Any John Denver fans out there? I’m not really one either, but this line from “Leaving On A Jet Plane” popped into my head when I was trying to think of a title for today’s post. You see, I’ll be heading to the airport for my move to Japan one week from today! Everything is lining up nicely. We are about 80-90% packed, the visas arrived quicker than anticipated, and yesterday we finally found a renter for our home while we are gone.<\/p>\n
Getting a visa for Japan went smoother than predicted. Originally they said it would take eight weeks to get a “Certificate of Eligibility” (COE) from the powers that be in Tokyo. That was eight weeks before we were originally supposed to leave (today). So we moved our departure date back a week to August 13. The COE was actually completed in about four weeks according to the date on it. Unfortunately it sat on someone’s desk (either in the administration or at Waseda University where it was sent to) for more than two weeks before I was told it could be sent to me. In any event, I received it on July 27, two weeks and three days before departure. I then had to send the COEs with visa applications, more passport photos, our passports, and a self-addressed, stamped, priority-mail envelope to the Consulate General of Japan in Portland, Oregon<\/a> (since I live 5+ hours away from Portland–most people probably drive it there). They said it would take a week to process plus postal time so I figured Priority Mail would be fine. They lied. It didn’t take a week. They processed the visas in a single day and mailed them back to me. The passports with visas in them arrived the same week I sent them on August 1. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to pay for overnight delivery. Overnight delivery of the COEs took four days, priority mail on the visas–both ways–only took a day or two.<\/p>\n Finding a tenant for our home wasn’t as smooth a process, but I think we found a really good one in the end. Better late than never.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Any John Denver fans out there? I’m not really one either, but this line from “Leaving On A Jet Plane” popped into my head when I was trying to think of a title for today’s post. You see, I’ll be heading to the airport for my move to Japan one week from today! Everything is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[7],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2599"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2602,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599\/revisions\/2602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}