I'm going to Tokyo over Christmas vacation! On Monday night I navigated through a Japanese airline website. Two hours and 68 emails later, I successfully reserved my seat. (Miho, thanks for all of your help!) Once reserving the seat, you select how you want to pay for it, either by credit card or going to a convenient store. I decided to go with the later. So, tonight I went down to the 7-11 on the corner and showed the cashier my paper from the internet. She kindly showed me the computer that was attached to the copy machine. Then she walked me through the process and showed me what numbers to punch in when and where. Then I walked to the cash register with her, paid for my ticket, and walked out the door with the airline ticket in hand.

It's amazing what you can do at these convenient stores. You can buy things from snacks to cans of oxygen, print out digital pictures, rent movies, pay your gas and electricity bill, purchase baseball tickets, and pay for your airplane tickets. There is probably even more that you can do that I don't know about. Wow!