A True and Truly Scary Story, but also Funny (Patreon)

⭐️Quick Question! I'm trying to put up all the old episodes (MP3s) in the Podcasts (ad free) collection and when I do it I can click it to "not notify anyone", because I really don't want to blow up everyone's phones or emails with 20~50 notifications every day until I get them all up. Is anyone getting notifications? I kind of suspect some are...If not, I will get back to putting them up.

Hello ~~ 👋

First, my ipad is wonky and takes screenshots at random times. I could be touching the screen or not, sometimes several in a row. Just weird. I'm sure it's something. Not sure what yet. The photo up there was one of the random images it felt compelled to capture. I just found it in my gallery and thought it was funny.

Woo boy! Things are hoppin' and every day is like my own personal Saiō ga Uma tale. Good thing, bad thing, good thing bad thing. I can't keep up and have resorted to settling into a slightly agitated state of "wait and see". Some days are better than others.

Had some harrowing negotiations going on, so to make myself feel better I went ahead and looked at tickets to Hokkaido for Christmas. Julyan invited us and can get some really cheap deals if I get them early. Found such a deal which should be a Yay! But when making sure I had our names spelled right per our gaijin cards, I noticed my card had expired back in February.

Cue panic attack. There's a lot of anti foreigner sentiment going on right now (Thank you tourists who do pull ups on torii gates and defile centuries old temples and artifacts 💢). I just read the other day how even people with eijū visas (permanent resident visas) are getting them revoked. That's the visa I'm on.

*not my real card

Also, you don't mess around with immigration. I mean it's not ICE, but they certainly aren't friendly. Decades ago I overstayed my visa and went to immigration here in Shizuoka and they were aghast. They sent me to Nagoya to the BIG immigration facility and basically I had to write an apology, beg forgiveness, and pray that the judge overseeing my case took pity on me. It worked out, but lots of shame and not niceness. And they bumped my visa status back down for several years. I was married then, so could just wait it out and eventually reapply for longer. But now I got nothin'. If not on a permanent resident visa and no work to sponsor me, no spouse...

So seeing my card was expired by seven months put the fear of a wrathful I-don' t-know-who god in me. I mentioned it to a friend who was not only born here, but also has lived her whole life here (except for university). She said, yeah, she forgot to renew her card and got her permanent resident visa taken away. But she's still married so no big deal, just mendokusai (pain in the butt).

I'm freaking out. Look up what could happen: deportation, fines, jail. This is all Friday, so I can't even DO anything until Monday. Trying not to catastrophize.

That was an on-edge weekend that was. Trying to Saio ga Uma it and thinking, well, maybe I'm supposed to be a free spirit planting trees and rescuing animals.

I did realize something though. I was in the hospital in January. While that had nothing to do with my forgetting (really I just forgot, every seven years and I never look at the card), I decided to use it as an excuse. A good one, I might add!

So I'm being super anal about making sure I have everything I need (passport, photos in the correct size, enough money to pay whatever fee they throw at me, and copies of my hospitalization papers). Ha! Good to go!

I decided to drive over taking the train, cooler, less hassle, fewer people I'd have to meet and/or see. Great! Enough gas? Barely, but we're good. Here's where I made a dreadful mistake. I put on my prescription sunglasses so the sun wouldn't be in my eyes the whole trip. Ha! Smart thinking, Terrie.

Then the other dreadful happened: To take the bypass, you have to drive up this narrow (one car only) lane (drop offs on either side) to get onto the Tomei Expressway. I have an ETC card holder which means when I get close it automatically opens the gate and my credit card is charged. This way cars and trucks can barrel on through with nary a slow down. Bigger entrances to the expressway have booths where you can pay in cash if you want. But not this one. It's people-less. You have to have a card set up or your screwed. There's no where to turn around or even pull over to let someone by. Keep THAT in mind.

I pull up to the gate with an uncanny sinking feeling in my gut. There's no one behind me, but... yup. No Beeep! sound. Nothing. I back up a little, forward again, all the way up the bar...nothing. Look in the rearview window and three car are whizzing up. What do I do?! They don't look like they're slowing down either. Roll down the window to try and talk to the speaker. A voice does ask what happened and I'm like I don't know! There's a flurry of are we going to get rearended, should I just drive through? And the bar goes up. My guess is the Speaker Guy pushed a button.

Wew. Let's not take that as any indicator on how the day is going to go. Buck up, Chickie. Thirty minutes later, I find a parking spot, we walk to the building, and there is no immigration office. Cue Freak Out Number Two. This one Richard saved me from. He's like it's in the building next door. Wew! Deep breath. Stay calm. Should have bought a mini towel for all this sweat. It's already 100 degrees out.

We're early. Yay! I grab some papers I think I need to fill out and realize then that I had left my regular glasses on the table at home. So here I am in super dark sunglasses with bright green frames, not the most demure or serious, law-abiding gaijin in the city. I about want to cry because I can't see without them and I can't read with them (or without them), so here I am holding the paper close to my face and trying to copy tiny numbers from my card, dropping things. It's pretty much a free-for-all on how my luck runs.

Long story short, the lady was very nice and everything got worked out. Card renewed with no scolding at all.

But funny, on the way home I wanted to celebrate and found a Sri Lankan restaurant. We don't get a lot of ethnic food so it's always a treat. But, closed on Mondays. That's okay, there's a Vietnamese restaurant nearby, closed on Mondays. And just when I'm about to have another tizzy-fit, I look up and a young woman walking towards me has a shirt with the words: Good Vibes Only! emblazoned on the front.

So I thought that was appropriate and chilled out. Ended up getting gyoza and cold ramen, which is also very good and celebratory in its own right.

This isn't where we ate gyoza, but it's a gyoza place that looks like the Flat Iron Building in NYC.

And I'll end with this neat treat I found. Those are little mochi donuts (oheso mochi / bellybutton mochi) that you can fill with sweet red bean paste. They are tiny, but super cute.

XOXOOXO,

terrie