Aliens, Insurance, Mobile Phones and other random occurrences.

Bureaucracy is a very scary thing. Japanese bureaucracy means a bewildering amount of forms, and an overwhelmimg amount of mostly useless information.

A few dorm mates and I decided we wanted, nay, needed a cell phone. Pronto. And in order to realise that dream, we needed our Alien Registration card. But that takes three weeks, and we're Gen Yers who want things yesterday, so we got the Certificate of Registered Matters. What this all amounts to is lots of forms and gesturing. But we caught this tiny little tram thing to the City Ward Office and got it all done. And even our insurance, which was explained to us by a very nice lady, who, while talking to her, seemed to be willing us to understand the various complicated things she was saying... she spoke really, really slowly but nodded her head really, really quickly. Slightly disconcerting but I think I got the gist.

Alien Registration, Setagaya City Ward

It's strange, but I haven't really blogged about food yet. Two words; good and cheap. I had kaiten-zushi the first day for lunch, and there WAS a barcode reader!! And we ordered from a touchscreen mounted on top of the table and the food we ordered would magically appear.

Barcode reader at Kura, kaiten-zushi. Reads the time the sushi was put on the belt... amazing!

And then today, we had Hokka Hokka-tei, which was a take away place. For 440 yen, I got a demiglace hamburg set, which had a decent sized hamburg, pickles, tiny bit of salada and a lot of rice.

And then, tonight, I had MOS Burger, which is kind of a little more upscale burger joint, with a nicer decor than the average McDonalds. And the amazing thing is that the burgers turn out exactly like the pictures outside, not squished, unrecognisable bits of goo.

MOS Burger Thousand Island Set, with iced lemon tea.

Oh, and the most exciting thing? Shibuya and the acquisition of a cell phone. So after getting all the necessary documents we hopped on a train to Shibuya, and was greeted with a seething mass of humanity... and really tanned people. It was truly amazing. So we wandered around for a while, and Robert, one of the Canadian guys wanted to check out the chicks in 109, so we became his camouflage. I don' think I've seen so many short shorts worn in the same place. And I shall never be the same for it. Then, to reciprocate, Robert came with Ju Hyun (a Korean girl from Seoul National University, which is like Korea's Harvard), to 109 Mens, newly opened. I was too blinded by the amount of sparkles on the men's jeans to take photos. And then we saw a pair of men's underwear studded with diamantes. As well as a manpurse I could swear a woman would use. So after daring all the boys to try something on (they cowardly refused), we returned home, totally exhausted from our travels.

Shibuya crossing - with Tohonshiki in the background, Carmen!

And, as a final treat, the promised photo of the mini beer cans, one of which I am drinking at this very moment.

Feel free to comment on stuff, so I know you've been reading!