Bureaucracy in action

Today I got up early, even though I didn't have a class until 3:10, to apply for the work visa. In Japan they are supposedly really strict about this because of the declining economy. So I was encouraged to go as soon as possible. The immigration office is in the Shinagawa area. So already it is kind of far away. But then you also have to take a bus to get to the office because it is a long ways off and hard to find. So after finally getting to the office we figure out where we need to go. We were told to get a ticket and wait for our number to be called. They were currently serving number 101 and I was given lucky ticket 241. So my time was quite a ways off. We wanted to find some sort of interesting area nearby, but the office is on a man made island near nothing except docks. So we waited for 3 hours with all the other foreigners. Finally we were called and the process took about 1 minute to complete. I gave them my forms, filled out my address and was done. They told me that I would recieve a postcard in the mail and have to go back to the immigration office with the postcard and I could recieve my documents. So I get to return once more to the fake island of Japanese Bureaucracy. Why they can't just send me the documents and save us both the time I don't know. After all that fun we headed back to Hosei because we had a class at 3:10. We pretty much got there right on time.

After class, Aiko (the apparent leader of the Hi-C group) had invited us to go to Kabuki with her. Kabuki is one of those must do's in Japan. But since it often runs for 3-5 hours and can be quite expensive, I wasn't really planning on it. But she told us that we could go and see one act and pay only 600 yen. So I thought it would be a good chance to do that. So we went to Ginza district. Ginza has basically any store a baylor girl would want. Tifanny's, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Bvlgari, etc. And all of them are massive. In the middle of this captitalistic goodness was a big kabuki theatre. When we got there we were told that there wasn't enough room so we would have to stand. But we didn't mind. The play was quite interesting. I'm not sure if I can really describe it. Basically it was about a woman who was mad at some guy in a boat and turned into a snake to chase after him. I think. In the middle of the play, people would randomly yell the names of the actors. But there wasn't really any certain time people would yell, just at random. The play was kind of neat though. They had effects for like the water and the woman turning into the snake that were pretty cool. But I don't think I could have sat through 4 hours of it.

After kabuki Aiko wanted to go to a place and have dinner. We went to this really neat resturaunt underneath the station. If you have seen Kill Bill Vol. 1, it looked exactly like the garden scene. They had little waterfalls and bridges all over. Very neat. I ordered something that was basically an omelette with soba noodles inside. It was actually pretty good. That was my first omelette believe it or not. I had just never got around to eating one until now. But everyone else did not have so much luck. There was this strange bowl of blackness described as "sea ooze" and it tasted as so. Daniel got something that resembled what an omelette would be if it was uncooked. It also had a slight bacon taste. Nicole, the other American here, ordered a cassis cocktail with "fresh squeezed grapefruit juice". And they brought out a glass with a spoon and cassis in it and a grapefruit cut in half on a juicing plate. Definately was not expecting to be squeezing your own grapefruit. Maybe that is why it was so cheap...

Tomorrow I am observing a class at the school to see what I should be doing. It is apparently a halloween lesson. Hopefully I can figure out what to do because friday, I will be in charge. So scary.