Permanent Residence Application

Yesterday we took the day off to go to the immigration office in Osaka.

It was expected that it would be crowded but it was something like 200 times more crowded than our prior experiences. (Not saying much when the tiny Saga Immigration office had maybe two people waiting every time.)

It would have taken under two hours except that we were told from the start that we had better submit an application to renew my current (spouse) visa in addition to applying for permanent residence.

I kicked myself for not preparing this in advance, but in all honesty, I thought I wouldn't be allowed to submit them at the same time. The documents overlap so that was no problem, since we prepared for permanent residence which needs much more. We were told that it takes up to four months to process the permanent residency application but I only have a couple months left on my current visa. 

Thankfully all the applications and forms are available there. A lot of people don't come with everything printed out I guess.

It was at least 50% copying what was written on the permanent residence application, yet I really struggled to hand write the application because of the background noise, stress, and anxiety.

(At one point I told my husband to stop complaining that I didn't fill it out right and fill it out himself, wondering why I was even doing all the work. Haha the real reason is his writing is mostly illegible and I practice shodo, so even though it's totally backwards, I write more neatly than him. Then I appologized for being so grumpy and stressed out.)

It's so much nicer to fill out paperwork at home on the computer with no worries that if you make a mistake you'll have to start all over.

It was lucky that we had all the documents we needed to fill in the renewal forms and I had an extra photo. 

So glad that part is over with. Not as excited about going back twice to renew and hopefully get the change to a permanent resident.