I was supposed to fly back to the US today, but my passport & visa seem to have disappeared in the mail. My flight was at 7PM, and mail usually comes by 4PM, so my mom, dad, and I hung out at the house and played Wii Fit while checking the mail box every 20 minutes. We finally gave up around 4:30.
And now let me take this opportunity to rant and ponder about a couple of things:
1. Why does the US embassy in Japan insist on mailing our passports back? Most other places, like Canada and Thailand, let you pick it up at the consulate the next day. The embassy in Japan tells you not to book travel out of Japan until you get your passport back, but that isn't always realistic given that some of us have jobs and families to go back to. I do not wish upon anyone the anxiety of not knowing where his or her passport is.
2. Is the Japanese post office really as wonderful as Steven thinks?
I guess its not only US Japanese embassy, my wife is Japanese American like you Lisa and we live in Portugal (im Portuguese, btw the first western country to contact with ur culture...and the first western country the japanese visited), and this happen exactly the same.
marcos
Posted by: Marcos Palmeira | February 21, 2009 at 06:37 AM
I'm sorry to hear the O1 didn't make it in time... :(
That's an "extraordinary ability" visa, isn't it? Congrats! Was it hard to get?
Though isn't it odd that even such demonstrably extraordinary people (like yourself! :) are only granted temporal, employer-bound free agency? Citizenship is such a nobility title...
Posted by: elzr | February 21, 2009 at 04:49 PM
Even the Chinese embassy just hands you your passport back the next day. Maybe they got confused by the whole "Risa" situation.
Posted by: Ujin | February 22, 2009 at 12:23 AM