first day ^^

Woke up at 6 a.m. and went back to sleep until 8 a.m. Pretty rare for the first day in Japan, rather than waking up at 5 a.m. and not being able to sleep afterwards because of jet lag. Brief summary of the day's events:

+Saitama Prefectural Government Building - The building was very large, but very old. The workers at the business department we visited kept laughing and saying that if there were an earthquake, the building would collapse.
+Lunch at pasta place
+Saitama Shintoshin tour – Super Arena, John Lennon Museum (why the John Lennon Museum is here, nobody knows. なぞです.)s
+Softbank store - mega-fail on trying to register by myself. I need a foreign registration card to get the prepaid phone USIM card I want, and it's going to be impossible for me to get one. I have a lead on Craigslist though.
+Bonsai - we saw lots of little bonsai trees! Some of them were worth up to $1,000! I took two pictures, and then found out that wasn't allowed.
+At dinner at a really nice restaurant at a hotel in Saitama Shintoshin
+Hotel - We watched a travel show about onsens. The onsens were in really spectacular places--one was in a beach with red-colored water, one was in a cavern and the other was one that was only reachable through an incredibly treacherous, 10-mile path on mountain cliffsides. Extreme stuff just for a bath. :D