I am an alien!

Well, yesterday was interesting. Went to the school for the first time. I will only be teaching at the school proper once a week, most of the classes take place at the community center and a few take place on site (ie Sony, etc.). But this school is not much bigger than my closet. This is not an exaggeration. Like I said only one class a week there. After visiting the school Mr. M. took me down to city hall to register me. I felt like a dog getting licensed. I am now a registered alien. Mr. M. is a bit disorganized (read really scatterbrained). To get your dogtags you need to have two passport sized photos. One to be kept on record, the other to be attached to your foreigner id card. He got all flustered when he found out. This is not the first time he has had to do this I'm sure. The funny thing is that I knew that photos were needed. But he has done so little to help me, that I thought I would just sit back and watch. It was quite amusing. So we scurried down to the photo place and back to city hall. Got my application submitted and appropriate hoops jumped through. Then he hustled me down to the cell phone place. Well, here we go again. It went a little like this...

Must have bank account
Don't have bank account
Oh dear dear
Hey, I got a Mastercard, will that help?
Mastercard very impressive (it's really hard to get a credit card here)
Very good
Now, just need your dogtags
But I just applied for them
Oh, dear dear
Let me phone head office
Head office says you should have gotten temporary dogtag
(Mr. M. and I scurry back to Dog Pound, get temporary papers, scurry back to phone place)
Very good, very good!

Now insert any marginal experience you have had buying a car and you will know the rest of my story. I am signed up for way too many extras and may have signed away god knows what. Having a little (lot) of buyers remorse. Oh, well, when in Japan....

Off to meet the munchkins now. Hope I'm good with the 2-5 set. Wish me luck!