Mondy and the paperwork blitz

 Day 5,

Monday was a blur.  We went to Bre's office and met with Maiko Kakemura-san, one of the office ladies who speaks English.  As we were walking to the university I came upon this small truck.  I thought the truck was incredibly small.  I realize you don't have a scale in the photo, but I am 6'2" and I was holding the camera at eye level, which is about the same height as the tuck.  It couldn't have been more than 6' tall and 12' long.  Even that may be giving it too much credit for size.

 Here is the organized chaos that is a Japanese power pole.  I think the pole is made of steel.

 Here is Kyle on the University Campus.  Hokkadai (Hokkaido University) has the largest campus of any university in Japan.  It is very nice.

 Below is Bre at her new office.  It has a great window looking out at the woods.  Perfect for spacing out if needed.

 It was around this point when we met up with Maiko Kakemura-san.  She led us through the subway system to the ward office where we registered for our official alien registration.  Next we went up to the National Health Insurance program.  It was upstairs in the same building.  We got a steal of a deal for the first 5 months.  The insurance for the both of us came to 10,800 Yen.  The current exchange rate is 78 Yen to the dollar.  In US dollars we paid $138 for 5 months insurance for 2 people.  The amount you pay is based on how much you earned in the previous year.  In our case because we did not have jobs in Japan over the last year we counted as not making anything over the previous year.  Oh, the magic of socialized medicine!

We went to the immigration office to get the re-entry visas so that we can leave and return to Japan.

After the insurance we went out to eat at Yoshinoya fast food restaurant.  I thought it was good and quite cheap.  It was the sort of place that only salary-men go.  According to Kakemura-san women almost never go and tourists almost never go.  Bre and Kakemura-san were the only women in the place.  We had the beef bowl with carmelized onions and lots of rice.  I had a side of pickled vegetables, and Bre had a side of Kimchee.  Bre thought the Kimchee didn't taste like Korean Kimchee, but rather a Japanized version of Kimchee.  I am not enough of a Kimchee expert to be able to tell.

The last place we went was the Bank.  We got a bank account and will have our bank cards sent to us in the mail shortly.

We returned to Bre's office and thanked Kakemura-san for spending most of her day helping us.  We met Adit, who shares Bre's office.  Adit is Indonesian and is fluent in English and speaks some Japanese.  He offered to help us get cell phones today.

The rest of the photo's I took on the walk home.  You may notice that it was raining.  It made the photos quite exciting with the light reflected off everything that was wet. We stopped by the 100 Yen store and got umbrellas.  As you can see in the last photo Bre is very happy with her umbrella.

 That's all for now.

-Kyle (and Bre) in Japan