After hearing that Omotesando was closed down, I got up early and headed down to my local Softbank shop at 5:30 this morning. I needn’t have worried, cos there was noone there yet. At 6:00, the next iPhone fan arrived, an otaku kind of guy. At 7:00, a very genki oyaji came along, he was super chatty and told everyone that he was getting it in Japan cos his son in America said that he US version wouldn’t work with Japanese input. Then slowly more people arrived. Another otaku type went to the shop and got us all canned coffee! About 8, the only woman arrived. She wanted to get the white 16 gig version. At 9:00, the Softbank guy came out and gave us all tickets so that we could come back later and claim our iPhone. I’ll have to go to AU now and get a cancellation ticket so I can transfer my number over.

I asked what I needed to bring along, but the guy didn’t say anything about the 27 month visa limit. He just said that if I was using an Alien Registration card, that I’d need to bring along my bank details. He said the only ways I could pay were by bank transfer of credit card transfer. I’ll find out later about the 27 month thing.

A few details from a friend working in a Softbank shop..

Only 10 phones are going to be delivered. It’s a small shop, but that’s a very small number. The shipment will only arrive tomorrow.

Phone calls were coming in all day asking if they could reserve. The policy at the shop was no reservations, you have to line up on Friday.

For foreign residents of Japan, you have to have a valid visa with at least 29 (!) months left. This seems a bit crazy, since most foreigners in Japan have at most a 3 year visa (ie 36 months) so you would have had to just gotten your visa. Or have a marriage or permanent visa.

The only alternative is to buy the phone outright, which will cost about 70,000 yen. Supposedly, you’d get a plan cheaper than the 7,200 yen that’s currently on offer, since you wouldn’t be paying the monthly charge for the phone. I heard that it comes out to about the same price.

You have to sign up for a 26 month plan, not 24 month.

You need to bring your alien registration card, possibly also a passport and credit card.

There is definitely no place to hang dangly Hello Kitty straps.

Here’s the best keyboard shop that I’ve found in Tokyo. It’s in Akihabara, about 5 minutes walk from the station, in a small alley. It’s called Cleverly and there are 3 separate stores. Only one of them does all keyboards, but they’re all close together, so just ask if you land in the wrong one. Here’s the link.

http://www.clevery.co.jp/shop/shop-2.html

They have plenty of different keyboards to buy, like Filco, Happy Hacking, Microsoft. They have both Japanese layout keyboards and American (US ascii) layout, all nicely set out so you can try the action on them. As far as Filco keyboards go, last time I was there there were about 10 or 15 to choose from, with Alps and Cherry switches, as well as a Bluetooth wireless keyboard. They have more PC keyboards, but have a few specifically for mac, including the very stylish mac happy hacking keyboard.

Along with keyboards, there are mice and other accessories, but the main focus is keyboards. If you want to see Akihabara keyboard Otaku, this is the place to come. The only problem is that it’s a tiny shop, and all the geeks have their Otaku standard backpacks on. Combine that with the cup ramen and pizza diet and it’s hard to get past. Here’s the details of the shop:

Map: http://mymapofjapan.com/spot.php?id=k3ad5v

Cleverly No. 2

Chiyoda-ku, Soto Kanda 3 Chome 13-2

クレバリー２号店

東京都千代田区外神田3丁目13番2号

Telephone: 03-5296-1775

Opening Hours: 11:00 - 20:00
Sunday, Holidays: 19:30

Click on the link above for a map.

Here’s an excellent list of the major bookshops in Tokyo. It seems to be updated regularly (last update was a few days ago) and includes places that have closed as well as the ones that are still open.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/jp-tokyo.htm

http://www.reference-net.jp/lib_dir/13.html

Here’s a page with links to libraries throughout Japan, organised by prefecture.

Update: Here’s a list of libraries in Japan I found in English, from YellowPagesJapan. Not sure how up to date it is, but I guess libraries don’t change all that often.

I got a call from an unknown number on my Keitai but didn’t answer it. It looked like a business number with repeating parts (043-224-1010) and I knew that it was in Chiba by the first 3 digits. Being paranoid, instead of calling it back I went and searched on the internet. It turns out that the best way to search is to break the number into 3 parts like above and search for that. If you search for 0432241010, it comes back with nothing useful. I put 千葉 into the search too, and came back with Yodobashi Camera in Chiba city.

Since google maps has business phone numbers with their address data, searching for the number (in the correct form) comes up with Yodobashi as well, along with a nice pointer on the map.

JR Abiko Station Map

JR Airport Terminal 2 (Narita Airport) Station Map

JR Akabane Station Map

JR Akihabara Station Map

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You can buy tickets for the Ghibli museum for any of 4 times each day, 10, 12, 2 and 4. The museum closes at 6pm, so as you’d expect, the 4pm tickets are the least popular. The Loppi system is hit and miss, and when I tried it, I couldn’t find a way to look at a calendar and see which days were free. Luckily, there’s a web page which shows the information for the next 2 months. This page is all in Japanese, but the important parts are the times in the calendar and the blue text. An x next to the time for a day means it’s sold out. An o means it’s still available. The blue text above the calendar shows “Ghibli No Hi”, the day the tickets for the following month go on sale. In the picture below, it’s November 12th, a Monday. If you can get to a Lawsons at the time they give (10am) you should have a good chance of buying tickets for the time you want.

I didn’t check the width when I bought it, and got one that’s a bit too fat (0.7). I still don’t really see what all the fuss is about with this pen, it’s the same as Moleskines, just a fad that’s in at the moment. I still like the Zebra Tapli better, or the cheapy Prismee by Zebra which I nicked from a real estate agent.