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Yumi's Massive Japan Attack: On Japanese Bureaucracy |
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Written by Yumi
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Thursday, 19 April 2007 |
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Getting to Japan was easy.
Two plane rides and one comfortable Sakura Lounge after leaving SeaTac International Airport in the morning of Tuesday, April 3rd, I arrived at Narita International Airport on Wednesday the 4th, safely. The man at the immigration desk didn't even say anything to me as he slapped a sticker on my passport. But as it turned out, that was a very bad thing. Thursday morning those of us who arrived sometime during the previous day headed to the municipal office of Fuchu-shi to apply for our resident alien registration cards. They're commonly referred to as "Gaijin Cards" by the foreigners living in Japan. Anyway, I wasn't able to submit all of my paperwork to the office. The immigration officer who let me into the country the day before didn't notice the college student visa on the next page of my passport, apparently. He let me enter the country with a temporary visitor visa.
Um. That's not good.
It caused many problems, and eventually one of the administrative office workers went with me to Tachikawa to the immigration bureau's office, where we ran into a line of 91 people. This was all to fix a sticker that had no place being on my passport. It was the fault of the immigration officer, but we still had the joy of fixing it. Luckily, the JLC staff member who accompanied me managed to talk to a free immigration worker, and we didn't have to wait the 3+ hours it would have taken otherwise. But our next mission was to make it back to the Fuchu municipal office before 5:00, when everything seems to close.
While waiting for the next bus to come and take us back to Tachikawa station, which was strange, since generally buses aren't late in Japan, we decided to flag down a taxi. The driver took pity on us, and gave us quite a discount, and managed to get us to the office about half an hour before closing time, so I was still able to apply for my resident card and health insurance on the same day as everyone else I had met in the morning.
The train back to the school didn't work so well, as we boarded the wrong one, only noticing 4 stops later. Once we made it back to the University, the office made a copy of my passport again, but with the new sticker, so as to have all accurate information for their records.
It was about 7:30 then. I went to start that morning at 9:00. Everyone else had the day free after about noon.
That's fine, though. As a couple of my friends here have pointed out later in the evening while we laughed off the day over some katsu curry, this first burst of bad luck means that everything will most likely run smoothly from here on out. I can relax knowing that I've already experienced the bad. |
