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tammaiyaOkay, dudes, I'm going to do this in stages because I have kind of a lot to say and I don't have to do anything tonight so I've got time to kill by regaling you with my first few days of Japan-ness. Um, warning to people who can't tolerate extreme stupidity, you might want to SKIP this post because it is filled with me being an enormous idiot. Like, you will not even believe how epically I fail at international travel; it's frightening. Certain parts of this tale of woe would by themselves be enought to warrant extreme mockery, but together they pretty much defy belief. Please don't mock me, though. I'm serious, it sucked enough going through this and I already know how monumentally stupid I am, so I don't need it rubbed in.
Okay, so I am a TERMINALLY absent-minded person. I thought I had everything, which as it turned out was critically wrong. I had ALMOST everything... except the most important stuff. We were already a little late when we were leaving because I left my travel socks in the house and noticed when we'd already driven around the corner (I'd started to put them on earlier and my mum was like NO WAIT UNTIL SYDNEY so I'd set them down on the computer desk and then... left them there), and then dad and I stood in the international luggage check in for about five minutes or ten minutes until they told us it wasn't open on Saturday, come to the normal domestic check-in and they'd do the international customs check there. Okay. Keeping that in mind.
They ask for my passport and I realise I'd left my travel belt on the computer desk too. Because it was uncomfortable and I didn't want to wear it until I had to, which turned out to be a MEGA ENORMOUS MISTAKE. Because it had my passport, my japanese yen, the note from my endocrinologist, and... supposedly the document I thought was my visa. (TWO points of mistake, here, take note.)
At this point it's 5 past 6 and my plane is at 6.50. I had to check in by like, 6.25. (Or so I thought, it seems I had about 10 extra minutes leeway.) The airport is on the edges of Canberra, which is not a big city and my house is in the centre but NEVERTHELESS. My dad must have broken all KINDS of speed laws, though, because he got back with my travel belt at pretty much 6.25 on the dot. So I had my passport in time! Hooray!
But then he asked for my visa.
And the document wasn't in the travel belt.
JESUS. CHRIST.
But I did have a photocopy of it-- which was the REASON it wasn't in the travel belt, I'd left it on the scanner/printer/photocopier at home. *facepalm* And he was like, yeah, that's fine-- uh, you know this isn't a visa, right?
... WHAT?!
Yes, that's right: I don't have a visa. All I had was a certificate to say I was ELIGIBLE to get a visa, which I'd know if I'd ever properly read the damn thing, but since the application and the document I got back were both all mixed up with the documents for my uni-- because they handled the certificate bit-- I assumed it WAS the visa and didn't give it more than a cursory glance. I haven't been overseas before (not counting the time when I was 5 and went to China), so I have no idea what a visa looks like or what the process generally entailed. I thought that was IT. And it says on it fairly clearly that that's NOT it, but I didn't read it. I was much more concerned about getting the document for my medication in time, which I now realise was a fatal error.
Anyway, Australians can stay in Japan for 90 days with no permanent visa, so they let me on the plane despite my lack of visa. I'd been so busy stressing out that I didn't really say goodbye properly and it didn't hit me until the moment I was going through the boarding gate and suddenly my mum starts crying. ^^; But the fail doesn't end here. I had three bags, two of which were enormous, and a bunch of jackets, and my aunt had been carrying my handbag. My family were like, you have all your bags? Good, okay, bye! and I get on the plane, and I was stowing stuff in the overhead locker when suddenly I'm like, OH FUCK, WHERE IS MY HANDBAG-- it being the smallest and least noticeable bag. I panic and go to ask the crew if I can quickly get off and grab it (I was pretty sure my family had to have noticed and would be in the area around the gate) and they were going to let me because the plane was actually running early, but then one of the stewardesses came on board with it ANYWAY so it didn't matter. Crisis averted.
I arrive in Sydney, my siblings pick me up and make faces of disbelief at my utter idiocy. We ate dinner together and Rohan tried out a deep-fried mars bar, which, well, deeply weird. He said it was actually not bad. But it looked kinda gross, like a fish stick gone wrong.
Also, the porn was very prominently displayed at the newsagent. What? Who even knows.
So I managed to get to the international check point without further incident, although I had to stop and fill out a form which I hadn't completed yet, and then I stopped and helped an Israeli rabi who asked me for help fill out most of his until a woman who spoke fluent English AND Hebrew came along and did the rest. That was a fairly random moment, but interesting.
When I went through the security screening I almost dropped my boarding pass and passport, so I shoved them in my pocket and continued on to the duty free shops, which I stared at for a while before going to exchange some money. I had AU$300 which I was intending to change, but the difference between buying and selling was astronomically RIDICULOUS-- like, 15-20 yen-- so I only changed about $100 in the hopes that I could find a better exchange rate once I got to Japan. It wasn't urgent; I already had 20000 yen on hand and the $105.30 changed for 8000.
Except then when I was putting my travel socks on I had a huge freak attack where I was like OH JESUS FUCK I HAVE LOST MY PASSPORT AND BOARDING PASS I AM SO FUCKED and flailed around searching frantically through my bag before I remembered to check my pockets. This isn't the LAST time something of this nature would happen. I am far too highly strung and forgetful to take international trips, obviously. But at least I hadn't actually lost them.
So I managed to get on the plane okay, although it was a fairly long trek to my seat with my enormous hand luggage and it was quite depressing going past all the business class seats. I never realised how HUGE international aircraft were, and I was right at the back of the plane. I was lucky, though, because I ended up sitting next to this really nice Japanese woman from New Zealand who was going to visit her mother in Yokohama.
The flight itself wasn't too bad. I didn't suffer the sinus hell I was dreading, my dregs of my flu behaved themselves aside from incredibly painfully chafed nose/mouth towards the end and getting a little dry from the recycled air, and all in all things weren't too bad. I watched Juno at the beginning of the flight, which was really funny. What WAS crap was that I was already really tired and I couldn't sleep. Which was kind of a lot like hell on a 9 hour flight. At one point in the wee hours I went to go get a drink from the kitchen and hung out with the crew in there for a bit and ate an apple (they had a whole crate) which was really delicious. Of course, right when I went to swallow a pill with the water turbulence started and I spilled it on the floor. ~_~; At least I didn't spill it on ME. But that brought the chatting to an end, because I had to go sit down and put my belt on. It wasn't terrible turbulence, but still.
Of course, and you had to know this was coming, I suffered one moment of epic fail during the flight, and that was at about 4am-- um. 4am my body time, 3am Sydney time (Daylight Savings ended WHILE I WAS IN THE AIR), 2am Tokyo time-- when I got paranoid about my bloodsugar being high, decided to check it and COULD NOT FIND MY TESTER. It was in my bag on the floor, as far as I knew, and the bag was unzipped in the middle (it was too full) and had been pushed around a bit by my feet when I was trying to sleep, so when I couldn't find the tester I assumed it had fallen on the floor somewhere. What followed was about twenty minutes of me frantically searching on the floor and trying to look under the feet/blanket of this woman sleeping in the seat behind me, first by the light of my ipod and then, when I got increasingly desperate, by turning on my overhead light. Both the woman sitting next to me and another Japanese woman across the aisle got worried and helped me look. And it turned out that it was in the OUTSIDE, ZIPPED POCKET of my bag. I don't even KNOW how that happened. I don't remember putting it there, I've never put it there before, and I didn't even know it fit there, but I was monumentally relieved to find it and felt really bad about being such a moronic douche for the trillionth time in the past 12 hours. Clearly I am NOT CUT OUT for this shit.
After all this, the worst part was still to come, and that was when I arrived at Japanese customs. You know. WITHOUT A VISA. By this point I was totally exhausted and completely stressed out, and then this woman takes me into this small room to talk at me in rapid Japanese about my visa situation. It's a miracle I understood her, actually, given how tired I was. But I was TERRIFIED that they were going to, like, send me straight the fuck back to Australia or something, jesus. The woman obviously couldn't get over my stupidity because, she pointed out, it said very clearly on the certificate that it wasn't enough to enter the country and according to Japanese law...
Yeah. I couldn't believe my stupidity either, for what it was worth. *sigh*
So eventually I had to change my entry form to say I was only staying for 90 days and I got a temporary visa which I will have to change. Mum has mailed my certificate of eligibility-- the one I left in Australia, making this all SO MUCH WORSE-- here by express post. My current situation is kind of fucked up, because I can stay here but it'll take one to three months to change my visa status and I can't work or pretty much do anything with the temporary visa I've got. It's even hard just to get a mobile phone, and I suspect forget getting a bank account, which is kind of an enormous problem, since that's where my rent is supposed to be taken from. *headdesk* I am paying a LOT for being such a monumental moron. Sigh. Thankfully I don't have to pay rent until the beginning of June, when I pay the first three months as a lump sum. That gives me some time to actually GET the visa, although it's still a little iffy, because that's only TWO months. >< I guess I'll have to talk to the uni.
Moving on from the visa, the baggage pickup had already ended at the carousel which caused me further brief panic, already on the verge of tears over the visa thing, but thankfully I just had to ask some guys and my japanese was the one thing that didn't fail me. It was on the other side of the room and I got it safely. And then they accepted my urgently faxed medication certificate and let me and my medicine pass. The first thing that had gone right this whole time. Phew.
And that, I think, is a good place to stop for now, because I've spent a VERY long time getting this far, and that was where I emerged from the security checkpoint and met Kaori in person for the first time. I'll continue on with this... later, maybe this evening or maybe tomorrow. (It's currently 7.45pm and I'm staaaarving and don't have a source of dinner yet, so I have to do something about that now.)
Okay, so I am a TERMINALLY absent-minded person. I thought I had everything, which as it turned out was critically wrong. I had ALMOST everything... except the most important stuff. We were already a little late when we were leaving because I left my travel socks in the house and noticed when we'd already driven around the corner (I'd started to put them on earlier and my mum was like NO WAIT UNTIL SYDNEY so I'd set them down on the computer desk and then... left them there), and then dad and I stood in the international luggage check in for about five minutes or ten minutes until they told us it wasn't open on Saturday, come to the normal domestic check-in and they'd do the international customs check there. Okay. Keeping that in mind.
They ask for my passport and I realise I'd left my travel belt on the computer desk too. Because it was uncomfortable and I didn't want to wear it until I had to, which turned out to be a MEGA ENORMOUS MISTAKE. Because it had my passport, my japanese yen, the note from my endocrinologist, and... supposedly the document I thought was my visa. (TWO points of mistake, here, take note.)
At this point it's 5 past 6 and my plane is at 6.50. I had to check in by like, 6.25. (Or so I thought, it seems I had about 10 extra minutes leeway.) The airport is on the edges of Canberra, which is not a big city and my house is in the centre but NEVERTHELESS. My dad must have broken all KINDS of speed laws, though, because he got back with my travel belt at pretty much 6.25 on the dot. So I had my passport in time! Hooray!
But then he asked for my visa.
And the document wasn't in the travel belt.
JESUS. CHRIST.
But I did have a photocopy of it-- which was the REASON it wasn't in the travel belt, I'd left it on the scanner/printer/photocopier at home. *facepalm* And he was like, yeah, that's fine-- uh, you know this isn't a visa, right?
... WHAT?!
Yes, that's right: I don't have a visa. All I had was a certificate to say I was ELIGIBLE to get a visa, which I'd know if I'd ever properly read the damn thing, but since the application and the document I got back were both all mixed up with the documents for my uni-- because they handled the certificate bit-- I assumed it WAS the visa and didn't give it more than a cursory glance. I haven't been overseas before (not counting the time when I was 5 and went to China), so I have no idea what a visa looks like or what the process generally entailed. I thought that was IT. And it says on it fairly clearly that that's NOT it, but I didn't read it. I was much more concerned about getting the document for my medication in time, which I now realise was a fatal error.
Anyway, Australians can stay in Japan for 90 days with no permanent visa, so they let me on the plane despite my lack of visa. I'd been so busy stressing out that I didn't really say goodbye properly and it didn't hit me until the moment I was going through the boarding gate and suddenly my mum starts crying. ^^; But the fail doesn't end here. I had three bags, two of which were enormous, and a bunch of jackets, and my aunt had been carrying my handbag. My family were like, you have all your bags? Good, okay, bye! and I get on the plane, and I was stowing stuff in the overhead locker when suddenly I'm like, OH FUCK, WHERE IS MY HANDBAG-- it being the smallest and least noticeable bag. I panic and go to ask the crew if I can quickly get off and grab it (I was pretty sure my family had to have noticed and would be in the area around the gate) and they were going to let me because the plane was actually running early, but then one of the stewardesses came on board with it ANYWAY so it didn't matter. Crisis averted.
I arrive in Sydney, my siblings pick me up and make faces of disbelief at my utter idiocy. We ate dinner together and Rohan tried out a deep-fried mars bar, which, well, deeply weird. He said it was actually not bad. But it looked kinda gross, like a fish stick gone wrong.
Also, the porn was very prominently displayed at the newsagent. What? Who even knows.
So I managed to get to the international check point without further incident, although I had to stop and fill out a form which I hadn't completed yet, and then I stopped and helped an Israeli rabi who asked me for help fill out most of his until a woman who spoke fluent English AND Hebrew came along and did the rest. That was a fairly random moment, but interesting.
When I went through the security screening I almost dropped my boarding pass and passport, so I shoved them in my pocket and continued on to the duty free shops, which I stared at for a while before going to exchange some money. I had AU$300 which I was intending to change, but the difference between buying and selling was astronomically RIDICULOUS-- like, 15-20 yen-- so I only changed about $100 in the hopes that I could find a better exchange rate once I got to Japan. It wasn't urgent; I already had 20000 yen on hand and the $105.30 changed for 8000.
Except then when I was putting my travel socks on I had a huge freak attack where I was like OH JESUS FUCK I HAVE LOST MY PASSPORT AND BOARDING PASS I AM SO FUCKED and flailed around searching frantically through my bag before I remembered to check my pockets. This isn't the LAST time something of this nature would happen. I am far too highly strung and forgetful to take international trips, obviously. But at least I hadn't actually lost them.
So I managed to get on the plane okay, although it was a fairly long trek to my seat with my enormous hand luggage and it was quite depressing going past all the business class seats. I never realised how HUGE international aircraft were, and I was right at the back of the plane. I was lucky, though, because I ended up sitting next to this really nice Japanese woman from New Zealand who was going to visit her mother in Yokohama.
The flight itself wasn't too bad. I didn't suffer the sinus hell I was dreading, my dregs of my flu behaved themselves aside from incredibly painfully chafed nose/mouth towards the end and getting a little dry from the recycled air, and all in all things weren't too bad. I watched Juno at the beginning of the flight, which was really funny. What WAS crap was that I was already really tired and I couldn't sleep. Which was kind of a lot like hell on a 9 hour flight. At one point in the wee hours I went to go get a drink from the kitchen and hung out with the crew in there for a bit and ate an apple (they had a whole crate) which was really delicious. Of course, right when I went to swallow a pill with the water turbulence started and I spilled it on the floor. ~_~; At least I didn't spill it on ME. But that brought the chatting to an end, because I had to go sit down and put my belt on. It wasn't terrible turbulence, but still.
Of course, and you had to know this was coming, I suffered one moment of epic fail during the flight, and that was at about 4am-- um. 4am my body time, 3am Sydney time (Daylight Savings ended WHILE I WAS IN THE AIR), 2am Tokyo time-- when I got paranoid about my bloodsugar being high, decided to check it and COULD NOT FIND MY TESTER. It was in my bag on the floor, as far as I knew, and the bag was unzipped in the middle (it was too full) and had been pushed around a bit by my feet when I was trying to sleep, so when I couldn't find the tester I assumed it had fallen on the floor somewhere. What followed was about twenty minutes of me frantically searching on the floor and trying to look under the feet/blanket of this woman sleeping in the seat behind me, first by the light of my ipod and then, when I got increasingly desperate, by turning on my overhead light. Both the woman sitting next to me and another Japanese woman across the aisle got worried and helped me look. And it turned out that it was in the OUTSIDE, ZIPPED POCKET of my bag. I don't even KNOW how that happened. I don't remember putting it there, I've never put it there before, and I didn't even know it fit there, but I was monumentally relieved to find it and felt really bad about being such a moronic douche for the trillionth time in the past 12 hours. Clearly I am NOT CUT OUT for this shit.
After all this, the worst part was still to come, and that was when I arrived at Japanese customs. You know. WITHOUT A VISA. By this point I was totally exhausted and completely stressed out, and then this woman takes me into this small room to talk at me in rapid Japanese about my visa situation. It's a miracle I understood her, actually, given how tired I was. But I was TERRIFIED that they were going to, like, send me straight the fuck back to Australia or something, jesus. The woman obviously couldn't get over my stupidity because, she pointed out, it said very clearly on the certificate that it wasn't enough to enter the country and according to Japanese law...
Yeah. I couldn't believe my stupidity either, for what it was worth. *sigh*
So eventually I had to change my entry form to say I was only staying for 90 days and I got a temporary visa which I will have to change. Mum has mailed my certificate of eligibility-- the one I left in Australia, making this all SO MUCH WORSE-- here by express post. My current situation is kind of fucked up, because I can stay here but it'll take one to three months to change my visa status and I can't work or pretty much do anything with the temporary visa I've got. It's even hard just to get a mobile phone, and I suspect forget getting a bank account, which is kind of an enormous problem, since that's where my rent is supposed to be taken from. *headdesk* I am paying a LOT for being such a monumental moron. Sigh. Thankfully I don't have to pay rent until the beginning of June, when I pay the first three months as a lump sum. That gives me some time to actually GET the visa, although it's still a little iffy, because that's only TWO months. >< I guess I'll have to talk to the uni.
Moving on from the visa, the baggage pickup had already ended at the carousel which caused me further brief panic, already on the verge of tears over the visa thing, but thankfully I just had to ask some guys and my japanese was the one thing that didn't fail me. It was on the other side of the room and I got it safely. And then they accepted my urgently faxed medication certificate and let me and my medicine pass. The first thing that had gone right this whole time. Phew.
And that, I think, is a good place to stop for now, because I've spent a VERY long time getting this far, and that was where I emerged from the security checkpoint and met Kaori in person for the first time. I'll continue on with this... later, maybe this evening or maybe tomorrow. (It's currently 7.45pm and I'm staaaarving and don't have a source of dinner yet, so I have to do something about that now.)
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 03:26 pm (UTC)But the thing is? If I ever go overseas, THAT'LL BE ME. Don't worry, you're not alone! XD
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 01:02 am (UTC)Anyway, as I was saying: my friend Tristan was like, "I don't understand. You're so smart! you do well in law! HOW CAN YOU BE SO DUMB?" and I said something along the lines of, "Intelligence and common sense are two entirely separate things, and when they were handing out the brains, they put all of my eggs in one basket." XD
People with no common sense, unite! Only not, because then we'd all die from our own stupidity. *g*
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-10 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-10 02:22 am (UTC)But most things are turning out better. I've got a mobile phone now (as you've heard XD), I can withdraw money from my Australian bank account and pay my rent directly so not having a bank account isn't a major insurmountable obstacle, and I won't get kicked out of the country until July. Which gives me some time to get a visa. Although my mum's been talking to the embassy in Canberra and it might actually be quicker and easier for me to come home for a week and do it that way. (though not cheaper)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-10 02:22 am (UTC)