Cold Day

It rained and rained all of Sunday night and into yesterday morning, so we didn't make any plans until it had stopped in the afternoon. I used my morning time to organize my room a bit, work on Fafsa, and actually study a little bit of kanji! Then we all met downstairs (Me, Greg, Jen, Dan, and our new friend Hunter) to try and find some lunch. All that rain made it super cold outside, so I was super glad I had bought that new coat the day before! I still felt like I needed gloves and a scarf though!

We walked up to the station area and down towards the mall where Greg and I had gotten ramen and pillows before, because Greg planned on finally breaking down and buying some socks, despite his particular sock standards. We walked a pretty good ways down that street trying to find a nice-looking place and happened across a little mom and pop ramen shop (hahaa...) and decided on it! It was super warm inside and the price was reasonable (although I somehow keep ending up ordering the same, happyaku en dish as everyone else despite my continued efforts to get the smaller/simpler/cheaper dish...) and the people seemed nice. The best part was that they gave us the little glasses of cold water instead of hot tea, and there was a water cooler in the corner for refills! I have a feeling we'll be going back there at some point. I got plain ol' ramen and it was sooo good, way better than the stuff from the mall =)



After that, Jen and Dan departed for a place Dan knew about near a U.S. military base where foreigners can buy prepaid phones. Our group made a stop for Hunter to get photos taken for the gaijin card, and I spotted a pretty good-sized AU store, which is the company that makes the phone that Sada gave me from her trip to Japan so I could just reactivate it instead of getting a whole new phone, so I decided to go in and give it a shot at least. The lady I talked to was super nice and helpful even though I didn't understand most of what she was saying. I filled out an entire form for a phone plan before saying I was only going to be there for four months, at which point she said oh...well a prepaid phone is probably going to be cheaper than getting a plan for this one then! Doh! I say I filled out the whole form, but, embarrassingly, neither Greg, Hunter, nor I could remember the postal code or phone number for DK House, or Teresa or Dan's phone numbers! Oof.

After we switched to pre-paid mode, she showed me how the phone Sada gave me would "become" this new tiny phone she had. I'm not sure what that meant, but I think maybe it would be an exchange? Or she would move any content and numbers to the new phone? I picked the cheapest plan, which looked like 3,300 yen (about$33) a month, but I couldn't really read it fast enough to see how many minutes or texts a month that is. I don't figure I'll be using it too much anyway so I'm not too worried about that, but I'll try and check the AU site and see what it can tell me.

Anyway, she said it would take a bit to get it set up, so she gave me a little card and said to come back in an hour, so we went on back to the aforementioned mall. Turns out there are two more stories to that mall, for a total of four stories! The third floor is mostly baby stuff and electronics, but the fourth floor has the following cool things:

• A great view of the city
• School supplies
• Snacks of all kinds!

We did so much shopping around in Shinjuku, but this mall really had everything we needed all along, haha. We probably got things like scissors and a blow dryer for cheaper in the city though, so it was worth it in the end. But if we need anything from now on, we definitely know where to go! I wonder if they have any member discounts...

When we got back to DK House I quickly got the DK House contact information, Teresa's number, and a few other important-seeming documents and trucked it back to the AU store, which turns out to actually be preettty far away. Unfortunately, the lady decided that just my passport and the things in it weren't enough for her to be able to give me a cell phone, and that she needed something else, like the gaijin card. I was so close! I tried giving her my American driver's license, but that was a no go. Then I showed her the ISIC card, you know, the one that seems really important and amazing for foreigners to have and you have to have it before you study abroad? She stared at it for a looong time and then asked something to the effect of "What on earth is this card I wonder?" And the "world of discounts" provided by the card include a grand total of 2 hotels, 2 performing arts theaters and 1 restaurant in ALL of Tokyo. (And about 15 museums, but those are an indulgance.) We're all pretty bitter about that card now, haha.

After my long journey to and from the phone shop, I was tuckered out and decided to give in to a little 5:00pm short nap. I woke up about an hour later I'd say and checked to see if anyone was around, but nobody was online and I was still groggy so I laid back down. Two hours later, I'm awakened by Greg knocking on my door. "First of all," he says, "It's like almost 8:00, so you've been asleep for like three hours.." Dangit >_< haha. Second of all, he and Hunter decided they wanted to find this gaming club he heard about only two stops away from our station that had a super cheap deal for all-you-can-play gaming. I had kind of a bad feeling about it but decided to say yes anyway.

When we got to the station, there was a neat sort of stand where you can put money into a vending machine and choose the meal you want, and then it gives you a ticket that you give to the cooks and they prepare it for you. We decided that was about as cheap and good as we'd be able to find, and it was a unique experience, so I got curry soba noodles and the two guys got udon. I think I'm discovering that I prefer rice to noodles, and definitely when it comes to curry, but it was still pretty good (and there was unlimited water again!!!). It was suuuper hot though and I got some on my pretty new cream coat T__T Just another reason for me to abhor the Japanese custom of slurping as showing a sign of delicious noodles or whatever, it's silly and unnecessary, especially when places don't have any napkins out for use. Bah humbug.

After our meal, it was time to head out on our journey for the JJ Club 100. Now I'm not gonna say how it happened, but we ended up walking a good 30-45 minutes in the complete opposite direction out of the station. We asked some Jr. High kids if they had heard of the place we were headed, but they hadn't. Finally we ended up asking the worker at the Sunkus store, who also didn't know, so we just asked him how to get to the nearest station. Unfortunately, all I remembered from the name of the station we had come from was "Urawa", so that's where he directed us. We finally got to the station and on the train before we realized it was not the station we had arrived at, but one further down the line! We had walked reeally really far. While we never got to the gaming club that night, it turned out being a nice and entertaining stroll with friends =)