This afternoon, I got the call I’d been waiting for: SoftBank called to arrange an appointment to pick up our phones. After some procedural stuff, we arranged for a meeting time of 4:00 pm on Friday, just four hours after the release time for the store. I would have made it earlier, but earlier this semester, before the iPhone for Japan had been announced, I had happened to schedule a special workshop class for the 11th at 1:00 pm. So 4:00 it is.

Getting the appointment is a nice relief: it means I won’t have to wait in the long lines at the store. Officially, you’re not supposed to get appointments; Apple and/or SoftBank demand that you come to the store and wait in lines, probably as a marketing display to show off the item’s popularity. But a few SoftBank stores, apparently fully independently, made promises on the first day or two to take reservations–that’s when I dropped by, and got on the list. Although I heard one report of a store canceling its reservations, I heard of at least one other that did not, and when I asked a few weeks ago, the store I signed up at said that although they stopped taking reservations, they would not cancel the one’s they’d made. True to their word, they are honoring the arrangements they promised a month ago. That puts me at a great advantage over the people who have been spending days in line–but I think those people would wait in line like that just to be able to (a) get the iPhone a few hours earlier, and (b) claim to their friends that they were among the first to get the devices.

One catch: they said they didn’t have black 16 GB iPhones. I’ll ask again the day we get them, but they seemed to be saying that the black ones were either immediately unavailable or were already spoken for–but they had white ones. Frankly, the color isn’t quite that important to me, and does have the distinguishing characteristic of denoting a less common model/color, but if I had a choice, I’d go for the black one. Still, there is one other advantage: Sachi will have the black 8 GB model, and this will make it easier to tell the phones apart.

Sachi, by the way, is claiming no great interest in the iPhone, but will get one just to stay on the same plan. Still, when I showed her the Apple video in Japanese demoing the phone, she was very interested in some features, especially the map feature. Nevertheless, I’m pretty certain that if I were not getting one, even knowing the features, she would probably stick with what she’s got.