Your’s Truly, Adrian Wylde
Expense account, submitted by Johnny Dollar Adrian Wylde.
This is an accounting of expenditures during my pursuit of the Keijidosha Matter.
Item one, Thursday, April 1: ¥3,000 for a translation into Japanese of my Canadian driver's license. I bicycled from Ginowan to Urasoe, a distance of about 5 kilometres, mostly uphill, in an effort to keep the expenses for this case to a minimum. The girl behind the counter spoke English better than I speak Japanese, but I stuck to her native language.
Translation safely in my folder, I continued on to Naha, an additional 11 kilometres, mercifully beginning with a long downhill stretch. The official there informed me that an official gaikokujin toroku shomei (certificate of alien registration document) was required.
Item two, Friday, April 2: ¥200 for gaikokujin toroku shomei from the city office in Ginowan, the opposite direction from my residence. Despite my legs being sore from the 30 kilometre ride the day before, I bicycled there on my mamacheri, a heavy 6-speed steel bicycle with a basket in the front for my briefcase and a child seat in the back. This was as far as I went that day, given the late start.
Item three, Monday, April 5: ¥4,500 for the license. I bicycled again to Naha and was able to acquire a Japanese driver's license, unten menkyou. Because of an understanding between Japan and Canada, all I needed was my Canadian license, an official translation of it from the Japan Automobile Federation, my gaikokujin toroku shomei, and my passport. I took a quick eye test and attended a half-hour lecture in Japanese, after which I was handed my license. Most of the lecture seemed to focus on the financial burden if you got drunk and killed somebody.
Item four: Friday, April 10: ¥5,500 for an inkan, a name stamp that counts as an official signature. After copious internet research and car shopping, I had my name stamp by the next day and bicycled to Chatan on Sunday with my daughter, to look at a car which turned out not to be in yet.
On Monday it was back to the city office again to get another gaikokujin toroku shomei, as the licensing office had retained my first one, and also to get an inkan toroku shomei, an official registration certificate for my inkan. This let to the following two items:
Item five: ¥200 for the second gaikokujin toroku shomei.
Item six: ¥5,500 for another inkan. The first was beautifully inscribed in katakana, one of the phonetic alphabets here, that they will not officially register at the Ginowan city office. They require English lettering for foreign names (though I found out later that the Naha city office will register katakana inkan). This did not come with a nice case, and due to space issues he had to use my first name when I always use my middle. I picked it up before work the next day. Well, after the first job and before the second.
Item seven: ¥500 to acquire the official inkan toroku shomei. Easy enough once it was in romaji, and now I had all the documentation I needed to buy a car. I also stopped at the fudosan, the real estate agents who'd arranged for our apartment, in order to get a parking stall.
There was another complication though. Having bicycled to Chatan on Sunday, and having the sunburn to prove it, work intervened, leaving me unable to get a final quote for several days.
Item eight, April 15: ¥2,270 in a combination of three buses and one taxi ride to get from my apartment to view the car in Chatan. It ran, and was cheap.
Item nine: I put down ¥50,000 as a down payment and they would deliver the car later, once the paperwork was done. Total price including paperwork and delivery was to be ¥170,000 for a 14-year-old car with 98,000 kilometres on it. Also revealed is that because the car is a keijidosha (“light vehicle,” a special class of very cheap, very small car that gets a break on insurance and regulations) I didn't need the inkan toroku shomei.
Item 10, April 22: ¥460 for the bus from Naha to Chatan to pick up the car. The official fair was actually ¥750, but the bus driver grew impatient with me working out the difference between that and the ¥460 discount bus ticket I had, and just waved me off the bus.
Item 11: ¥120,000, balance due on the car. After a few more stamps of my inkan and handing over a wad of cash, I drove my car off the lot. It's a white Suzuki WagonR with “upgraded” sound. It has a CD changer in back that skips constantly and badly mounted speakers, but it runs and should run for quite some time.
To acquire a keijidosha, a much cheaper car to run, I needed the following items:
- Inkan (though I may have been able to get by with a signature in the end)
- Gaijin Toroku Shomei – certificate of Alien Registration; the card alone isn't good enough
- Gaijin Toroku – the foreign registration card
- Unten Menkyou – driver's license
- Cash
- Time
Expense account total: ¥22,130 in miscellaneous expenses, including my driver's license, plus ¥170,000 for the car itself, bringing the total to ¥192,130.
Remarks: Wow. Lots of misinformation out there.
The Story of the Fall of Troy
Well, another story already. This one is from my creative writing class again, slightly modified from when I submitted it. I had a lot of fun with this one, and it's definitely more safe for kids.
Mistaken Identity
This is a story I wrote for my creative writing class last summer. The final revision is posted below the jump. People tell me it's a little dark, and there is definitely an undercurrent of impending violence, but no violent scenes occur. Lots of swearing, so you might not want your kids to read it.
The quote at the beginning is from the book "Hagakure," by Tsunetomo Yamamoto. It's an amazing book by turns ridiculous and sublime. I'll write more about it later for a blog post. For now, please enjoy the story.
More to come…
Keep watching the skies. Or here, I'm not sure which is going to change first.