Don’t be fooled by the single entry, this blog post has been completed in two sittings. It’s funny though, because I’m typing this during the first sitting and there is nothing past tense about my writing at all. One this is very clear though, I do not have the energy to finish this up tonight, much less proofread it. Even more importantly, I don’t have all the pictures I want yet to post along with this entry, maybe I can get them tomorrow.
Alien Registration and Health Insurance
I’ve started writing this the same day of my last entry, only at the end of it rather than the beginning. If you recall, I unwillingly woke up at 4:30 AM. It is now 8:00 PM and I am coming to a whole new understanding of what it is to be tired. The time my sophomore year that I stayed up 37 straight hours never felt like this does right now. The decision to stay up the night before my flight, the intermittent sleep on the plane, and the unproductive night of sleep last night have finally taken it’s toll. Right now, I’d like nothing more than to be asleep in bed, but I feel like every hour I can get closer to 11, the faster I’ll deal with the jet lag and get on a local schedule. If I can make it to 9 I’ll consider it a win. In short, jet lag is really uncool.
Today I ended up having a pretty productive day. My suitcase ended up arriving at 11:50, ten minutes before the close of three hour delivery window, in the same way that the four hour time blocks you schedule with the Time Warner technician really means the last 30 minutes of that block. At any rate, I was thrilled to see rest of my stuff arrive… so I could leave it untouched because I don’t own any hangers yet. Since it was noon, and I was hungry, I made my first trip to the supermarket. I’m going to have to get better at this, as what I came home with was pretty insubstantial and didn’t really live up to the images in my head. I only have myself to blame though.
With some food finally in my stomach I set out to obtain my alien registration card and get enrolled in the national health insurance program. This wasn’t the smoothest operation I’ve had since I arrived here, though it went slightly better than my attempt to ship my bag and definitely smoother than the Citibank adventure which is coming up shortly. My time at the Nakano City Office has taught me one very important lesson though, I need to find a Japanese conversation partner and fast. I seem to have three major deficiencies with the Japanese language. First, my vocab just isn’t very large. This is understandable, and will only correct itself through exposure and use. Secondly, I need more confidence. I know the grammar and I can string along a few phrases but my lack of confidence with the language has left mumbling incoherently more than I should. I will just have to the language more and is the primary reason I need a conversation partner. Finally, I have trouble picking out all the words when they’re spoken in real time. This probably will correct itself over time. At the end of the day though, I managed to get applied for my registration card and get enrolled in the national health insurance program, so big success. I am, however, less clear on when I pick up my alien registration card, or when I am supposed to pay the premiums for my health insurance. This is something I will have to investigate soon. (Mystery solved as I have now read the booklet they gave me for the health insurance and I know when to pick up my card. Amazing what a night of sleep can do for your brain).
The Citibank Adventure
I have to get three things done before I can move forward with my job: applying for the alien registration card, enrolling in the national health care system, and opening a bank account. When I finished with the health insurance it was a around 3, so I thought the best thing to do would be to knock out the bank today and then I could spend Saturday trying to get a cell phone. Before I headed off to Citibank, though, I needed food. Apparently my lunch had been too insubstantial and I really needed something to eat. I felt light headed and lethargic. In the past this has always happened when I haven’t eaten in a while, so logically I went to eat food to make my head feel better. Now that I sit here on the other side of dinner feeling the exact same way, it is apparent that this has more to do with being tired than it does with needing food. At any rate, having eaten some food, I headed out of Citibank.
Banking is a bit of a strange beast in Japan from what I can tell. Citibank and Shinsei are the only two banks that can really be considered “nationwide” banks. That being said, Wachovia seems to have about as many branches in Charlotte alone as Citibank has in all of Japan. This is probably because the Japanese do most of their banking through the post office (which is very ubiquitous), so it just isn’t worth the money for private banks to build the number of branches we do in the US. Also, the ATMs are not open 24/7. After examining the Citibank site I decided that the financial center near Shinjuku station was the best one for me to head for, it was close and I had conveniently been through Shinjuku station the day before, so I had some familiarity with the place.
That familiarity ended up counting for nothing. Shinjuku station is absurdly confusing for first (or in my case second) time visitors. It has about 6 different exits and the station itself apparently expands all the way to the next station on the Marunouchi line. Today I was looking for the east exit, yesterday I had used the west exit and knew that the east exit was near it, so easy enough right? Sadly that was not the case. The signs leading you to the west exit take you right up to the stairs that put you out on the street. The signs for the east exit suddenly disappear and you are left with signs like “A9 (the one I needed) and “B8”. Furthermore, if you look at the map of the station where it says “West exit” there are some stairs, and if you take them you go out onto the street. However, the stairs where it says “east exit” actually enters back down onto the metro.
After looking at the map I concluded correctly, that I wanted to take A9, and then promptly became lost. I ended up going out the south exit, saw a landmark from the previous day, made my way around to the west exit (by walking around the outside of the station), and found myself back where I had previously been. I ended up talking to an attendant, who said take A9. My mistake at A9 had come at the top of the stairs. Once I got up the A9 stairs I continued further into the station and got myself confused. Turns out all I had to do was look behind me to see a second set of stairs leading up to the street.
Having finally made it out the east exit, I managed to get to Citibank only to discover there was no one there to help me open an account. I thought maybe I had misread the branch services on the website. So after my adventure in Shinjuku station I ended up just taking the metro back home. Once I got home I rechecked the website. Had I been reading more carefully I would have noticed that you can open accounts from 9-3 and 5-7, I had arrived at the bank around 4. By the time I got back to my room I was too tired to head back out during the evening rush. Instead I got dinner and sat down to write this. I made it to 8:40 before I gave up the ghost by the way. I woke up at 1, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30 and got up at 6. I did manage to get some sleep though, and 6 is far better than yesterday’s 4:30. I am feeling much better this morning and hopefully I’ll have the jet lag out of my system tomorrow. On tap for today, Softbank (cell phone), the hyakuen store (dollar store), and perhaps finding a gym.
Now that I see how long this post is I’m going to forget the pictures and put them in a separate post tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
1 comment:
nice work
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