Finally, thank God
I made it home.
Basically, I should have been home three weeks ago. However, after walking out of the customs line and on down to the gate--my plane was supposed to take off in about 15 minutes--someone comes running after me yelling at me to wait, wait, wait, you need to come back for a minute. I stop, at this point fairly tense because, hello, I have a plane to catch. Turns out when I came back to Japan after spring break my landing permission sticker is only for 90 days, which obviously does not cover my four-month semester. Even though when I went through immigration when I got the stinking country I presented my visa, told the guy I was staying for four months, and he said okay, stamped my passport and let me go. Stupid me, I trusted that everything was fine and didn't check it again.
I get dragged into the immigration office, where I am told I am not allowed to leave the country, and must go to the Bureau of Immigration's main office the next day for an interview and other such things since I have overstayed and therefore broken the law, and after I finally obtain permission to go back to my home country I won't be allowed back to Japan for a year. It's really not a good feeling being told you're not allowed to go home. Especially when you're stuck in a place where it still takes some effort to even talk to someone. And then there's the fact that I have medical nonsense I need to deal with--in fact, I'm supposed to see a surgeon on the 25, the next day. But no, that's not going to happen.
So I end up having to get a hotel room in Narita, close to the airport, have to drag all my luggage out there, and make various phone calls--IES, home, the US consulate, and a few fellow IESers who are still in Japan. I have to be in Shinagawa at 8:00 the next day for my interview. If I don't show up, I'll be arrested. So I leave at five the next morning and make it within 15 minutes, after paying 1260 yen for a train ticket.
I'm nervous, but not too worried, really--the immigration officers at the airport have assured me that I will be able to do my interview in English and there's plenty of people around to help me out if I need it.
Riiiight. I think immigration is set up to make the experience as harrowing as possible. Someone directs me to get in line, so I do. When it's my turn, the guy fusses at me for not having my forms filled out. What forms, no one gave me any forms. So he hands me my papers, and tells me to go fill them out and then get in line. I go to fill them out, find there are no pens, and am told to go to a conbini and buy one. Okay... Finally, with my forms filled out, I get back in line, the guy takes my forms, asks me a few questions--all in Japanese--and then tells me to wait for my name to be called.
When my name is called, I get my fingerprints taken twice and a few headshots taken, with the instructions that I needed to take my glasses off and I wasn't allowed to smile. Then I was instructed to go back out and wait until I was called for my interview.
I was actually sort of looking forward to my interview, because then I could at least explain what went on, and that I had basically broken the law without actually realizing it. I hadn't tried to get away with something that I knew I wasn't supposed to. However, when I walked in, my interviewer told me I was required to complete the whole thing in Japanese. WHAT?! I tried explaining that I had been told that this would be done in English. The interviewer just looked at me and said, no, Japanese only. There wasn't even anyone there who spoke English. So what could I do? In my horribly simple Japanese, I did my best to explain what I thought was going on and what had happened in the interview. At least the guy was patient with me. I would have gone from nervous and worried to really pissed off if he hadn't been. Come on, it was FREAKING IMMIGRATION and you deal with foriegners every FREAKING DAY and you don't have anyone who speaks ENGLISH?! Come on! What kind of idiots are you?
Finally the interview ends. I am told I have to stay in Japan for three more weeks, surgery needed or no, and when my three weeks are up I have to come back to Immigration with a plane ticket to prove I am leaving the country and then I will receive my departure order. I'm given a sheet of paper saying that immigration knows I am here illegally, and I have all my papers in order, but I can still be arrested for being in the country illegally if an officer wishes to. Thanks, guys.
I move into the Kanda dorm for the next three weeks, deal with fun stuff like living on the fourth floor of building with no elevators and dragging all three of my suitcases the stairs by myself (which are damned heavy, since they're mostly full of books, and my foot really doesn't help much). I try to get permission to leave the country a little earlier, because if I wait the full three weeks, then I have only a week to deal with my foot, my teeth, and my eyes before I have to head back to Ole Miss. I even get Shin-san, one of the guys at IES, to talk to immigration for me since I lack the technical vocab to get me through such a conversation. Immigration says yes, they can grant me permission to leave earlier, but if they speed up the process that much I won't be allowed back in the country for five years, not just one.
I tell my parents I'm staying for my three weeks, thank you very much. Which, I'm not all that upset about staying for three weeks, except that I was planning on being home, I was looking forward to being home, and I had stuff I needed to do. I like to think I can handle a change in plans, but that's a pretty damn big change in plans and it threw me off a bit.
So I putt around Japan for my three weeks, see my other two kids off at the airport, get phone calls from my husband in Hokkaido. Do karaoke a couple times, spend three hours at King Arthur's with Jessica singing every song we could possibly think of. Normal Japan stuff.
Then I return to immigration on Friday to get my departure order, am hassled a bit because I have an e-ticket and not a physical one until finally another officer says no, no, that's fine, she can go. I am also questioned about my last name and my nationality. The guy cannot pronounce my last name, and then he looks at my passport suspiciously and tells me that my name does not sound American. I fight the urge to roll my eyes and tell him there IS no such thing as and "American-sounding" last name, but instead just tell him that part of my family is Portuguese. He finally lets me go.
I am about to leave when I hear a bit of Portuguese being spoken. Whoever's speaking it does not sound happy. Apparently it's a Brazilian chick who ran into the same problem I did three weeks ago--no one speaks her language here, and she speaks zilch Japanese. I offer to help her, and for the next thirty minutes I play translator. I'm not comfortable enough with either language to go directly from one to the other, so I had to think things out in English before I could put into the other. What a pain. But the girl seemed really grateful. I figured that after that, I'd filled my "be nice" quota for the day and if another guy grabbed my ass on the train, I was entitled to slap him across the face and not feel bad about it.
No one grabs me on the train, thankfully, although some African dude does hit on me. But then he asked me if I was married. I answered yes, and I have three kids, thank you, at which point he gave me a weird look but wandered off down the train, probably to hit on the next foriegn chick he runs across. Oh well, it's not me. Ha.
I have a ticket to come home on Sunday, so my next day is spent packing and hauling three suitcases back down the stairs. But everything's in place, and I head to the airport on Sunday, preparing for a rough day of travel. But I make it through the airport okay, and immigration does nothing funny. There's no stamp or anything in my passport other than my regular "departed" stamp. Nothing out of the ordinary occured, except that I get pulled aside by security so they can go through all of my carry-on stuff. I wasn't going to argue with them. I watched as they pulled everything out of my carry on case and my backpack, mentally telling them good luck getting all of the crap back in there. And you had better not bend any of those doujinshi. Which I don't really want to know what the inspector dude thought about those, but he seemed more preoccupied with my underwear so maybe he didn't really notice them. Oh well. Not like I'll ever see him again.
After eleven and a half hours in the air, I land in Dallas. I go though immigration, which was fairly simple, a few questions about what I was doing in Japan. Customs was also relatively easy. The inspector looked to be only a few years older than me. He questioned me about my "items to declare list," as I had written "knicknacks/dishes--$70" and wanted an explanation for such a title. I told him that I knew from experience no one really cared about a list of little things like pens and keychains that cost a dollar a piece, but I also figured that "other random crap" was not appropriate to write on a federal document. He laughed and me and told me "welcome home," and let me go.
I rechecked my bags and headed through security--the security officer asking for an explanation for the Japanese word "moshi moshi" as I put all my stuff on the screening belt--and then I boarded my plane for Houston. It was a rough flight, but we made it.
Thank God. So happy to see my family again. And driving home... I-10 never looked so good.
Basically, I should have been home three weeks ago. However, after walking out of the customs line and on down to the gate--my plane was supposed to take off in about 15 minutes--someone comes running after me yelling at me to wait, wait, wait, you need to come back for a minute. I stop, at this point fairly tense because, hello, I have a plane to catch. Turns out when I came back to Japan after spring break my landing permission sticker is only for 90 days, which obviously does not cover my four-month semester. Even though when I went through immigration when I got the stinking country I presented my visa, told the guy I was staying for four months, and he said okay, stamped my passport and let me go. Stupid me, I trusted that everything was fine and didn't check it again.
I get dragged into the immigration office, where I am told I am not allowed to leave the country, and must go to the Bureau of Immigration's main office the next day for an interview and other such things since I have overstayed and therefore broken the law, and after I finally obtain permission to go back to my home country I won't be allowed back to Japan for a year. It's really not a good feeling being told you're not allowed to go home. Especially when you're stuck in a place where it still takes some effort to even talk to someone. And then there's the fact that I have medical nonsense I need to deal with--in fact, I'm supposed to see a surgeon on the 25, the next day. But no, that's not going to happen.
So I end up having to get a hotel room in Narita, close to the airport, have to drag all my luggage out there, and make various phone calls--IES, home, the US consulate, and a few fellow IESers who are still in Japan. I have to be in Shinagawa at 8:00 the next day for my interview. If I don't show up, I'll be arrested. So I leave at five the next morning and make it within 15 minutes, after paying 1260 yen for a train ticket.
I'm nervous, but not too worried, really--the immigration officers at the airport have assured me that I will be able to do my interview in English and there's plenty of people around to help me out if I need it.
Riiiight. I think immigration is set up to make the experience as harrowing as possible. Someone directs me to get in line, so I do. When it's my turn, the guy fusses at me for not having my forms filled out. What forms, no one gave me any forms. So he hands me my papers, and tells me to go fill them out and then get in line. I go to fill them out, find there are no pens, and am told to go to a conbini and buy one. Okay... Finally, with my forms filled out, I get back in line, the guy takes my forms, asks me a few questions--all in Japanese--and then tells me to wait for my name to be called.
When my name is called, I get my fingerprints taken twice and a few headshots taken, with the instructions that I needed to take my glasses off and I wasn't allowed to smile. Then I was instructed to go back out and wait until I was called for my interview.
I was actually sort of looking forward to my interview, because then I could at least explain what went on, and that I had basically broken the law without actually realizing it. I hadn't tried to get away with something that I knew I wasn't supposed to. However, when I walked in, my interviewer told me I was required to complete the whole thing in Japanese. WHAT?! I tried explaining that I had been told that this would be done in English. The interviewer just looked at me and said, no, Japanese only. There wasn't even anyone there who spoke English. So what could I do? In my horribly simple Japanese, I did my best to explain what I thought was going on and what had happened in the interview. At least the guy was patient with me. I would have gone from nervous and worried to really pissed off if he hadn't been. Come on, it was FREAKING IMMIGRATION and you deal with foriegners every FREAKING DAY and you don't have anyone who speaks ENGLISH?! Come on! What kind of idiots are you?
Finally the interview ends. I am told I have to stay in Japan for three more weeks, surgery needed or no, and when my three weeks are up I have to come back to Immigration with a plane ticket to prove I am leaving the country and then I will receive my departure order. I'm given a sheet of paper saying that immigration knows I am here illegally, and I have all my papers in order, but I can still be arrested for being in the country illegally if an officer wishes to. Thanks, guys.
I move into the Kanda dorm for the next three weeks, deal with fun stuff like living on the fourth floor of building with no elevators and dragging all three of my suitcases the stairs by myself (which are damned heavy, since they're mostly full of books, and my foot really doesn't help much). I try to get permission to leave the country a little earlier, because if I wait the full three weeks, then I have only a week to deal with my foot, my teeth, and my eyes before I have to head back to Ole Miss. I even get Shin-san, one of the guys at IES, to talk to immigration for me since I lack the technical vocab to get me through such a conversation. Immigration says yes, they can grant me permission to leave earlier, but if they speed up the process that much I won't be allowed back in the country for five years, not just one.
I tell my parents I'm staying for my three weeks, thank you very much. Which, I'm not all that upset about staying for three weeks, except that I was planning on being home, I was looking forward to being home, and I had stuff I needed to do. I like to think I can handle a change in plans, but that's a pretty damn big change in plans and it threw me off a bit.
So I putt around Japan for my three weeks, see my other two kids off at the airport, get phone calls from my husband in Hokkaido. Do karaoke a couple times, spend three hours at King Arthur's with Jessica singing every song we could possibly think of. Normal Japan stuff.
Then I return to immigration on Friday to get my departure order, am hassled a bit because I have an e-ticket and not a physical one until finally another officer says no, no, that's fine, she can go. I am also questioned about my last name and my nationality. The guy cannot pronounce my last name, and then he looks at my passport suspiciously and tells me that my name does not sound American. I fight the urge to roll my eyes and tell him there IS no such thing as and "American-sounding" last name, but instead just tell him that part of my family is Portuguese. He finally lets me go.
I am about to leave when I hear a bit of Portuguese being spoken. Whoever's speaking it does not sound happy. Apparently it's a Brazilian chick who ran into the same problem I did three weeks ago--no one speaks her language here, and she speaks zilch Japanese. I offer to help her, and for the next thirty minutes I play translator. I'm not comfortable enough with either language to go directly from one to the other, so I had to think things out in English before I could put into the other. What a pain. But the girl seemed really grateful. I figured that after that, I'd filled my "be nice" quota for the day and if another guy grabbed my ass on the train, I was entitled to slap him across the face and not feel bad about it.
No one grabs me on the train, thankfully, although some African dude does hit on me. But then he asked me if I was married. I answered yes, and I have three kids, thank you, at which point he gave me a weird look but wandered off down the train, probably to hit on the next foriegn chick he runs across. Oh well, it's not me. Ha.
I have a ticket to come home on Sunday, so my next day is spent packing and hauling three suitcases back down the stairs. But everything's in place, and I head to the airport on Sunday, preparing for a rough day of travel. But I make it through the airport okay, and immigration does nothing funny. There's no stamp or anything in my passport other than my regular "departed" stamp. Nothing out of the ordinary occured, except that I get pulled aside by security so they can go through all of my carry-on stuff. I wasn't going to argue with them. I watched as they pulled everything out of my carry on case and my backpack, mentally telling them good luck getting all of the crap back in there. And you had better not bend any of those doujinshi. Which I don't really want to know what the inspector dude thought about those, but he seemed more preoccupied with my underwear so maybe he didn't really notice them. Oh well. Not like I'll ever see him again.
After eleven and a half hours in the air, I land in Dallas. I go though immigration, which was fairly simple, a few questions about what I was doing in Japan. Customs was also relatively easy. The inspector looked to be only a few years older than me. He questioned me about my "items to declare list," as I had written "knicknacks/dishes--$70" and wanted an explanation for such a title. I told him that I knew from experience no one really cared about a list of little things like pens and keychains that cost a dollar a piece, but I also figured that "other random crap" was not appropriate to write on a federal document. He laughed and me and told me "welcome home," and let me go.
I rechecked my bags and headed through security--the security officer asking for an explanation for the Japanese word "moshi moshi" as I put all my stuff on the screening belt--and then I boarded my plane for Houston. It was a rough flight, but we made it.
Thank God. So happy to see my family again. And driving home... I-10 never looked so good.