I finally left the house today

I spent the majority of the day at home because it rained today. I was planning to get out of the house today too. Today was going to be a day of good exercise since I was planning to go play tennis with the tennis club. But since it was raining, they had cancelled it and there wouldn’t be one tomorrow since a Typhoon is coming; something that I’m not to enthusiastic to report. I called the school today, which is a new thing for me and talked to the front office lady and then to the tennis coach. I think that they were surprised that I called, and I am too. I was very confident in my Japanese, and only made a minor mistake. It was only because they use too formal Japanese that I haven’t learned yet. It was an interesting conversation that just ended with me saying “no, I won’t come to school today.” I thought that message was pretty clear. But I knew that today, I’d have to go out anyways to get some food.

I went for a little walk today to the Ofuna area. I was shopping for some DVDs but nothing looked interesting enough to buy. I was looking around the laptops that they had there too and saw how big some of them were. I’m glad that I went to look at laptops in person; otherwise I might have bought an oversized notebook for myself. I think that I’ve decided to buy a Sony Vaio Type S. But the problem that I have with it is that it’s almost exactly like the laptop that I have now, which is the R505DL. Except in the Type S, there isn’t a docking station or a 1.5 inch disk drive, but everything else is about the same. I mean, I’m going to customize it so that there will be some differences, but I’d like for there to be better things, but I guess that I just like this size better. I was looking at the Type T, but I’ve read stories and complaints for people that their hands get cramped from the keyboard being too small. I mean it looks cool and all, but it really wouldn’t be much of an upgrade for me since I pretty much have all those features that are on the Type T. Except that the Type T is smaller and has a longer battery life.

After looking around at Yamada Denki, I decided to go to Yoshinoya today again. Like I always do, but the lady that was taking my order got it wrong again. I was a bit disappointed about that. I think that it was because my Japanese has been getting worse. I haven’t studied it in a long time and I haven’t even heard that much recently. Since I’ve been locked up in my room slaving away at my blogs and my website, everything has been in English. I have even started to only listen to English music too, so this was a rude awakening for me. I need to get back on track with my Japanese studies. The dinner didn’t seem to be enough for me too, which was the most disappointing part of it. So I was thinking about all that during my 35 minute walk home.

When I came home, I did some more laptop shopping online and realized that I might want to buy the laptop in Japan as it might be cheaper to customize it myself than if it were to be bought online from the Sony USA website. Actually they don’t ship it overseas, so I would have a problem with actually getting the laptop. But then again, if I get one in Japan, I’ll have a Japanese type keyboard. That will change my typing drastically since the ones at school cause havoc with my typing. But I guess I ought to get used to it. It’s also about $50 cheaper to get a Japanese one anyways. The thing that makes the laptop really expensive is the 3 year extended warranty. I knew it would be expensive, but it’s going to be really really expensive when it’s all totaled together. Right now, I’m looking at a price of 285,000 yen, which translate to be about $2,850 USD. That’s like a months’ worth of work for a laptop. I’m thinking about financing it, even though I have enough to pay for it in cash. It would be much cheaper to just buy one already pre-made, but then I wouldn’t think it would be that cool to have. I want to get one that’s all decked out and I guess I’m going to have to pay the price for it. I think I would want to try having a Japanese OS, but I think I’ll run into a lot of trouble, so I might have to go to Sony directly and order one that’s customized and with an English OS. That’s going to be big big bucks since it seems that Japanese companies like to take advantage of unsuspecting foreigners. Well, it seems that way in my case at least. But I guess if my Japanese were better, I’d be able to deal with that better. I just have to take the hits and go with flow and learn as I go.

I’m also looking into cell phones, and I’ve seen one from DoCoMo that I like and one from AU by KDDI that I like. I just need to check the prices of the phones and for the plans since I’m about to ditch Vodafone. I also have to check to see how to do that too. But right now, I’m focusing on a new laptop. I was also thinking about getting a PowerBook too, but there are things with the compatibility that I have issues with. Once they release the ones with Intel chips, I think that will pave way for me to buy one and use all the cool features that they have, but for the moment, windows XP will be enough for me. Since I have to buy one before this year is finished.