Well, ordering started in Tokyo today. It was a pain–they were on sale for three hours only, as sign-ups started at 5pm and ended at 8pm. As it happened, I had a school activity that started at 6pm and ended after 7, right smack in that window. I tried to stop by a Shinjuku SoftBank store on the way home, but they were packed–the shop was filled up and people were waiting out on the street, despite moderate rainfall. I took express trains back to my local station but could not get to the shop before closing time–still, they let me in and gave me a slip of paper to sign, and told me to come back the next morning at 10 am.

Looks like there were lines all over Tokyo. The iPhone 4 will not only bring in lots of new customers, but tons of old ones like me–especially since SoftBank is essentially giving away the 16 GB phone for free. People with 3G contracts will have no reason not to get an upgrade, unless they need to leave SoftBank for some reason.

The Shinjuku person who told me the day before that there would be a 300 yen surcharge for keeping the same number appeared to be mistaken–the Hibarigaoka shop sales person had never heard of that, and I am hearing reports from others that they did not have the surcharge applied. Strange.

Reports are from all over the world that iPhone 4 pre-ordering is huge. Lines everywhere, servers crashing from the overload. SoftBank computers went down as well yesterday. Looks like Apple has a hit with this phone.

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Addenda: Signed up for one. No 300-yen surcharge, but they did tell me that my remaining 3 months paying off my iPhone 3G would be without the 1,830-yen discount, which will end up costing me an extra 1,530 yen a month for three months–about $50 all told. Meh. No biggie.

The lines, continue, by the way–I stopped by two SoftBank stores tonight to see if I could ask whether my 3G could still be used as a second phone on the same account (no, it can’t–I found out later by phone), but both offices were filled with people waiting to sign up for the iPhone 4.