Almost...

For better or worse I've gone ahead and signed a letter of agreement to work another year in Japan.  I hadn't given any serious thought to returning to Canada so signing the dotted line was pretty well a foregone conclusion.  I won't say that the sentiment that it feels like I just got here is what led me to that result.  It's more a case of feeling that I'm settled in and I'm not in a hurry to move again.
This year's act of signing another contract has been accompanied by other "housecleaning" activities; getting a new passport and applying for a work visa extension.  The former was a bit of a SNAFU situation thanks to me being caught off guard by Easter Monday.  The latter has gone a bit more smoothly.  I say "a bit more" because of a snag I hit when I submitted my application and documents. 

After I had signed my letter of intent to remain with the company I had reminded them that I would have to get my work visa extended.  So our office manager was tasked with assisting me gather the required documentation.  She was able to obtain a number of them without my assistance.  In one case she found out that I would have to visit city hall in person to get the pertinent document.  On Sunday night I did a final check and everything seemed to be in order.  Then I noticed one item at the bottom of the checklist (incidentally it was all in Japanese) which had been handed to me; a revenue stamp.  After a quick check on the Internet I was relieved to find out I could purchase one at a post office.  So I was able to let out a sigh of relief and get some rest.

The "fun" started after I got into the immigration bureau office in Sendai.  When I submitted my documents for screening I was told that the application form I had been provided was out of date.  Okay.  The clerk made a quick inquiry and then found a form which I could fill out in lieu of redoing my application form.  So that wasn't a big deal.  I was given a number, asked to take a seat and wait to be called.  It didn't take an inordinate amount of time for me to be called up to submit my application and its attendant documentation.  After doing that I returned to my seat to wait until I was called again.

When called back to the counter I was advised that I needed another document.  Great.  I wasn't angry.  Just a bit confused and surprised.  I was given a letter of explanation (all in Japanese of course) and a self-addressed envelope to use for sending in the required document.  After giving my head a few incredulous shakes I trotted off toward downtown Sendai to get a bite to eat and do some shopping.  That exercise was relatively successful.  My mini katsudon and soba set was quite good and I was able to purchase a loaf of freshly baked German style sourdough rye bread.  The cashier chuckled when I asked him to cut me a slice off the loaf before he packaged it up for me.  I, for one, was not going to miss out on a chance to nibble on some fresh baked rye bread.  Especially in Japan. 

The gist of the documentation omission boils down to some peculiarity of taxation in Japan which I haven't completely figured out.  On their website the Japanese Department of Immigration mentions that one has to submit documents pertaining to income and payment of taxes.  But they don't say which or what documents.  Along with the salary schedule document from my employer I submitted a document from city hall that stated I had paid income tax.  But I believe I was also required to submit a document which amounts to being proof of being assessed income tax.  Of course my poor little Canadian brain wonders why one document can't serve both those functions.  My initial search of the city hall website didn't turn up any mention of such a document.  So it looks like I'm going to be having another lesson in the joys of dealing with bureaucracy, Japanese style. 

Going Back to My Previous Post...

...The image is of a creation which I came up with by chance when plugging away in Simcity 4 (which I had talked about at length in another previous post).  The little mountain I created reminded me of the Totoro creatures in the old movie "My Neighbour Totoro".  So naturally, I named the little town I created at its feet, "Totoro-mori".

A slightly less comfortable movie reference came up this past winter.  I don't remember exactly when but there was some snow on the ground so I suspect it was late February.  The situation was one where I was heading out to get dinner at a nearby restaurant.  As I left the school where I work I noticed a significant amount of bird droppings on the ground.  I didn't bother looking up.  I just looked down and made sure I didn't step on any droppings.  After I crossed the street I saw more bird droppings.  As I stepped around them I heard crows cawing overhead.  That's when I looked up and saw them...crows.  A large black mob of them.  There were literally hundreds of crows gathered on the telephone and power lines overhead.  For about three blocks every inch of wire was occupied by crows.  "Whoa", I said to myself, "This is like a scene out of 'The Birds'".  There was genuine sense of fear in me as I worked my way down the street trying to avoid being shat upon by some black, feathered bomber.  Thinking back I can surmise that such a scene must of been the origin of the term "a murder of crows". 

Just a Quick Test

I will write about this screen shot in my next blog post...

First...A Word About...

...Flickr.  The word I have reserved for that right now is "Annoyed".  Not terribly annoyed but annoyed nonetheless.  The reason being that the little app which allowed me to compose and post a blog entry from within Flickr is no more.  This feeling of annoyance isn't about blaming someone for the removal of that app.  It's about not having that option to share what I had been intending to share.  Any ways, enough of that.

The original title of this post was to be "(Yet Another) Game Which Ate My Brain".  The guilty game in this case being a veteran called "Simcity 4".  It's been ages since I've played any of the "Sim" titles.  I believe the last one I touched was "Simcity 2000".  I did a quick check and discovered it was released back in 1994.  What got me hooked this time was an e-mail from a game site I've been a customer of.  It heralded the arrival of a new Macintosh platform version of the game.  That within itself didn't catch my addition.  The $20 price tag did.  So I fired up the App Store on my Mac, purchased Simcity 4, downloaded it, started playing and upon realizing I had been playing it for a while found myself going to bed at 3 am.

What followed was a gaming project of sorts: I created a region in Simcity 4 and slowly went about building a series of interconnected cities.  At that time I was just happy enough playing the game in its original "off the shelf" form.  And then something happened...what it was I don't have any recollection of.

The gist of the past month or so I've spent on the game is not about playing it but about making it do strange and wonderful things.  Somehow I stumbled upon a modification to the game which I downloaded, installed and found to be quite neat.  Before long I found a few more and duly gave them a try.  What drove me onto the path of something less than sanity was a game modification featuring a train station...based on a train station in Japan.  The fact that the platform was elevated drove me to find out how to make it work in the game.  And that search opened a whole new can of worms.

It didn't take me long to find out what the missing piece was.  Figuring out how to get it working was a touch tricky but fortunately I found answers to my questions with little effort.  Simultaneously I started collecting game modifications created by Japanese players of the game.  The net result is that I have the game running in left hand and right hand driving mode on my machine.  That was accomplished by changing the region of an account I have on my Mac to Japan and its primary language to Japanese.  So now when I log onto my secondary account on my Mac, all the menus and system dialogues are in Japanese.  Some of it I can read, some of it I can guess at based on an understanding of kanji radicals and the rest is by association with English language counterparts.  The experience hasn't substantially increased my knowledge of Japanese but I do have a version of Simcity 4 loaded with Japanese buildings, vehicles and other flotsam.  Now I can play the game and watch cars drive on the left hand side of the road and trains run on the right hand side tracks.  Back in my coding days we would call that kind of bug, a "feature".