Ouch.

For someone who isn't a very big cell phone person, or even a phone person, I sure go through a lot of them. I've been here only 8 months and already I'm on my 3rd one. After a good three hour session at one of the local cell phone companies, I finally decided to go ahead and get a new phone. Getting a new phone is a fairly straightforward process that involves filling out eight thousand forms-in triplicate. Thank God my roommate speaks japanese. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without him.

Anyways the silver lining is that I was able to get the phone that I've had my eye on for the past 2 months. It only cost me $200 bucks. 14,000 yen for the phone, 3,000 to cancel my old contract and 2,700 to start a new one. But I've got it all set up the way I want it with a Red Hot Chilli Peppers ringtone and an ICQ "uh-oh" for my email alerts and I've got it chained to my pants the way Phil Demerais used to chain his wallet-no seriously. I'm gonna start a new thing.

Speaking of starting a new thing, I bought a new purse today. No not actually a purse. More like one of those shoulder bag type things only a lot smaller. You can sling it around your shoulders or you can clip it onto one of your belt loops using a carabiner. It's pretty cool but I think any guy back home would take a lot of flak if he walked around with one of those things hanging off his belt. But one of great things about living in Japan is that you can go out and wear totally weird stuff that you would never wear back home and you'd probably still be the most normally dressed person out there.

I'm still hoping that someone turns in my old phone. I need to get my address book. We're so dependent on technology nowadays that we don't rely on our brains anymore. I don't know how many people I had in my phone-at least 20, but I didn't know a single telephone number or email address of any of them-including my own roommate!

My new 'purse'