Settling In

Am I due for another post?  Yea...

I'm not very good at this blog thing I realize.  I need to get used to carrying my camera around so I can take awesome pictures and you can ooh and ahh at them.  Instead I have to show you crappy pictures taken with my blackberry.  I didn't think we were going to do anything worth blogging about but..it's Japan...everything's interesting!

Oh yes, before I get into today, let's talk about yesterday.  I forgot to take pictures except on the bus ride to the dorms, so the only picture I have to show you is of Tokyo Tower.

Yes so that's that...

So today's itinerary:  apply for alien registration, insurance and sign up for a keetai (cell).

It's a pretty nice phone and the plan is cheap.  It'll get me through 5 months.  I also bought some bling to decorate the phone with.  I know what you're thinking, what were you thinking?  Yea I thought so.  C'monnn...I'm in Japan!  Besides, I'm never going to use this phone outside of Japan, so let's bling out.  I also want to find the biggest phone charm I can find.  Like, ridiculously huge that it won't even fit in my pocket.  Why?  Because I can, and it'll be normal.

So the phones happened at the end of the day.  For lunch we ate bento lunches from 7-Eleven.  It's actually quite common to grab a quick lunch at a convenience store or something.  It's good quality stuff!

It looks yummy doesn't it?  It tastes pretty good too!  The rice was soft and pillowy, and the tempura and katsu were flavourful.  Obviously not crispy, but they did heat the whole thing through which was welcome.  This did the trick, I was pretty full.  Washed it down with ocha.  

Now during the keetai business, we had to wait a long long long long time before we got the phone in hand.  Activations or whatnot, so we split up because we are such a big group and went to find some bangohan (dinner).  Do you like my snippets of Japanese?  I'm assimilating already.  Anyways, so we stumbled around Shibuya for a bit and found this restaurant with 270 yen signs plastered all over it.  Who can pass up a deal like that?  Most everything was 270 yen...beer, skewers, rice bowls, etc.  This was a type of izakaya place. Izakaya is a type of restaurant that serves drinks with food.  Usually small plates to accompany your beer.  

Now, again, sorry for the really crappy pictures.  Blame Blackberry.  

So let's start up with the Szechuan Cucumbers.  I was expecting something spicy and refreshing.  Refreshing it was, spicy it was not.  It was actually sweet.  But it was really good. 

This is just chicken wings.  A bit crispy.  Also pretty good.  Skin has lots of flavour.  But seriously...what can go wrong with chicken wings?  

You gotta have edamame.  This was served right away without even ordering.  This edamame is different from Vancouver in that some pieces are still connected to the stalk.  So you pick up a few at a time.  This was good.  Nice balance of saltiness with the sweetness of the beans.  

Takoyaki.  This was good also.  Flavourful, but lacking in octopus pieces.  

Chicken gizzard skewers.  This was done perfectly.  Not too chewy, the sauce that went with it was sweet and went perfectly with the gizzard.  Thumbs up.

This is albacore tuna sushi.  Originally it came with 4 pieces, but we ate most of them before I remembered to take a picture.  This was kind of bland and thin.  I could get this quality sushi in Vancouver.  Pass. 

One cool thing that I personally really liked about this restaurant is the self ordering.  Each table has like a little touch screen that you can pass around the table, and you just choose which types of dish you want and how many.  You confirm and the food comes like 10 minutes later!  Actually some dishes came out quite fast.  This place was really busy too.  Almost all the small tables were full.  When we were leaving, we overheard them telling another group that it would be a 2 hour wait.  Ouch.  

I have no idea what the place was called.  I wish I had taken a picture of the outside.  

This was taken near Shibuya Station during the day.  Shibuya is full of malls and the side streets are full of restaurants.  It was hard to choose which to eat at.  I really want to come back here and explore like a tourist!  Today was all business, no play.  

It's been cloudy for the past couple of days here as you can see in the picture, and it was raining on and off all day.  So it wasn't the best day to be walking around morning to night.  And I didn't being an umbrella.  And there's a typhoon warning for tomorrow...time to get an umbrella.