Alien Registration

If you are staying in Japan for more than 90 days, then you need to apply for an Alien Registration card at your current nearest city, town, village, or ward hall. If you change address, visa status or name in the time you have one you must notify your nearest visa office (it doesn't have to be the same one as you originally registered with) and they supply you with a new one. This seems crazy to me, as with the Working Holiday visa, you have to move around a lot and your address might change weekly! But never mind. I applied for mine today.

As I am residing in Chuo-ku, I had to find the Chuo ward office. I went to Tokyo's visa immigration office in Shinagawa last week in an effort to try to find the address, because I couldn't find it anywhere, and afterwards found a website with all of Tokyo's ward offices.

The visa immigration office was a real trial to find, and when I got there it was one Japanese man in an office above a convenience store, who didn't speak any English and I thought - "this doesn't seem as grand as the name suggested, this can't be the place I want" and it wasn't! But, through my garbled Japanese and frantic gesticulating, he printed me a Chuo-ku Living Guide, which not only has the ward office address inside, it has all the information about living there; including disaster procedures, education, health and transport information.

So today I took three metros (even though it's not that far away, there's no direct route) down to Tsukiji (where the famous fish market is), and found the ward office (it's right outside Exit 1). I went inside and started to fill in a yellow form on a table marked 'For foreigners', then realised it was a form for people wanting proof that they were an official alien, which I was not yet! So I sat down and waited until someone was free then went up to ask them where I should go. Turns out I was in the right place. I sat down and she talked me through it (she didn't speak much English so I used Japanese) and gave me an example of what a properly filled out form should look like. The form was quite simple, I made a couple of mistakes though. I said that 'Sakura House' was the head of the household, but it turned out that I was the head of the household. So the other people in my guesthouse need to bow down to me!! (No stereotypical pun intended there.)

She told me I needed to come back in a month to collect my Alien Registration Card, I think I may have just missed a period or something, because she kept saying "nyuu perioddo". So I have to wait a month! I have the number of the card I would be given, so maybe that will be enough for potential employers/ phone distributors but I have to say, I doubt it, as there is no guarantee that I will be granted the Alien Registration Card. Although I can't see why I wouldn't be, it's still not a definite.

So things are getting tough at the moment. I have job interviews, bank accounts and phones to sort out, and the biggest barrier at the moment is my age. No one said anything about problems with being under 20! But we shall see... time will tell. As will some phonecalls tomorrow...