Studying at the foot of Mani

Last weekend my cell phone broke.  Suddenly, the buttons stopped working so I stopped being able to do anything with the phone except turn it on and off and briefly use it as a flashlight in the dark.  As there are many cheaper and better flashlight alternatives, I decided to get myself a new phone.
Getting a cell phone in Japan can be easy or it can be somewhat similar to a Gnostic entry password to heaven, that is to say, full of bizarre passwords and hand signals.  My phone buying experience was more of the latter.
Japan has 3 major phone carriers:  Kddi/Au, Docomo and Softbank.  I have, for the entirety of my time in Japan (5 years total), always used Kddi/Au as my provider.  Mostly because it has a good service range and good pricing plans.  The phones tended to be less cool than the Docomo phones though as Docomo tends to put all types of extra features in before anyone else.  Softbank, the former Vodafone, was never much of an option because they generally had bad coverage when compared to Kddi/Au or Docomo even if their pricing plans are cheaper.
Anyway, my phone is broken so I head to the Au shop in order to figure out something.  I browsed around at phones and I can honestly say I am always impressed by new phone functions.  There were solar charging phones and built in exercise/calorie counters, 10 megapixel cameras and a bevy of other standard features that would have seemed impossible, and probably were, 5 years ago.
After speaking with the shop staff I found that buying a new phone would be expensive and fixing my current phone would take weeks so, instead of renewing, I took a bold step in the direction of the new and canceled my contract.  The process was, after I spoke the necessary passwords, gave the required hand gestures and danced the needed jig, relatively painless.
The closest cell phone shop to my house is a Softbank shop so I figured I'd give them a chance and went in.  There were some pretty spectacular phones there, ones with highly functioning cameras and e-book readers and whatever else you can think of in terms of cell phone use.
All of the Japanese cell phones, even the basic, "free if you sign up for anything" phones are incredibly function heavy (unless you specifically buy the phones for old people that purposely have minimal functions) but in the end I decided on aniPhone 3GS.
The benefits for the iPhone are many while the drawbacks are few, though seemingly the drawbacks are rather Japan centered.  For example, the biggest complaint I've heard about theiphone is the lack of infrared sending/receiving.  While never all that popular in the US, infrared sending is very popular in Japan for exchanging numbers back an forth between phones.  I've used it many many times myself.  TheiPhone lacks this function.
The workaround appears to be use of a QR code.  Pretty much all Japanese phones can read QR codes (those codes that look like a magic eye puzzle but can be used to read data) and theiPhone offers a cheap (115 yen) app that creates one out of any address book data you might have. Though still, this isn't ideal.
Thought the benefits far outweigh the few negatives.  For example, I was able to combine my phone, my ipod and my electronic dictionary all within the iphone while also gaining the ability to watch movies (yeah my ipod was 5 years old and couldn't display video).  My bag is so much lighter.
I'm sure most of you know the iPhone is a good phone, however the process of getting the iPhone was not so easy.  I had to do a lot of ridiculous hoop jumping to get mine.
Let me summarize in easy to read list form:

1. Go to Softbank shop and order the iPhone (it wasn't released in Japan until the 26th)
2. Fill out a ridiculous amount of paperwork which required all types of extra stuff I needed to go home and get (bank card, credit card, passport, foreigner registration).
3. Wait for a call confirming the arrival of the iPhone.
4. Schedule an available time to activate the iPhone after the phone arrived.
5. Go to the scheduled activation, again carrying all of my related items, in order to fill out more paperwork and do more waiting involving activation.
6. Fill out forms for some cashback related stuff.
7. Pay a truckload of money. (On a side note, I really had to pay a ton because my visa is not valid for 24 more months, actually it still has 22 months on it but that was not good enough to get an immediate discount.  This left me having to pay full, undiscounted price for the iphone with the guarantee that I would get the discount price back over the period of 24 months.)
8. Leave with my iPhone and download a ton of Japanese iPhone apps.
9. Manually input all of my previous contacts.

In the end, I feel less like I got a new phone and more like I joined an arcane mystery school.  However, I have a new phone and hopefully I won't have to go through this again for another 5 years at least.