Trips to Japan

Day 4 – taking care of business

One of the things I want to do during this visit is to get a new passport. My current passport is not machine readable. It slows down the check-in process and others when I travel internationally. And it is not easy to get a machine readable Japanese passport in U.S. And because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan just started issuing RFID enabled passport, I can renew my passport before it expires.

As far as I know, the process of passport application is rather different from U.S. The part about having to have a passport photo, having to fill in the request form, and having to pay the fee. How to file it seems to be different. I had to go visit the passport request form filing office, wait in the line, file it in person, and a few days later, I go pick it up in person. As a part of the filing, they also require an official copy of the family register.

The acquisition of the copy of family register was pretty easy. Waiting in the line at the Passport Center wasn’t too bad either – the waiting line was about an hour. The trip there is the part I always like – taking a train.

I thought about doing some shopping while I was in central Nagoya for different people, but by the time I was done with the passport business, my left knee was starting to hurt, so I cut the trip short and went home. Carrying those tree branches for couple of hours probably contributed to the pain too.

I’m supposed to be picking up the passport on June 11th, a week after the filing. If I want to do some more shopping, I shall do it then. I definitely need to pick up a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt or two then for Doug at work. (And I must ride the train again.)

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