I know it’s been a bit of a delay between pictures or updates. It’s just been a crazy week: 36 hours parties, classes starting, studying japanese, eating superfresh sushi, getting another phone…You know, the typical Tokyo things.
First, about the phone: When KDDI came to school to explain about the phones, they had a neat looking “Casio G-Shock” model. It’s pretty cool. Anyway, the plans here work a little differently - no one really makes phone calls, they all text all the time. But because we’re Americans, they have a large calling plan.
Anyway, I’m used to being able to send lots of text messages and browse the web from my phone. So I asked the KDDI people (through an interpreter) if it was possible to use the web, and how much did it cost to use? Unfortunately, that was translated as “Can the web be accessed and how much does access cost?”
Needless to say, I used a lot of data that first week and really racked up a bill. So I went to the store, and it turned out that it was cheaper to put that G-Shock phone on the lowest price plan and get a new phone with less talk time but unlimited data usage. So now I’m buzzing on the net and sending pictures like whoa! The new phone is a Hitachi W32H, and it’s pretty slick looking with great features - music player, movie player, 1.28MP camera, radio, etc.
I also managed to move into my apartment, and pictures of that will be coming soon. For the time being, you can see the manager’s site about the Akasaka apartment. It’s some sweet digs!
Finally, the 36 hour party time! Basically, on Friday, 20 January 2006, I woke up at 6AM to meet Professor Yoshikami from the University of Maryland, with whom I came to Japan in 2002 (you can actually read posts from that trip on this site as well through this link!). I met up with Professor Yoshikami and her class, and then I did a little bit of her tour - which was rushed because they had an afternoon kabuki showing and I had a morning one. After that, I went back to my hotel and moved from the hotel into my new apartment, and then I rushed off to school immediately.
Class was fine, if a little boring, and from class, I went back to my apartment to drop off some of my stuff and then head to the Temple University Japan party in Roppongi - 500 yen (~$5.00) was entrance and a drink (places here that charge cover give you drink tickets for your cover - it’s more of a 1 or 2 drink minimum than a cover, because it’s more expensive to drink here also). So I started out at this one club, then moved to Heartland (it’s the bar from Kill Bill) then from there went to this bar/club/expat hangout called Muse (it’s more in Roppongi Hills, which has much nicer buildings. Roppongi Crossing is just one huge bar. I’m going to do pictures soon).
From Muse, it got a little split up. I needed (at 3AM) to grab some stuff for my apartment, so I stopped by the “Don Quixote,” a 24-hour department store of sorts. Then we met back up at Mask, which is my friend Michael’s main hangout. We stayed there until 5AM, when a bunch of us went to the Tsukiji Fish Market. While it was freezing. And snowing. And we had to wait outside the really famous sushi place for an hour because it was packed at 5:45 AM. We finally got in to eat around 7:30AM…and it was ABSOLUTELY worth it. AMAZINGLY worth it. It was the best sushi I ever had. They essentially made it from the fresh fish caught that morning. I would do it over again…just when it’s a little warmer, please?
Following the sushi, we split up, and I headed over to Akihabara Electric Town to pick up some computer supplies for my apartment, and finally got home and crashed around 2PM. I slept straight through until 10 AM Sunday morning!
patchmonkey on January 23rd, 2006 | File Under General | No Comments -
