So, first day in Tokyo is basically done, we just got home at 7:30, and will make some dinner or whatever, but as far as going out, we're about finished... Started off by going to the kyuakshuu (spelling-no idea!), to get my my alien/gaijin card... I started the registration proccess, but can't get it picked up until the end of the month...

Then Pete went to do some banking in Roppongi, and then we went to SoftBank to get me a new phone from the very nice English speaking Russian/former USSR sales girl... I got a VERY cool red Vodafone 904T which has a 3.2 megapixel camera (solving the lack of a party phone quite nicely!), video camera, GPS/navigation (which is mostly in Japanese, a way to pay for stuff, internet, email, etc... Considering my old phone can make phone calls, and that's basically it - no camera or anything, it's very cool! Pete's going to take it when I leave, as our contract is 26 months...

While waiting for my phone to be prepared/switched to English, etc. We walked with Venus for about ten minutes to General Nogi's house and stables. He and his wife seemingly used to live there and then both killed themselves when one of the Emperors died (Meiji?) All circa roughly 1910, apperantly... It was a nice little park type setting with the four stall barn and their house, where you could look inside the windows. We just had a quick peek inside, and then walked back to the downtown Roppongi area to grab the phone...

After that, we went to get an English Tokyo Atlas, and a little guide book type thing at a near by international bookstore... Then we went to Roppongi Hills (soooo cool! - we're going to go back for a tour) to try and get a bank account, but the fake little alien card thingy I'd gotten earlier wasn't sufficent proof of residency, so I'll be going back to get my hot pink or lime green (you get to pick from like 40 colors!) bank card at the end of the month...

Then, we walked around the corner to meet Hitomi for a Starbucks in another bookstore with some English books (lots of great Design and Architecture sections so far!) and then went to an international grocery store to buy some very english-y type groceries - you can buy Canadian brand beans and pizza and stuff... Some stuff is only a few cents more (like cream cheese, although if you buy the 'made in Australia' philly, its cheaper than its American clone), but some things, like apples are obscenely expensive - 5.25 EACH!

There were a few odd things, like a 12 pack of quail eggs for 11.75, but other than that, it was like a scaled down North American shopping experiance at roughly 150% the price...Incidentally, gas isn't really that much more expensive than Victoria, but bread is 8$/loaf... Very bizarre pricing anomolies...

So, nothing too exciting/Japanese-y to report, although the phone is quite exciting! But that's what we've been up to so far, and I want to get into the habit of journalling about this trip (unlike so many others, so that's why there's a blog post about today's errand-y ish day).... Hopefully I'll have pictures in the next couple of days, especially with the camera phone to have in a pocket!

D