The Dreaded Immigration Office
Posted on | October 17, 2006 | No Comments
I finally went to the Toyko Immigration Office for the first time since I moved to Tokyo and it was quite an experience. The buildiing was very new and quite well layed out and appeared to be sufficient in size. That being said, it was miles from absolutely anything of convienence. It is located in the middle of a pier on Tokyo Bay on one of the man made islands. Despite being only a couple of kilometeres from the center of Tokyo, the nearest train station is a 15+ minute walk away. In all fairness though there is a fairly frequent bus.
The wait at the Immigration office was two and a half hours, which is quite extreme. It did not appear as though they were understaffed. Every window in every section seemed to be manned. In fact, the vast majority had two people working at one window to handle the people. Even with that being the case though, there was still an incredible wait. The only logical deduction is that when they build the place (which was fairly recent) the planners just fucked up. The number of foreigners in Japan is always increasing, and therefore the usage of the immigration bureau will increase proportionatly. It would appear as though the planners just did not antipicate this or just didn’t care. Most people are just waiting to get simple (and usually automatic) things done. For example, Japanese law requires that foreigners get a “re-entry” permit when they leave so that they can use the same visa when they get back. People waiting for this simple item also had to wait herrendous amounts of time.
Many people that I speak kind of feel the whole setup is yet another fuck-you from the Japanese. I don’t see it that way, I think they probably just want to spend the absolute minimum amount of money in despite of whatever inconvience it may cause.
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