My Wallet Just Died a Little

So, today I had two morning classes which was Writing / Reading at 9:00 and Speaking at 10:00. Writing was difficult as Mori-sensei flew through all these difficult new words and the time spent reading the sentences they were in was wasted as before I could even figure out how to pronounce or even recognize the kanji, we were reading the sentence and on to the next one... A little frustrating. I have to learn about 23 kanji and 40~ something words by the next class... Not including the words I don't know and need to review since I'm behind everyone else.

Speaking went a little better even after I realized I didn't do the listening homework. I had no time for it the previous day due to 4 classes and the language lab opening late and closing early... It would have been a good assignment too. At any rate, I demolished the vocab quiz on these new words I learned; I got all but one written down and mispelled one. I got all the extra-credit. I hope I can keep up in both of these classes since everyone else is much better at speaking, vocab, and kanji. I wish I worked harder on the foundations that Yip-sensei and Yonezawa-sensei tried to get into us. I should already know formal speaking-styles (keigo) and intransitive and transitive forms...

Anyway, to detract from the thrilling world of grammar, I had nothing from 11:00-4:00. I went to go wait 20 minutes in line in the school convenience store to get a paper to take to City Hall to speed up the cellphone registration. So I took the bus there and back. I handed in the form, and found out they were out of the "pre-paid" plan, which was much cheaper than the other one... by a lot. About 9,200 for prepaid. 20,800 for the only other available plan, which is 6 months, free calls to other Softbank users (maybe from 1:00AM-9:00PM?) and free texting, and a 381 a month fee.

I went with this for numerous reasons:

1. It was the only thing left
2. One of the two workers at the booth was British (could speak English)
3. I would not have much luck communicating cell-phone topics with a Japanese
4. I need a phone anyway should I want friends, especially those who are Japanese...

So the British guy filled out my Japanese forms, and I ran to the ATM to get money to pay for it. When I got back he was off his shift and the Japanese girl was the only one there... So it was a little uncomfortable. I just told her I wanted the cheapest thing they had, and said "That sounds good! Okay!" quite a bit. She told me to go to the Softbank store after my 4:00-5:30 class to get the phone.

Picture if you will the scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the astronauts came upon The Monolith. That's what meeting the new phone was like. It can browse the internet, use Yahoo! Chat, use several other chatting options, give me weather, I can read manga on it, I can pay for train-tickets with it, I can use bluetooth devices, I can calculate restaraunt bills, I can email anyone from anywhere and receive emails (bertmi01@softbank.ne.jp if you so desire,) I can keep track of several time zones, I can put in a MicroSD card with files and music and movies, I can play PlayStation quality video games on it, I can have a dictionary, I can use the 2.0 Megapixel camera, and I can do so many other superfluous things.

That's just from playing with it, I'm sure there's more in the manual. It came with about 6 different books (all in Japanese) so I'll never know all the features. You almost don't need a PC or a laptop if you own something like this, and this is the cheapest model. Ugh. I was probably gouged for being a foreigner, but what can you do? It's kind of motivation for learning the language. I definitely don't need a phone like this though.

The only other interesting bit of the day was walking over a mile for groceries. I bought $30 or so worth at Top World. I got the ingredients for a ham-toasted-cheese sandwich, some weird marble (maabaru) bread-spread that might be good, a liter of Blendy (ice coffee?), a carton of Cafe Au Latte which is basically iced mocha in a half-liter milk carton (cheap too!), some croissants, a pizza, four apples, and what I think are two bread pouches with peanut butter in them.

Generally I do not know what the hell most of the things in any given grocery store outside of what is a result of globalization and evolution. There are odd food combinations here, many of which you cannot get elsewhere. You cannot get a bread roll with a sausage on top covered in mayo in the US. They are good (if you're in the mood.) I don't know what this marble swirly-spread is either; I shall report on that later. You cannot get liters of ice coffee for less than $2 if at all in the US. Let me know if you can. Nor can you get mocha or lattes in milk cartons. Other oddities elude me now.

Anyway, that's about it. The rest of the night was kanji study, and tomorrow night I'm planning on what to do with my three-day weekend.