Wednesday, May 19

If you stay in Japan for an extended amount of time, you have to register with the city hall to get an alien registration card. I also needed to open a bank account and get a cell phone, so instead of going to work, I was supposed to meet up with Takamura-san at Yokosuka Chuou to get everything done. I made one mistake, though. I thought we were going to meet at the train station like we did when I first arrived, but Takamura-san wasn't there. There was a pay phone nearby, but I didn't have his number. After waiting for about an hour, I finally asked someone if there was an internet cafe nearby. Sure enough, the building right next to me had one on the 6th floor. It was only ￥100 for half an hour, so I logged onto my email, found his mobile email address, and sent him an email asking what happened. I got a reply within a few minutes. Turns out I missed that he had said to meet at the bus stop. I left the internet cafe and walked the, oh, 200 feet from the station over to the bus stop to find Takamura-san waiting for me. Hopefully, this will be the last time that happens since I'll have a cell phone after this trip.

The trip to city hall was pretty uneventful. I just had to fill out some form and wait a little bit. Since the card takes a little while to process, we had to fill out another form to get something we could take to the bank so I could open an account. On our way to the bank, we stopped to look at cell phones. The biggest cell phone carrier is DoCoMo (stands for DO COmmunications over MObile networks (emphasis mine); also "dokomo" is Japanese for "everywhere"), and they are also a subsidiary of NTT. We found out that they don't do any pre-paid plans, so we had to go with another company called SoftBank. We had to get a phone before we could purchase the service, though, but there was a secondhand phone shop just down the street. We found one for about ￥6300 and then went back to purchase the service. In a perfect world, I would only have to pay the ￥300 per month is costs for unlimited text and email, but the cheapest pre-paid card you can buy is ￥3000. Since it's good for 60 days, I'm basically paying about $15 a month for it. The remaining money can be used for calls, though at ￥90 per minute, it'll be mostly for emergencies, however, I can call SoftBank customers for free. Three of the four Canadian interns plus Amir, one of my fraternity brothers who is currently in Yokohama, have SoftBank, so it worked out pretty well.

Our last stop was Mizuho bank. The night before, I had thought about reviewing the chapter in my text book about going to the bank, but I forgot. It wouldn't have mattered. There's no way I could have done this my myself. Takamura-san told me what to fill out and did most (read: all) of the talking. He translated the things I needed to know. My favorite part was when he told me I had to agree not to do anything illegal. I assumed that meant not using my account for any illegal activities like money laundering. No, it meant anything illegal at all. I guess that as a Mizuho customer, committing a crime would bring shame upon them and dishonor their name. In any case, I made the minimum deposit of ￥1000, and we finished up. We stopped to get some ramen for lunch, and then we returned for the last few hours of work.