Forms & bureaucracy...

It's that time of the three year cycle...visa renewal. Renewing a visa to live in Japan requires filling out 3 pages of forms that have a way of asking for the same information several times. http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/english/tetuduki/kanri/shyorui/03-format.html So long as one concentrates & doesn't mix things up like the date of visa expiring and the date of passport expiring, it's pretty straightforward. The second step is gathering documents, which shouldn't be particularly bothersome, but always seems to be. I can walk into the tax office or the post office and almost always things go smoothly; the local govt. however have secretly microchipped me and I set off an alarm that alerts the office staff that they are required to be as difficult as possible. Yesterday... Arrive at local govt. office a little after nine with a permission note from Hiro that I could pick up his tax records (required for my visa). Permission notes are quite pointless if you're logical about life because Japan doesn't work on signatures it works on hanko (personal seals) which can be bought by anyone in most Japanese family names at most 100 yen shop. So I don't need his signature, just the 100 yen shop stamp. But anyway... I handed over the permission slip... I was summoned by a narky guy, who would have been well suited to the officer class of the Imperial Japanese army. Yes I had the permission slip... but no it didn't say it was ME authorised to pick it up. (Like Hiro could find anyone else to take time out of their morning to pick up his tax slip for him........) I said, no worries I would write my name at the top that it was me who was picking it up... DAME DAME DAME (NO NO NO) FAAAAAAAAAAIIIL That was breaking the rules... So I emailed Hiro and asked him to make a second copy with my name on it, which he dutifully did. TODAY I went back to the local govt. with Hiro's new sheet + yesterday's. I presented yesterday's, with my hand written addition that it was me collecting it & stamped it with the 100Yen shop seal... (The newly printed one ready to pull out the moment they objected.) And yesterday's sheet was accepted no problem. NOTE TO SELF. It doesn't matter what you change on an official document. Anything can be verified by a 100 shops stamp, so long as you don't make the change in front of a bureaucrat who enjoys asserting petty power. Sigh....

Non smoking, sometimes ...

Yesterday we had Chinese for dinner. The restaurant has non smoking lunches, three days a month... I am not sure why they bother.

Location:Non smoking - just check the date

Public public toilets 2

Spotted near the Kanda Gawa on the way from takadanobaba to Higashi Nakano yesterday.

Location:Okubo

Japanese Newspeak & the Senkaku "dispute"

This is from the Facebook page of  Richard Lloyd Parry's  - The Times' Asia editor.


NHK, Japan's rough equivalent of the BBC, is often accused of being insufficiently independent, and of pusillanity in the face of pressure from the government.The following document, passed to me by a source who wishes to remain anonymous, seems to confirm this. In the past, the NHK style police have outlawed the use of the English expression "sex slaves" for the euphemistic "comfort women", and insist on referring to "the incident known as the Nanking Massacre". Now employees on NHK's English language programs have received the following memo from their boss:


(To all translators)

We forwarded to you the other day a message asking you to refrain from using the expression "disputed islands" in news scripts related to the Senkaku Islands.

The World News department has further decided not to use the word "dispute", to avoid giving the mistaken impression that NHK acknowledges the existence of such a dispute.

We are in the process of determining what expression to use instead of "dispute."
Until then, we ask you to refrain from using this word when writing news scripts.

###

https://www.facebook.com/richardlp/posts/10152140629445645


I expect this from China, but from supposedly democratic Japan.

Political developments in Japan are extremely troubling.