really: We got this magnetic card that goes into this machine where you have to swipe it, then feed the machine ¥1000 notes, and the internet connection costs ¥2750 per month, and the machine does not give change, but the remainder apparently carries over to the next month, and when you first do so, they ("They") will connect you in 3 work days, and last two days when I came back to my dorm I never had three ¥1000 notes, so despite my desire to pay in advance and have my connection ready when I finally get a computer, it backfired and now I have to wait.

This kind of leads me into another funny story: the one about how to get a mobile phone in Japan. Now, everyone I heard from says I should sign up for SoftBank, and not one of the two other major operators, or one of the apparent million of minor ones. Why that should be so, I have no idea, but simply by the logic everyone else was on SoftBank and my fees would be less if I followed suit, I followed suit. I was already twice checking out the mobile phones: once with my tutor on the first day in BicCamera (when I was all indecisive and stuff etc), once by myself when I thought I had finally decided (in a proper SoftBank place, but this time they refused me on the grounds I did not have my bank book yet), so third time's the charm, as they say. Besides a bank book (or a credit card - debit card is apparently no good), you also need your Alien Registration Card (or a certificate of the said Alien Card being In Procedure, since it takes about 3 weeks to make), and of course your passport. Also, I learned in the meantime that to take advantage of a monthly repayment plan for the mobile phone over 2 years, I'd need a 27 month visa. So I had to buy a mobile phone and actually pay for it. Which would be okay, but for the fact that the mobile phones are insanely expensive here. I bought my MacBook here because it's cheaper; I bought my keitai here because the ones used everywhere else won't work. The cheapest phone I could find costs about ¥17000; however, they informed me I better buy a charger as well, otherwise the phone is not usable (another ¥2000). I thought about iPhone, but whereas I remember Apple announcing its new price ($200, or $300 for more memory), the Japanese had other ideas, and it costs over ¥800000. Wow. So, the cheapest one for me.

So this time I picked, as I later thought, the worst place to finally Do It: I thought it was a SoftBank shop in Akiba, but it turned out to be a Yodobashi Camera pretending to be a SoftBank shop. Which is bad because I already have a bonus point card (with some bonus points!) in BicCamera; now I have a Yodobashi point card as well. (You get points on the point card by - what else - purchasing things, and then you can spend them on your next purchases as discounts). However, it seems I got off lightly - some people I talked to later said they took over 3 hours on a SoftBank chair. However, it seems they managed to find some weird discount that I missed (which apparently involves signing up for a more expensive plan, then canceling it by receiving a call in Japanese).

So that's it for today. I still have some bread left over from yesterday (bought 6 rather delicious slices for ¥350 or so, quite a bargain), one pack of natto to go with it, and there's still a bit of Pocari Sweat. I should be fine for today. And tomorrow... I don't know. See Shinjuku and Harajuku, maybe. Get a metro day pass, maybe. Maybe even go see some temples or sights or something. Dunno. If my feet stop hurting that much. If not, I guess I can space out in the common room watching cooking shows (which is what is almost always on telly).

Oh, one more thing: Mac rocks. A guy with another Mac came to the common room (the 3-hour-keitai one), and all the cables were taken (one of which by yours truly). It took about one minute to enable internet sharing on my machine and for him to connect to it, neither of us having done it before. Take that, Bill Gates!

Skype is installed, but I won't be using it till I'm in my own room. I did not buy a headset (Moniq should note here it's a perfect place to use the explicative construction). Also, by virtue of having a keitai, I can now be reached by email wherever I am (in theory at least, I haven't tested it yet, and there's also some setting up to do to make it even easier - for me, at least). The interested ones may ask me in a private email, please - I'm not naming any names here.

Except for Bill Gates, obviously.

See you soon, dear readers.