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Hehehe.  I have acquired a Nintendo DSi.

These spiffy gizmos launched on November 1st, and that’s when mine came in the mail!

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a gizmo on the day it launched before.   The reason I got one this time was because well…I wanted one, and there were rumors they’d sell out, and so I was worried that if I didn’t get one on launch day, I wouldn’t get a Japanese dictionary for months. That’s right, a dictionary. See, because there’s a stylus on the DS, you can draw Japanese characters, and if you have a dictionary cartridge instead of a game cartridge, it’ll tell you how to say the character, and what it means in English, blah blah blah.

It wasn’t all that easy to pre-order online though – I had to do quite a bit of poking around Japanese websites.  I stumbled across some fellow’s blog, where he was tracking which stores were currently posting “reservation tickets” online.  Through my limited Japanese and *cough* Google translate, I figured out that he was letting folks set alerts as well.  So I set the alert for a white dsi, and waited.  About an hour later, a weird cell phone ringing that wasn’t my cellphone suddenly went off,   I hopped back to his webpage, and ordered my shiny new toy.

Of course, in the urgency of ordering the thing, I needed to pay for it.  Alas, the particular website I was ordering from didn’t allow for (or I couldn’t figure out) how to pay with a credit card associated with something other than my shipping address.  As desperation was setting in, and I’d waded through a mess of sloppily encoded (half/full character issue) forms to get to the checkout point, I did what I had to.  I selected the alternative to credit card payment, hit continue, and held my breath.

Nothing happened, but a confirmation screen and a thank you.

After sitting around confused for a second, I checked my mail to find out that I’d ordered the DSi with “Daibiki” also known as Cash on Delivery.   Oops.  How does COD even WORK?  I haven’t used it in the US, ever.  Some more online investigating helped put me somewhat at ease, but I still wasn’t reallly sure that I’d successfully ordered the thing.

But it came!  And I promptly set it to work, with the magnificent photo manipulation features.

I’m trying to restrain myself from buying any actual games, lest I never leave my apartment. Perhaps before I fly back, so I can ignore all my friends when I return.  Since you all have maybe forgotten me already ;)

Oh yes.  Yesterday I was in a Tokyu Hands store, trying to bling it out with dragon decals and the like, but  sadly, since the new DS is a matte finish as opposed to glossy, the normal sticky shininess does not adhere. I shall have to leave my device bland and unpersonalized.  For now.

1.There’s usually food catered in for lunch at work, but Thursdays are Sushi Day!  I guess that’s today. LAST Thursday was special though, because it was not only Sushi Day, it was MAGURO day.  And boy, did they bring on the maguro. There were sushi chef types carving it up and handing you pieces, as well as bowls of maguro chirashi waiting for happy office folk.  The whole cafe was noticeably abuzz.

2. Went back to Sora no Niwa, a place near the office that makes their own tofu, and does it in creative ways. This shot is of a sesame tofu that had a thick, creamy feel to it, to the point that I almost wanted to put it on toast.  It was backed up by a very avocado-ey avocado tofu.  The sesame came back in fried form later in the night, with dipping salts and a sauce and that was quite tasty as well.

3. I’ve been feeling a little out of it for the past couple of days.  Maybe I ate something weird, maybe I was just rushing around too much…not sure. But in times like this, a diet of ginger ale and rice porridge/moi/ochazuke seems just the thing.  So no, I’m not into white wine at breakfast now. The bug seems to be fading – hopefully tomorrow puts me right.  Went to a really good ochazuke place in the Tokyu dept. store basement yesterday.  I’ll definitely be heading back once it gets colder (or if I fail to get better soon).

The jetlag’s largely gone (finally), meaning that I can get to midnight without falling into my soup bowl. Victory!  (Now I have to come up with other excuses.)

I did have lots of opportunity to watch morning talk shows last week, though, and noticed an unusual special guest on one (no, not the lucha libre fellow on the left.)  Like another US pseudo-celebrity,  Stitch (of Lilo and-) seems to have found more popularity outside his home country and picked up another language.

Browsing through stores, I’ve noticed stuffed Stitch dolls, Stitch stationery, and the requisite cellphone dangley Stitches.  Seeing him as a talk show guest was a first though – I like the reaction of the humans to his outburst.  “How rude! Whose idea was it to invite this guy, anyways?”

Hm…on second thought, they should really show a little more respect for a monster alien genetic experiment.  Wouldn’t you?