Roving Japan

Yesterday was our first day in Tokyo. We spent most of the time unpacking our stuff, but we did manage to venture outside to register for my Alien Registration Card and to look at cell phones.

In case you aren’t familiar with Tokyo, it’s basically a massive metropolis made up of many smaller towns. Komae (where I am) is just one of those small towns. It’s slightly outside the main ring of “Tokyo” so it doesn’t show up on the main subway map, but as you can see in the map below, it’s still squarely inside the city.

View Hiking Japan in a larger map

Here is our view from the room on the 3rd floor of Risa’s parents house:

While walking to the City Hall, I spotted these funny bike racks.

I had to get 2 passport style photos for my registration. I thought I would be going to a post office, or drug store, or someplace similar to where I would go in America. NOPE! I should have known better. I’m in Japan. Everything is done with vending machines right?

For $7, I got a print-out with 4 photos. 2 are passport size, and 2 are this other “official document” size. 35mm x 45mm.

After we got the photos we headed over to city hall!

Once the paper work was completed, we were told that it might take a little longer than I had originally thought. Since “Golden Week” is in the beginning of May, they might not finish my card until May 7th instead of May 1st. They told us that they would try to get it done before the holiday, so we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed.

After city hall we went to look at cell phones, but that will have to be in the next post. Japanese cell phone plans are just as complicated as those in America. We have a lot of material to try and decode.

Stay tuned!