Immigration

On Monday, my economics class was canceled, but we didn't know so we went there and then found out. It was okay, though, because we were going to go out to eat anyways after class and we got to talk to Josh, a grad student in econ from Alabama for a while, which is always informative. I asked him about getting the reentry permit to leave Japan and come back without violating your visa, and he said that it took like two hours when he did it and that it was a pretty grim office.

I decided to go after history today, and I was going to take the train, but then I looked at a map and decided to just ride my bike. Josh had given fairly good instructions from Chiba Station so I just rode my bike there (it was actually closer to the university than Inage is, I think) and followed the monorail east to the first station. Given the rave reviews Josh had given the immigration office, I was expecting something utterly decrepit, so I was surprised to see that the waiting room was not too bad. It was dingy by Japanese standards, but all the vinyl benches were intact and I only waited about 20 minutes - there were 4 people ahead of me by number when I got there. Once it was my turn, the guy gave me a form to fill out and a thing to go take to the post office in the basement to pay, so I filled out the form and then headed downstairs, where a policeman (I don't know why, but I think half the times I've been to a post office, I've been greeted by a rather eldery policeman who asks me what I need and directs me where to stand.) steered me to the sign that said the equivilent of please wait here (I was the only person in the office besides him and the teller, so I think I could have figured out to walk to the desk myself). I paid my 6000 yen and got a stamp (literally, I had to lick it) to stick onto my form that said I paid. Paying was remarkable only because I got a 2000 yen note (a $20 bill). Someone had said they were in the process of phasing them out and it was the first one I've seen the whole time I was here. Usually I get 4 1000 yens. (I took a picture of all the different ones I had, but I haven't got a 500 yen coin at the moment, and neither did my neighbor).

I went back up the escalator and gave the guy my completed forms and my passport and he told me to sit down and he did something and then called my name(much quicker than I had been expecting) and gave me my passport with a new piece of paper to turn in at immigration and a new sticker. All in all, I think I was there for about 45 minutes.

Riding my bike back was made considerably harder by the fact that there was a stiff breeze (okay, it was really windy) from the west... which is the direction I was going. Eventually I made it back to the dorm, though.

When I paid my rent I complained that the bug poison they had given me did not work and I got a bug bomb type thing. I had set it off in the morning, since it said to leave the room shut for 2 hours. I was surprised when I cameback that my room pretty much smelled like mint and there was no sign of the smoke that had started coming out of the thing in the morning. I had put all my bedding outside, so I checked that none of it had blown away and opened the door and then I went to get some food... I didn't feel like washing everything to cook. I never really liked curry when I was in Chicago, but I went to this curry restaurant last week and it was so good. Honestly, Japanese curry rice is half a plate of rice with gravy (with a very small amount of tiny pieces of meat and potato and peas) and some sort of breaded and deep fried meat or something. I had pork roast with it. Because my room was still theoretically airing out,I took it back and sat in the meeting room staring aimlessly at the tv. I got to see the very end of what I can only assume wasa very long movie I had seen the beginning of at the immigration office. It was some sort of dramedy set in a hospital. While I was eating, some guy from China came in and started talking to me in English. The only problem being he didn't really speak English at all. He said some stuff to me in Japanese and then vanished to reappear with a Chinese-English dictionary and I think he was just flipping through it and making up sentences with words and waiting for me to pronounce them correctly for him.

Anyways, I am going to go to sleep soon - I stayed up until almost ten last night and I was exhausted this morning.