yesterday i took hiroyuki downtown to apply for his japanese passport. i drove right into tenjin because yoshi found a cheap place to park. i found the place easily and walked to the passport office. i had to take a number and wait; i only waited about 20 minutes. towards the end hiro was getting hungry, though, so when it was finally our turn he was quite fussy.

yoshi had prepared all the paperwork for me (though i had hiro's picture taken), but he hadn't quite finished. no problem though, i just had to write some kanji down and that was that. the lady who helped me was very nice, though i felt she was a bit condescending when telling me that 'such and such' (a japanese word i didn't recognize and still don't know) mean 'insurance card'. anyway, it struck me that in the US i would probably get really angry at the person behind the desk for their crappy attitude (of course i'm assuming but so many times in situations like that the person pushing the pencil in the US is very rude...)

then hiro was hungry so i went to a restaurant. i ended up at wendy's but was very good and ordered a salad with a side of chili and a potato (i meant to share the potato with hiro but he wasn't really interested.)here's hiro at wendy's:



after lunch i went to the IMS building. on the second basement floor there was this really neat interactive art. basically there were hundreds of paper leaves with eyes printed on them.



one could pick up these leaves and put them in a white tower,



air was blowing inside and blew the leaves out of the top of the tower.



it was very popular with children.



even hiro was fascinated:



from the next floor up it was very pretty:



we spent a little more time in town, mainly window shopping. then we went back. i actually got a discount on parking and only paid 600 yen for four hours! i was really happy about that!