Visa excitement

So I went to the Immigration Office yesterday to try and renew my work visa under my new company, Interac, yet the excitement never seems to end in my time here as I didn't have the correct documents, etc. Turns out I need tax certificates from Nova as well as a letter of release since a different company will be sponsoring my visa and to top all of this off none of the staff at the office spoke English! Now this may come across as American arrogance, but I feel in this instance it is actually called for as it is a damn Immigration Office! When I went to the consultation area to ask the staff there if I would be able to renew my visa despite not actually starting until April I asked the woman, in Japanese, if she spoke English. She replied in the negative and then asked me if I could understand Japanese. It turns out that I was able to explain my situation remarkably well even in Japanese and it wasn't until I went to the counter to actually file my visa application that the excitement started. The woman told me I couldn't do it and when I asked why she jabbered something at me in Japanese to which I kept replying I didn't understand, but she just kept going on in Japanese despite my continued insistence that I only understood a little Japanese. Finally her manager came over and said in halting English something about tax forms and how I needed them. Anyway I left in a decidedly darker mood than I had started in and now I am going back there tomorrow with Ayuko to act as a translator. It just seems to me that having English/Chinese speaking staff at an Immigration Office would be the norm, not something that is rare to find.

I don't know anymore. I'm finding that the little things are starting to frustrate/depress me such as today I couldn't figure out how to fax some papers and had to wait until Ayuko came home to do it for me. Just feeling so helpless all the time despite my low level of Japanese is really starting to get to me. Even the most mundane task can turn into a mountain of work as I attempt to navigate my way through Japanese manuals, staff, instructions, etc. Plus my visa is uncertain at this point due to my unique situation, so that doesn't help with the daily stress.

I haven't had a stable life for the past six months or so and the daily stress of that is starting to build up. Not only the financial situation, but also just wondering week to week if I'll have a job or not. Plus now that I have actually been offered employment the visa situation may keep me from keeping the ALT job, so even that isn't certain. Nor do I want to return to America at this point as without grad school it would be difficult to obtain a good job there and the earliest I could go to grad school at this point would be the spring semester of 2009. So overall my outlook is rather bleak at this point, but all of that could change tomorrow based on how my visa situation turns out.

Just talking with Ayuko about what we have had to give up in the past year is rather depressing as well. I have had to abandon a trip home for Christmas as well as going home for a month for my brother's graduation from medical school as well as a wedding of one of my best friends from college. On top of that not being able to spend money on anything besides dinner dates once a month or so for the past six months hasn't helped things except give me spending habits that Mother Teresa would be proud of. I honestly think about how buying a packet of gum could affect my financial outlook two months from now. Ayuko has also suffered as well as she has had to put up with my depression/anger over the past six months due to my situation, as well as giving up a trip to France at the end of March so we can afford to get an apartment together when we both start work in April. So basically boo hoo for me. Oh well I suppose the pity party is over, but they say its cathartic to write about your experiences, both positive and negative, so I suppose you'll just have to deal with it. Anyway I'll update tomorrow after coming back from the Immigration Office. Wish me luck.