[aychseven]

thanks for the information and offers so far. it's still many months before i leave, so i don't know exactly where i'm staying or traveling to from the airport just yet. about all i know is that the school i'll be going to is near the azabu juban station on the tokyo metro namboku line.

that suica thing looks very useful. i think some of the old vodaphone phones had it built in along with with felica, does softbank still do this and are they the only cell phone provider that offers this?

what about buying train and subway tickets? is there a machine with english readout or is there a ticket booth with people that speak english? i've never ridden a train or subway before (las vegas is so spread out that you need a car here and the bus system is really terrible.)

oh and food! are most menus in japanese only, or are there usually pictures you could point at? i've eaten at plenty of japanese places, so if the names were in hiragana or katakana i could probably figure it out. i'm not quite adventurous enough to randomly point at something on a menu i can't read, and i'd rather not get stuck hitting up a combini for 3 meals a day because i don't know kanji.