It’s snowing today in Sendai, and although it’s not the first time this year, it certainly is the most it has snowed. It’s not to the point that it’s accumulating, and it’s not likely to change this time, but that’s not indicative of what the rest of the winter will bring. People have told me that when the time comes, Aobayama campus (where my lab is), will remain frozen over for like three months, and there will be snow on the ground every day. Sounds like fun!

Yesterday I finally got the internet in my dorm. It’s not very good by any means, and I have yet to be able to download anything more than a couple of megabytes, but at least I can do some of my research at home. The States clock me at around 400 kbps, Japan clocks me around 1.5 Mbps, but I haven’t gotten downloads faster than 35 kbps. I guess I’m spoiled from the dorms at Mines.

Yesterday is also when I ordered my brand new macBook. I know I boasted before that I was making the switch, but now I have. I couldn’t place my order through the US site as they don’t ship internationally, so I went to Apple’s Japanese site. The only trouble is, it’s in Japanese. And also, you have to input your shipping address in kanji. Who wants to deal with that? I’m very fortunate that they have a service hotline in English, and I called up, greeted with Japanese, and I asked them as best as I could in Japanese if they spoke English. The woman explained in a phonetically-memorized script that she was sorry that no English speakers were available, and if she could please have my phone number, a representative would call back shortly. A few minutes later, I was on the phone with Kuni, whose English impressed me. He helped me place my order, get my student discount (interestingly enough, I didn’t need to provide any authentication that I was actually a student) and all that.

I got the white macBook Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, upgraded to 2 gigs of ram, and even a US keyboard layout. They said it should be a few days before it ships, and then it should be on my doorstep between December 15 and 20. In retrospect, I think I may have chosen a poor time to order.