I am in uncharted waters. My passport is out of my hands and I am in a foreign country. Will I ever see it again? Actually, I have relinquished my passport many times to get visas. But in all those cases, I was in the US. My passport expires in just a little over 6 months. It is recommended that you have a passport valid for at least 6 months whenever you enter another country. I’m not sure why, but that’s what is recommended. Also, my visa expires in 6 months. I figured it was better to get a new passport before I get a new visa. When is it a good time to give up your passport? Right before holidays of course!
In Japan, they strongly urge you to renew by mail. I had to mail my passport with a self-addressed trackable mailer inside, my applications, my passport, my pictures, and a money order. A money order?!? Apparently my US credit is not acceptable. All passports are printed in the US, so I have to wait for the new passport to come back from the US. They say it takes 3 – 4 weeks. So … if I look at that, will I have my passport in time for Christmas? I don’t know. However, it doesn’t look like I’m going back to the States this Christmas. For the first time. Ever. However, I hope I get the passport before Christmas just in case, and especially before the New Year. The week AFTER Christmas is a holiday in Japan and I wouldn’t mind taking a few days then to travel. However, everyone in Japan is off, so travel is a nightmare.
I had to go to the Post Office to get a money order in USD. You can imagine how easy that is. The first Post Office I went to at lunch didn’t have the capability to do money orders. If looks could kill I would not be available to type this blog entry. I left work early (actually on-time but it felt early) to go to a more central post office that was capable of money orders. I had to fill out a block form like you do for standardized tests. Of course, I wrote my name as JONATHAN FISH. Another place on the form said I had to write as it is written on my official documents so I wrote JONATHAN NEAL FISH. Nope. Bad, bad, bad. I had to update the upper name to include the middle name. I’m not sure why, but I had to. Then, after much hemming and hawing, I was instructed that I had to write my name FISH, JONATHAN NEAL. Actually the comma is probably controversial I added that myself. Of course, this was after I completely filled out the form including the to address and the from address. I got a new form and started all over. I was a little grumpy about it.
The exchange rate I got was surprisingly good for these days – just a little over 100 yen per dollar. Then they hit me with a 2000 yen service charge (that’s about $20). After all the processing of everything I had written, I got the money order. None of the stuff that I had filled in for sender / receiver got printed on the money order and it had to be hand written on the money order instead. WHY DID I JUST DO THAT ON THE TEST FORM? Of course, I was super diligent to get it right.
After 40 minutes I had my money order in the passport pack and it was on its way. Now I’ll fret like crazy and hope that I included everything that was required, that everything was filled out properly, and that nothing gets lost. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy Japan!
What a frustrating process…
I’m pretty sure I thought you wouldn’t be coming back to the States for Christmas. From what you’ve written, do I understand that you might, if you had your passport in time? Of course, we’re going to TN this year, but if you were going to be in Indiana, we’d want to overlap.