Stolen Slippers and Rice Cookers

So today I was all excited when I woke up at 06:00 for the third day in a row. Today, I was going to buy a bike and a cell phone. Oh yeah, and I would have had this up 2 hours earlier, but someone decided to steal my big foot sized slippers, more on that later.

So at 11:00 I met my friend Suguru and went to where they were selling bikes specifically for students. Lone and behold, they didn't have any that really fit me. Soo...I bought one anyway. It is a nice granny bike, complete with luggage rack in the back, and basket up front, so I look absolutely ridiculous when riding it. As soon as I get a picture I will upload it. For now, you can feast on this, the co-op I was talking about in my previous entry. Neat-o ne?

Anyway, so I look absolutely ridiculous while riding my bike but its ok, because now I can actually get around. So me and my friend rode up to the district ward office because I had to pick up my ALIEN registration card. Well dummy me, Japanese dates are written [year, month, day] soo....I showed up a MONTH early to pick up my card, but it was a fun bike ride nonetheless.

After that we went into Yodobasi (yo-do-ba-shi) Camera which is a hugee electronics store at Sapporo station which is a 2 minute bike ride from my apartment. There are a million other stores there too, which is pretty cool. But inside this galactic collision of transistors are many micro stores, some of which are cell phone stores.

So one of the Japanese cell phone companies is called docomo (=anywhere) and they had this sick phone for a good deal and it looked cool. Well, after further investigation and a bit of translation, I found out that I could only get the sick (which means good By The Way) phone if I paid...55 dollars a month for the plan...sigh.

So I went over to Softbank, another Japanese cell phone company and got a crappy phone, but it was super cheap...free actually with the plan I got. So overall it was still ok. The phone btw is still super sweet. Its pretty thin, about 3/5 inches long, 1.5 inches wide, and about 1/2 inch thick. The phone I wanted was only 1/4 inches thick, but just as big in the other dimensions.

But it has an infrared sensor that Japanese phones use to communicate info, so now going around and adding people's names and numbers, you just hold your phone up to your buddies phone and they transmit each other's contact information automatically. It can also read bar codes and do some other cool stuff. I was in McDonalds again (haha) and my friend downloaded a coupon the their site, waved his cell phone in front of this small screen when he was ordering and the screen scanned the coupon off his phone.

Also Japanese phones strictly use email for text based communication, so if anyone is in japan, my email is too_tall_for_japan@softbank.ne.jp.

After that we walked around Sapporo station a little bit. Suguru said it wasn't crowded at all, but it was almost shoulder to shoulder people. Small stores, restaurants, the hyakin (100 yen store hehe) and so much other stuff that would take more than 1 day to see.

Japanese styles are also pretty cool/funny. I saw a guy today wearing what looked like a dead animal he dragged off the road and then stapled to his legs. Oh yeah, and in the electronics store, we took a quick look at rice steamers, their max price goes up to not 500$, not 700, not 1000, but 1500 dollars for a rice steamer. That is dedication ladies and gentlemen.

So my slippers also got stolen. They way Japanese entries work, you walk in, take your shoes off, step up (always a step no matter what) and put on your slippers. So there are usually pairs of slippers and shoes everywhere. well someone decided to take mine, so I am once again slipperless. Also this is the international dorm, so it must have been another foreigner. How ironic, to have a foreigner steal something from me in JAPAN.

I like this picture, well the picture of the river is supposed to go here...that is at least what I told my blog to do.

And for the video, I am standing on the bridge the river runs under. Notice the sound of the karas crowing in the background. I will also state that so far, they have been the only birds that I have seen or heard. Maybe they eat all the other birds, but I havent seen any other kind of bird yet. The video is large so give it time to load, its worth it :). and when I say big i mean 55 megabytes, so like..give it like...5 minutes ish...