Visa Application

I hope this will teach you, yet to apply for a visa student, to prepare your documents before heading to the Japanese embassy of your choice.

The Certificate of Eligibility sent out by my Japanese university arrived in England while I was in the USA, and as the visa application has to be done in person at the designated embassy (London for me), I had no choice but to wait until my return to England. Luckily, the embassy processes the visa right away and it should arrive by mail within 3 working days.

So the day I decide to set out, this is my to do list:

• Copy Certificate of Eligibility in city library
• Print visa application forms in library
• Get prepaid special delivery envelope at post office
• Try to find train station (I got lost and it took 30 mins longer)
• Train ride to London
• Get there at 4pm (embassy closes at 4.30pm)
• Get stressed and barely make it to the embassy

Okay so most of those items weren’t actually planned. Once I’m there, I go through security and take a ticket. When it’s my turn, I realize I haven’t filled out the visa application form yet. So I’m sent back out again. After filling it in, sweaty and wanting to die, I go to the counter again.. hand everything in, look for my passport photos.. gone. I must have lost them somewhere on the journey. The person on the other side of the counter is understanding and tells me to take a reference slip, go have my pictures made and hand them in with the slip at reception. 15 minutes and £10 later, I return for a third time and am welcomed by a laughing security guy. Soooo, back in, hand in stuff at reception. Done! ..right? When I was back outside, I realized that they still had my passport and I didn’t even pay anything. So, back in  again, wave at my new best mate, the security guard, only to find out that American citizens aren’t charged and the visa is sent back in my passport.

Moral of the story: preparation -> less frustration and stress.

Ameba Confusion

So I’m running around in this Ameba Pigg world, trying to catch up with what people are typing and checking out what they’re wearing. Since I just started, I obviously have no credit yet and while your initial character comes with some plain clothes, I chose nakedness. (STICK IT TO THE MAN) After clicking around I started to notice weird stars popping up around characters. Apparently, I was clicking something called “guppiggu” which translates into “good pigg”. Guppigguing around a while I find out that I can use a scratch card once a day after guppigguing 20 other Piggs… and win a hat! Then a guy pops up next to me and says something about laughing and over here so I follow him. Something pops up and I click what I think is accept, then some more random stuff and I don’t know and suddenly I’m here:

Where the hell am I and who is that naked baldie

As it turns out, I joined some sort of trolling/flaming club that (I think) is dedicated to a) gaining more members and b) trolling famous people and events. Hrm. I’m all for trolling every now and then, but I’m just not sure if I’m dedicated enough to be a member of a team.　Oh great and now somebody wants to do “H” with me.. -_-

Money Flowchart

I made a flowchart depicting how I will manage my money before and in Japan. It only looks slightly complicated on first glance because I’m lucky to have won the JASSO “lottery” and have my parents support me, too. The whole chart could really be summed up by saying: my savings in UK pay for time until bank is set up, my savings in Germany pay for fun stuff, the rest goes into daily expenses. Anyway, here it is:

Only thing left to find out is how to move around money the cheapest way. I don’t look forward to being charged for all this.