I am officially legal!

Sorry that I could not update again last night. Another late night followed by an early morning. I think I need a nap this afternoon. -_-

We rode the train two stops down from our home station to Gyotoku to get to the smaller branch office for alien registration. After picking up some lunch at the nearby konbini, we stopped at this park to eat. A bunch of pigeons waddled up to us hoping for some handouts.

Pigeons must be well-traveled. They seem to be the same no matter which city you're in.

I am a sucker for most animals so couldn't help offering a small piece of my dumpling, knowing I may very well regret doing so. Once one pigeon grabbed it, the others knew the sound of food being pecked at right away and suddenly they were coming from everywhere, flying right above us. I thought it was kinda cool but my dorm-mate disagreed. "Please don't do that again." :/ Oh well. Perhaps next time I decide to share my meal with the locals, I will do so when I am alone.

I also encountered one of Japan's famous crows. It was huge. The size of a hawk at least. It flew away before I could pull my phone out, but it landed on the slide in the playground and almost seemed to know how to use it. I wish I had a walnut to give him and see if he would open it the same way his fellow crows did in that video. For those who haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGPGknpq3e0

The registration office was rather uneventful. However, the wait was short (good thing we had a branch office we could go to) and the man who helped us was really nice. He spoke English and even circled all of the boxes we needed to fill out. So now I am a legal resident of the country. Yay for not getting arrested or deported! I also now have three ID cards on top of my regular driver's license and passport.

Left to right: International Student Identity Card, Meikai University student ID, and my residence card. Yes, I purposely allowed the glare to appear to cover my ugly picture.

I think that the most awesome thing was getting this welcome packet from the office that included this:

A detailed description of how to sort your garbage.

It may seem like going a little overboard in our foreign eyes, but I think that it makes sense. Having people presort their trash allows them to more efficiently get certain types of trash to the right place to be disposed of or recycled. They don't have to waste money or time sorting it after picking it up, so the cost of trash disposal for residents stays down and there aren't giant landfills that cannot be effectively managed.

Anyway, I said in a previous post that there were 3 different types of categories. I was wrong. According to the living guide, there are actually 12. Plastic containers and wrapping, bottles, cans, newspapers, magazines, cardboard, paper packaging, cloth materials, burnable garbage, non-burnable garbage, toxic garbage, and bulk garbage. o_O I haven't taken my trash out yet and am unsure when I will feel confident that I am doing it right. >_<

Though I have found where the trash bags need to go for the dorm, so at least I know where to put them.

I settled down for a bit in my room before one of my dorm-mates came to let me know she was going to go wondering around. I asked to come with her because I finally remembered I needed laundry detergent. So I finally got to do laundry for the first time. On a related note, it is common for people to hang dry their clothes in Japan instead of using a dryer. The dorm has a dryer, but you have to pay 100 yen per 30 minutes (about $1.50). I opted to hang my clothes on the balcony and noticed that the air conditioner unit was situated right next to the bar so that the hot air was blowing right on my clothes. I was essentially getting the hot air drying effect for free and my clothes were done in less than a couple of hours. Additionally, I was worried that my clothes would end up all starchy and stiff but the water seems to be relatively soft here and they turned out fine.

At dinner, I made a rather surprising discovery. We were served grilled fish topped with some kind of sauce that included red and yellow bell peppers with a side of steamed carrots, and some kind of mushroom. I hate carrots and mushrooms. I have always hated them. But I know they are healthy for me so I decided to try to stomach them. I took a conservative bite out of the carrot and found that it was incredibly delicious. Normally, I get a gag reflex eating carrots. Same for mushrooms. But these were also really good. What has Japan done to me?! Well, I am not complaining. Now I just gotta find Japanese carrots back at home. As for the mushrooms, I believe they are shiitake mushrooms, so those should be easy to find.

As for today, it was kinda crappy. :/ But I will get into that later. Am tired of sitting at the computer.