...sou zenzen kawaranai, just alive!
Mar. 14th, 2005 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
setraSo I went to Japan.
Only it turns out that my passport expired last month. Only American Airlines didn't check at all to notice this. Which meant that I got detained at immigration at Narita and questioned... and they had to call the US consulate. It was after 5 pm on a Saturday.
They did infact get ahold of someone at the consulate. But apparently (I didn't hear the conversation) the consulate "could not guarantee" that they would be able to renew my passport if I waited until monday.
Therefore I was left with two options, Withdraw Voluntarily (legally, I was never in Japan, no record)... or be "Asked to leave", and get put on permanent record and be unable to enter Japan again... possibly ever.
Obviously, I chose to withdraw.
So I was escorted to a hotel, where I was kept litterally locked in and guarded for about 16 hours. The I was escorted back to Narita and onto the next AA flight back to the states.
I had a lovely conversation in Japanese with my escort while we waited. He was really nice, and very easy to understand. All three of his children are/were studying abroad in S. America at an english/spanish bilingual school.
He had a teacher from JET in chugakko, and he also taught Japanese at a school in Argentina when he was younger, so we talked about that a bit.
Eventually, I asked if it would be ok to go buy manga or something, so he walked down with me to the honya in the terminal and I used my emergency 500-yen from way back when to buy this weeks Jump. (So I left the country with SOMETHING TeniPuri!)
I had a really nice seat (window over the wing) on the way back, and I slept for about 6 hours of the 9 hour flight.
LA was a whole new adventure.
More on that later...
So now I'm looking into if it's possible to get back. If I can make it in time for the DAI concert wednesday night, I'll do it. If I can't, then I guess Japan will have to wait for summer.
I got back to Fort Collins basically 72 hours after I left it for the last time...
Life lessons? Oh yes.
A longer version of events will be coming later, which I wrote over the past 24 hours or so. It will be locked to avoid spam. Comment if you aren't seeing it and would like to.
Only it turns out that my passport expired last month. Only American Airlines didn't check at all to notice this. Which meant that I got detained at immigration at Narita and questioned... and they had to call the US consulate. It was after 5 pm on a Saturday.
They did infact get ahold of someone at the consulate. But apparently (I didn't hear the conversation) the consulate "could not guarantee" that they would be able to renew my passport if I waited until monday.
Therefore I was left with two options, Withdraw Voluntarily (legally, I was never in Japan, no record)... or be "Asked to leave", and get put on permanent record and be unable to enter Japan again... possibly ever.
Obviously, I chose to withdraw.
So I was escorted to a hotel, where I was kept litterally locked in and guarded for about 16 hours. The I was escorted back to Narita and onto the next AA flight back to the states.
I had a lovely conversation in Japanese with my escort while we waited. He was really nice, and very easy to understand. All three of his children are/were studying abroad in S. America at an english/spanish bilingual school.
He had a teacher from JET in chugakko, and he also taught Japanese at a school in Argentina when he was younger, so we talked about that a bit.
Eventually, I asked if it would be ok to go buy manga or something, so he walked down with me to the honya in the terminal and I used my emergency 500-yen from way back when to buy this weeks Jump. (So I left the country with SOMETHING TeniPuri!)
I had a really nice seat (window over the wing) on the way back, and I slept for about 6 hours of the 9 hour flight.
LA was a whole new adventure.
More on that later...
So now I'm looking into if it's possible to get back. If I can make it in time for the DAI concert wednesday night, I'll do it. If I can't, then I guess Japan will have to wait for summer.
I got back to Fort Collins basically 72 hours after I left it for the last time...
Life lessons? Oh yes.
A longer version of events will be coming later, which I wrote over the past 24 hours or so. It will be locked to avoid spam. Comment if you aren't seeing it and would like to.
