First Cherry Blossoms and an Immigration Miracle!!

Friday, March 27th--  Today was a beautiful spring day!  Unfortunately, we spent a large part of the day at the immigration office.  Really dumb! 

When we came to Japan, we were told that the best way would be for the kids and me to come in on a temporary 90 day visa.  Once we arrived, we would have those 90 days to work with immigration to extend the visas for the rest of the semester.  Because Raymond is a student, his visa is different and he is automatically here for the duration of the semester. 

Everything seemed simple enough, but it has turned out to be anything but a huge burr in our side!  The immigration office has given us a horrible time!  They have been extremely difficult to work with.  Raymond has gone in several times, and every time he would turn in the paperwork and was told to wait two weeks for a letter in the mail.  The two weeks would go by, only we wouldn't receive anything from them.  Raymond would go in again, and they would then tell him that he didn't have the right paperwork filled out or that he didn't use the right color of pen and needed to do it over.  Every time, we would have to turn in more information or more paperwork, and wait for two weeks more.

These regular two week visits to the immigration office has eaten up our 90 day temporary visa with no positive results.  Today is Friday and our temporary visas expire on Tuesday. 

Yesterday was Christopher's birthday, but our situation is so dire that Raymond and I spent the morning at the immigration office instead of celebrating with the family.  We went in and explained to them that we needed to get this finalized because we are out of time.  The immigration lady told us that there was nothing we could do and we needed to leave the country.  We didn't need to return to America necessarily, just leave Japan for a 24 hour period.  Then, we could enter the country again on another temporary 90 day visa.  It doesn't seem like a big deal to grab a flight for the weekend at the spur of the moment, until you have to suddenly come up with  9 flights.  This 24 hour trip out of the country was going to cost us around $3-5000 that we hadn't budgeted for. 

The lady was not budging, but neither did we. 

In talking with her, it came out that the REAL reason they have been uncooperative with us is because we are such a large family that they really can't see how we can support ourselves.  They were afraid that we will be on the government programs. 

We pulled out our bank statements that they have had for almost three months and showed them once again the place where we paid 5 months rent upfront for our apartment before even leaving America.  That also included a large deposit and a really overpriced cleaning fee.  We also showed them the place in our bank statements where we had paid for our airfare back to America and were scheduled to leave Japan on May 12th.  Finally, we showed them the balances in our three bank accounts and pulled out the yen cash that we just happened to have on us.  All of this proved that we were not here to mooch off of Japan's welfare system.  We were fully capable of providing for our large family ourselves.  The lady was surprised, and said that this is information that they were unaware of--don't get me started on what I thought about that.  She said that she would personally work on our case and to return tomorrow afternoon after 1 p.m.  In the meantime, start looking for flights out of the country.

 

Raymond had class Thursday night, so poor Christopher didn't really get any birthday celebration at all.  I did take him to the store and bought him a piece of cake for just him to eat and also took him to lunch.  He and I ate our lunch on a bench in a small garden at a Buddhist temple.  He couldn't decide between pizza or Japanese food for his birthday dinner, so I made pizza the night of his actual birthday and he had Japanese food for his official birthday dinner on Friday night.  It was nice, but not the best birthday ever.

 

We researched flights to Korea for the weekend, and began a fast that when we returned to immigration on Friday, everything would be in order.  We were asking God for a miracle.

Because Christopher had a dumb birthday, we took all the kids with us to the immigration office on Friday.  After we found out our fate for the weekend, we wanted to take the kids to Meguro River to see the cherry blossoms there as a part of Christopher's birthday celebration.

This picture is two blocks from our apartment on the way to Ebisu Station.  The Lawson convenience store that we frequent several times a week (for the best apple juice on the planet!) is on the right--and cherry blossoms in full bloom are right in front of it!!  Our first view of the infamous Japanese cherry blossoms! 

Oh, what splendor!  I think we could get very used to seeing blossoms all over Tokyo for the next week or so!

As we continued on to Ebisu on our way to immigration, we walked under blossoms and enjoyed the ones across the street as well.

We went to immigration and received the miracle that we were praying for.  She had everything processed and ready to go!  Just like that.  We couldn't hardly believe it.  We then got in a really long line to just to get a number to get our places for another line to get our visas extended.   We were in the line for about an hour.  We got our number and it was 585.  The number on the counter was 459..... We were going to be there for a very long time.  A security guard saw our large number of kids and told us to go up to the counter and found a clerk to help us.  They processed our information right away.  We were there for three hours, but it is completely taken care of.  Whew!  Everything went so smooth that we were a little stunned.  It shocked us, and we were grateful for God's help in it all.  Miracles do happen!
(The carpet at immigration is some of the most disgusting carpet we've ever seen!  When we walked in, we stopped and looked around, and wondered if we were still in neat freak Japan.  It is just not like Japan to be dirty.  Japanese people are EXTREMELY clean, and we really appreciate that!  The carpet at immigration was so gross that we didn't even want to walk on it with our shoes.  It was a good reminder as to why we don't wear shoes in the house and we don't eat or drink anywhere except in the kitchen or dining room.  When you kids are trying to break these rules, from now on all I have to say is: "Remember the immigration office!")

Now that we knew that we would not be needing to quickly leave the country for the weekend, we could relax and enjoy the wonderful cherry blossoms and Mr. Christopher's birthday.  Time to celebrate!
We got off the metro at Meguro Station and walked over to the river.  On the way, we stopped at the temple we had explored when we went to see the hina doll display at the hotel in February.  Raymond hadn't been with us that day because of work and the kids wanted to show him.  While there, I noticed this small statue that I hadn't noticed the first time we came.  See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.  This saying originated in Japan....bet you didn't know that!

And then, we came to the river!  The birthday boy is posing under the beautiful cherry blossoms.

The blossoms are just beginning to open, but there were enough that it was enjoyable.  Christopher wasn't too impressed, but the rest of us loved it.

There is a path on both sides of the river.  We walked down one side for a little while, and then crossed a bridge and went back up the other side.

This is when we were on the bridge crossing over.  It doesn't look like many blossoms are blooming, but there were more than it looks like in the picture.

We started out today very nervous and edgy....but it turned out to be a really great day!  We got our immigration miracle and wouldn't need to leave the country this weekend, we were able to enjoy our first cherry blossom experience, and now we can go home to celebrate Christopher's birthday!!  Yay!!