Second Full Day in Japan

Since it's nearing midnight and I am still not a zombie - I decided to write another post to catch up :P.  So hopefully I am getting over the jet lag and will not wake up at 4am again!

The second full day was quite and enjoyable and happy experience.  I met with a grad student from the lab (another foreigner i.e. gaijin who lived in Japan for 1.5 years) who helped me to get the city registration done and (almost) get the bank account set up.  We took the train (3 different lines) to get to the office of the ward where I live.   We had to walk a little bit from the station to the office building asking for directions a few times (at least people were quite happy to give directions).  Nice temple along the way:

At the ward office was pretty interesting.  They had a whole different counter for foreign registration and the lady helping us explained everything quite nicely so that even I could understand how to fill out the form.  The actual card will be ready in a few weeks. 
From the ward office, we went to a bank to create a bank account.  That was a bit more painful since at first they kept asking for the registration card which I didn't have but they eventually seemed to be ok with the temporary paperwork that I got at the ward office.  Filling out the form was quite painful since due to the banking terms, the person helping me didn't understand things fully (my pocket dictionary was a bit useful but not really since I still don't know what some things like "tax class" were on the form).  Finally, towards the end of the application, I was told that I need an inkan stamp to open an account.  What was really interesting was that the bank person who was helping us, went with us all around the corner, crossing a large street to get us to the place where they make the inkan (which turned out to be closed so we decided to postpone the process to another day).  The bank building:

After the bank, we walked to a subway station along the main circle route - overally I walked around 5kms that day because we eventually separated and then I got lost going into a wrong street.  Luckily I was able to see the mall near my place from the distance and take a side street.

Getting a beer along the route (was around 36C + high humidity) really helped.  Drinking a bear and walking was quite nice :P.

A Shell gas station looked rather similar to the ones in Canada.  The gas a bit more expensive.

I don't know what this building is but it was quite interesting looking:

Finally I managed to get unlost and ended up in the large mall by my place.  First thing I did was to go to the ramen shop and get some nice ramen.  It was pretty tasty but the gyoza that came with it were delicious!  I also drunk a few glasses of water to cool off slightly.  Ramen + 4 gyoza cost around $10.

I also went to JUSCO and bought a few more important things like coffee and a little filter coffee maker thingie (very tasty coffee but I think I need to buy some sugar).  Which reminds me, I did buy a milk the day before and it was funny since there were about 10 different containers that looked like milk to choose from - so I did.  It tastes pretty good and I'm pretty sure it is milk :P.  Also regarding sugar, pretty much all the cold tea drinks that I've tried in bottles from vending machines are not sweetened which is pretty interesting compared to the normal use of sugar in pretty much all North American drinks.  I also bought some green tea icecream which almost didn't make it back the short walk due to the heat!

After a few hours of relaxation, I took the train to the main university campus.  The campus is quite well documented with boards and signs pointing to where buildings are.

And this is my "office" at one of the lab rooms.  There are about 6 other people in the room.  I got the feeling space is not easy to come by.

View from my desk:

I was lucky to capture the sun setting over the hills:

I had a chance to talk to a few grad students for quite a long time and made it home around 10pm.  It was a good day!