What a day...

I have to tell you about what has happened to me thus far today. First I walked onto the wrong train and ended up who knows where. I got to scool a little late, but I wasn't marked late thank goodness. Yesterday I had decided that I was going to get a bike and rice cooker today. I was very determined. I knew where I was going to go, what I was looking for and how much I was going to spend. I got to this section of Tokyo called Akihabara aka Electric Town. It's full of everything electronical, digital, etc. plus anime and video games. It's a nerd paradise. It reminded me of the Wiz , except 1000 times bigger (for those of you from the NJ/NY area). Best Buy on steroirds. The stores are all lined up on this big avenue and there all 6-8 stories full of electronic junk. I just wanted a rice cooker. No problem, found dozens of them. But the thing is Akihabara is not really discounted, which is ironic for the elctronic discount part of the city. If you want a deal, you gotta head for the alley ways and bargain. I don't speak Japanese so that was out of the question. Eventually I went into a store called Don Quixote, known has Donki in Japan for short. For some reason Don is a blue penguin. I thought he was Spanish. Anyway, I went in and found a rice cooker. Real good price too, the best so far after scouring the other high rise stores. Apparently you have to buy the item on the floor you find it on and the alarm beeped when I stepped on the escalator with my rice cooker, which was ok, I didn't get caught. Then I found my bike. It's awesome (for what I paid, which wasn't much, so it's not that great). I'll create a post just for it later I guess, with some pictures. It took awhile to get the bike. No sales people where working on the bike floor apparently at that time and so I waited around awhile for someone to pop up. Finally got someone, went to pay for it which turned out to be a real porblem, because no one speaks english, I had no idea how what the bike sales guy was trying to tell me. After 20 minutes I figured it out, found the bike guy again, and used my universal sign language to ask the million dollar question:

You see, Japan is a relatively safe country. Crime rate and violence is much lower than it is in America. That means cops have nothing to do. In Japan you also have to register your bicycle. There are 30 million bikes in Tokyo, so bikes are important to Tokyo life. Also, foreigners stand out (because of physical characteristics, of course) and since they are many times more likely to commit a crime (like say steal a bike), I must register immeadiately. I was told that once a Temple student "borrowed" a bike. He got stopped by the cops, arrested and put in jail for 20 days. That's right. The police can hold you for 20 days, guilty or innocent. When I asked the salesman to register, we kept using weird sign language, pointing at stuff, etc. so he called up someone to speak english. I finally registered my bike and got ready to leave.

Ok. Did I mention it was raining today? Pretty good too. I have an umbrella, no jacket or anything. As I stepped outside, I thought getting back to school was going to be the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. It was raining. I have a rice cooker with me (it's the size of a small computer monitor, so big it couldn't fit in the basket in front of my bike, which is pretty big). I also have my backpack on. I did not want to get wet, so I held the umbrella in one hand, which is what everyone else does in Tokyo. Also, when you ride your bike in Tokyo, you ride only on the sidewalk, unless your some kind of beast on a road bike going 30 mph thru the city. So here I am with this giant parcel in my front basket, bouncing up and down with every bump, holding my umbrella in one hand, steering the bike with the other (which was hard with this heavy rice cooker in front), hauling my backpack and steering around the throngs of people on the street. Many times I had to walk because there was just too many people. Oh, I forgot to mention how far away from school I was. Very far away. And to that the organic, non-sensical layout of Japanese roads (meaning that it wasn't a grid layout), I was in for a tall order. By the way, they do not name streets in Japan. Amazing. So try and imagine this for a second. I had to stop and read the map many times, walk behind people, dodge people and their umbrellas, grab the rice cooker as it was bouncing out of the basket while steering with one hand. It was nightmare. I also got stopped by a cop who checked for my alien registration card, which I didn't have because it's not ready yet. So I showed my receipt, which is good enough. Great. Ugh

I got lucky and got lost and ended up at school. Lucky. I was not in a good mood.