Adrift in Japan

Wrapping Up

Well, it's hard to believe it's been a year already. Posting has been light-to-non-existent here over the past few months so people aren't really coming by any more but I thought it was important to try to wrap things up a little.

We're going home on Friday (moving out Thursday) which is exactly a year from when we arrived. Today we took care of most of the "official stuff" we have to do to leave, and it's surprising considering how much trouble everything was to set up that it was so easy to undo it all. We went to my bank and deposited all of our small change, which they used the automatic counter to tally up (for a small fee). Then we paid the bills we had with us, and closed that account. Next we headed off to NTT DoCoMo where we cancelled our contracts, had our phones erased and turned them in, and paid off our bills plus our early cancellation fee for the contract. Finally, we went to Citibank where we managed to get them to give us yen for paying bills and settling up we have yet to do plus the rest in dollar value traveler's checks. Apparently if you want dollar cash instead you have to pay a handling fee, and who needs that?

Closing up is apparently easy. It was the ramping up that was hard.

Of course, there's still the packing and the cleaning and the search for a new apartment once we're back in California...

Resident Aliens

It is official! We are now resident aliens of Japan. We went down to the city ward office yesterday and picked up our “Certificates of Alien Registration”. The cards themselves have a few quirks. Under the label nationality it has Kanji for the US but right under that it says San Francisco. For place of birth my card says Royal Oak the city in Michigan where I was born but Michelle’s just says Wisconsin. The other interesting section is the householder section. On my card it says my name while on Michelle’s card it says me. This relates backs to the different types of official registers of residents kept in Japan.

Being resident aliens opens up a wealth of new possibilities for us. We will now be able to get cell phones and think about buying a car. Getting the cell phones will be easy. It is just a matter of deciding which carrier: NTT DoCoMo, AU, or J-PHONE, we want and then deciding on the billing plan and phones. I used to think cell phone billing plans were complex in the US but in Japan they are even more so. While you generally do not pay for incoming calls there are different fees for calling different types of phones (your network, other networks, and land lines) as well as different times of days.

Buying a car will be much more complex. First of all you need a registered family stamp/chop. Next in Japan, a car must pass a rigorous and expensive inspection every two years (three years if the car is brand new). We have been told that it costs around $1000 US. Since we will only be here one year that means we will have to pay the inspection cost up front when we buy the car or if we buy a car with one year left we will have to factor it into the resale value. We will probably not deal much further with the car question till we get back from our trip to Malaysia at the end of September.

Banking at CitiBank

This afternoon we went with Yukino-san to set up a bank account. Since Japanese banks don't offer joint accounts, Matt was going to open ours since he's the official head of household. I really didn't need to be there, but I figured I'd tag along anyway. We went down to a city office and picked up forms for each of us which are stand-ins for when we get our official alien registration cards; I think they just have the same information our registration cards will have, except we aren't picking those up for another two weeks. While we were waiting for the forms to be ready, Yukino-san took us to Tokyu Hands which was recommended to me today over IM by my friend Chris who lived in Japan a few years ago. It's got an interesting variety of products, from do-it-yourself paints to sofas and stationery, but we didn't pick anything up. Afterwards, we headed over to CitiBank to open an account. Although we thought about using Hokkaido Bank because it's in more places and has more ATMs we settled on CitiBank because they offer online banking in English.

We arrived at the bank around 2:30 pm, before the bank officially closes at 3, but our adventure was just beginning. Although Yukino-san had called ahead and they had said they speak English, their communication skills in English were sadly lacking. Thank goodness Yukino-san was with us. We picked up the info and forms for opening an account and filled them out while we waited for someone to help us. Eventually our number was called, and we were taken not to the desks in front of us, but to one in the back, with someone who had his own cubicle. You might think that getting your own cubicle means you're more senior and therefore more competent, but I'm not sure that was the case here. Certainly he didn't seem to have much experience dealing with foreigners. The biggest challenge was that we didn't yet have our alien registration cards. The man helping us consulted with a woman working there, and then both of them had a discussion with Yukino-san. She's a little slip of a woman, but she managed to get to them by saying she had been told on the phone that the forms we had obtained would be accepted instead, and that we were not just going to go home. She didn't sound fierce when she said it, but it worked better than the most forceful yelling would have. We continued to sit in front of his desk while the two CitiBank workers went off; when they returned it turned out they had called their headquarters and been told it was all right to go ahead.

So, then they started to process Matt's application, but every time something needed to be filled out, it seemed that our man had to call the lady back over to confirm with her. Then, Yukino-san asked about getting a second ATM card, so I can also get money out of the account. It's not hard to get a second card, but it does cost 1050 yen, and they had to look at my alien registration form. Aaaah, those pesky forms. Mine says my status is "Dependent" but it doesn't say upon whom I am dependent or that I am Matt's wife, so we ended up having to use the last name argument... "See? It says 'Potts' here, which is the same as his last name." There were frequent discussion and a lot of "Ah, so desu ka," and large pauses during which both people disappeared to make photocopies of our passports or to do who knows what, perhaps to complain that they were still working and it was already after three o'clock, or to wonder how it was their bad luck to get stuck with the unreasonable foreigners. (Once again, thank goodness Yukino-san was there) There was a lot more hemming and hawing in Japanese, but in the end it worked out.

It's taking a lot shorter time to describe what happened than it felt when we were there. We didn't end up walking out of the bank until just after 4 pm, having made a small cash deposit and receiving our welcome packet. Back at the office, Matt's successfully logged in to our online banking, so it looks like it's working. The next step we want to do is to verify this new bank account with PayPal if we can, so I can use my American PayPal account to pay Matt. It looks like this will be cheapest and most efficient way to transfer money from the US to Japan.

First Impressions

We're here! All the travel went remarkably smoothly, even with almost an hour long wait in the immigration line at Narita airport. All 6 of our bags were loaded on the plane in SF, and waiting for us on luggage carts at the baggage claim just in front of customs. We wheeled the bags over to the domestic check-in, where they told us they might not be able to put our skis on the plane, but in the end there was no problem at all. A professor's wife picked us up in her van and brought us back to the Hokkaido University campus where we met up with her husband Kohyama-san and they took us to our new home!

Our apartment is thankfully on the first floor, so we didn't have to haul the heavy bags up many stairs. The place is quite nice, complete with a little vestibule area for leaving shoes and coats. Inside it has a living room, small kitchen, washer/dryer, bathroom, smaller bedroom with bunk beds and one desk, and a larger bedroom with two twin beds pushed together so it's like a king size bed. It's actually a great size for the two of us, so I think we will be quite comfortable. Kohyama-san and his wife gave us a little orientation to our place and helped us settle in, and then left us alone for the evening. By this time, we were pretty tired, but Matt went out to the store to get a little food for the morning, and I hunted through our things to get out our bedsheets and pillows. The place came with some packaged sheets and things, but we brought some of our own for that "touch of home," and, well, frankly, they're just nicer. Before hitting the sack, I cleaned up from the flight and thankfully the water pressure in the shower is fantastic. Low water pressure is one thing that really drives me nuts.

To me the bed feels almost as hard as sleeping on the floor, although we actually slept pretty well. We're thinking about getting a futon or something to put on top of the mattress for a little additional padding. After a little poking around the apartment, we have a little list of things we'd like to get for the place, including trash cans, a bath mat, sharp kitchen knives and possibly slipcovers for the sofas.

I'm wondering though - what is it about Asian homes that they all have a similar scent, sort of like that of light mold? Is it the laundry detergent? The humidity? Whatever it is, I've never liked that smell, not in Singapore, or Malaysia, or now in my own home here. It makes me wish I had brought some Febreeze or some Glade plug-ins or something, to freshen the place up. The closets also have a smell to them, so we are hoping to find some drawer liners or something before we put our clothes in the dresser.

The people in the lab here have been great so far - admittedly it's just the first day but it bodes well. Yukino-san and another person drove us around to the local ward office and to immigration so we are all set with our application for alien residence permits and with our multiple-reentry visas (which will spare us the long foreign passport immigration line next time). I couldn't believe how smoothly it went, albeit probably because we were in tow of someone who could actually speak Japanese. Another guy in the lab went to our apartment to meet up with the NTT man to try to get our internet connection set up, but that looks like it's going to be a longer process than we'd hoped. They actually needed to request the building plans in order to figure something out. So until then, we'll be posting from the office only.

So far, other than the humidity and the strange smell in our apartment, we seem to be settling in well. Even the humidity is not so bad as long as you're sitting down. It's only when you walk around that you feel like you might be drowning. Or, in my case, it's because I tried to use the buttons on the toilet and wasn't sitting far enough back in the seat, so instead of the stream of water coming up and hitting me in the butt, it sprayed all over my back. Thankfully none of the Japanese people noticed, but Matt laughed when I told him. I'm a little nervous about trying the automatic spray buttons ever again.

It looks like the only thing that's going to be an irritant on a daily basis is the fact that everyone here seems to think I'm Japanese, from the flight attendants on the plane, to people in the lab. It's awkward to have them speak to me in Japanese and me just looking blankly back at them. I'm thinking when that happens they are more likely to think I'm just stupid than that I don't understand Japanese (ie, that I'm American). If only I were Caucasian like Matt! Then they'd just assume up front I don't speak Japanese. When I learn a few words, it will simply be expected I know more. When Matt says a few words in Japanese, it's like a miracle to them and they titter and smile.

Less Visa Blues

On Friday we found out from my Japanese counterpart that our Certificates of Eligibility had finally been issued. They were then sent by Express Post on Friday. We spent the weekend tracking our package as it arrived in San Francisco and cleared customs. Then on Monday we received a slip in our mailbox saying that a deliver attempt had been made for an express package from Japan. We were a bit irritated since both of us had been home all day and the post person had never ringed up to say there was a package.

Thinking our certificates had arrived we planned on picking them up from the post office on Tuesday and heading down to the consulate to get the visas. I prepared the necessary documents – visa form, passport, and pictures and we headed out to the post office. We got the letter and it turned out to be my user name and password for our Japanese ISP, ASAHI Net. We now had no idea where our certificates were. We headed home to get our tracking number and plan our next move. I first called the post office to try to figure out where our certificates might be. The tracking information indicated it was out for delivery and the person at the post office said that meant it would be delivered by noon. Even before he could finish saying that the call waiting beeped and it was someone needing to be buzzed into our building. Sure enough it was the post person with our certificates.

Relieved we headed down to the consulate which is located in the business district where parking is $2.50 per 15 minutes. It was 11:30 by the time we got there and the consulate is closed for lunch between 12-1 so we hurried into the building. Our first hurdle was getting a visit pass. All person entering 50 Fremont must show ID. Michelle’s two part last name though confused them and the badge they gave her had her last name badly mangled. We headed up the wrong bank of elevators but after a quick turn around found the consulate.

We got right up to the window and presented our forms. I had taken the time to fill out the PDF forms on the computer and printed them out. However, we soon learned that there was a particular way they had to be filled out. Lines could not be left blank but needed to be filled out with “n/a”. Michelle does not have an occupation since she is freelancing. For our sponsor I put “supervisor” which was sequentially changed by her from “employer” to “sponsor.” Finally, we got in a mild disagreement on how to spell my “sponsor’s” name. He spells it with an “h” and she said it is just not spelled that way though he has published dozens of scientific papers spelling it that way. In any case we did not rock the boat and in about 10 minutes had the documents filled out correctly. We were told they would be ready on Thursday morning but to call first. There could be one small technical problem that they needed to work out with the central office in Japan but I will save that for another entry.

In the meantime I bought our plane tickets and we will leave exactly two weeks from today to the hour.

Visa Blues

It has been 74 days since we began the process of trying to get our visas. To give a little background to get a working visa for Japan one must get Certificate of Eligibility. The Certificate of Eligibility must be obtained by your sponsor in Japan from the local immigration office. Once you have a Certificate of Eligibility you still must fill out a visa application and take the Certificate of Eligibility to the local Consulate to get the visa issued. Our odyssey began on May 16 with an email from my sponsor’s secretary outlining what she needed to obtain our Certificate of Eligibility. The request sounded simple enough – a copy of the inside pages of our passport, two passport photos of each of us, copies of our diplomas, and documentation of my financial support while we are in Japan. After some fiddling with the digital camera and Photoshop I had the photos. Copies of the diplomas and a faxed signed copy of my award letter from the NSF were also easy enough to obtain. The passport took a bit more time as mine was about to expire and Michelle needed to change her name. By Memorial Day we had our new passports in hand after paying for expedited service. It is a bit odd though to have the place of issue in your passport be the National Passport Center. By June 4 all our documentation had made it to Japan and we thought it would be a few days until our Certificate of Eligibility was issued. Then the fun began. On June 11 I got an email asking for a copy of our marriage license. I quickly faxed that off. On June 26 I learned that the immigration bureau needed original copies of our marriage license and award letter. After rounding up everything and sending it off our application was finally submitted on July 11 and here we sit today still waiting hoping to leave around one month from today. Our fun is sure to continue even after we get the visa as it is a single entry one and we will have to go to the immigration bureau in Japan once we are there to make it multiple entry.
-Matthew