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Aug. 10th, 2005 11:26 pmI went to the Japanese Consulate to apply for a visa today.
It's a rather nice, large white building that I had often passed but never given much thought to. For the longest time, I had thought its northenr wall was the edge of a park. (This misconception is somewhat understandable. Directlyly to the west of the consulate is a park of some sort. It merely requires a lousy sense of spatial relations and I have no sense of distance.)
The visitor's parking is a short row of cars outside the gate. I had just noticed a sign on the gate that said photo identification is required and my little brothers, who had wanted to go inside, did not have any. This caused a small amount of confusion that delayed us from leaving the vicinity of our car considerably. (Most elementary school aged children do not have proper government ids. And someone would have had to stay in the car with him and it certainly wouldn't have been me.) I looked behind me to see a rather nice young man who was holding what appeared to be two passports. My first thought was that he worked for the consulate and was there to greet us, but after a second, I realized that he was parked in the stall next to us and that I was blocking his way.
I found this to be mildly embarassing.
When I questioned the guard, I found that we just had to sign the boys in. Then I noticed that a "Jake Shimabukuro" was signed in a few names ahead of me. (Jake Shimabukuro is a local musician. I recognize his name because, let's face it, Shimabukuro is rather fun to say. I can't think of anything he plays, but apparently he's quite Big in Japan.) When I pointed this out to mother, the guard said that we had just missed him. He was in the....oh. Mom teased me about this afterwards, but we didn't really make a big deal out of it. It was more odd than anything else.
When we went in, I was rather surprised to see that the consulate looked very much like a bank.
It's a rather nice, large white building that I had often passed but never given much thought to. For the longest time, I had thought its northenr wall was the edge of a park. (This misconception is somewhat understandable. Directlyly to the west of the consulate is a park of some sort. It merely requires a lousy sense of spatial relations and I have no sense of distance.)
The visitor's parking is a short row of cars outside the gate. I had just noticed a sign on the gate that said photo identification is required and my little brothers, who had wanted to go inside, did not have any. This caused a small amount of confusion that delayed us from leaving the vicinity of our car considerably. (Most elementary school aged children do not have proper government ids. And someone would have had to stay in the car with him and it certainly wouldn't have been me.) I looked behind me to see a rather nice young man who was holding what appeared to be two passports. My first thought was that he worked for the consulate and was there to greet us, but after a second, I realized that he was parked in the stall next to us and that I was blocking his way.
I found this to be mildly embarassing.
When I questioned the guard, I found that we just had to sign the boys in. Then I noticed that a "Jake Shimabukuro" was signed in a few names ahead of me. (Jake Shimabukuro is a local musician. I recognize his name because, let's face it, Shimabukuro is rather fun to say. I can't think of anything he plays, but apparently he's quite Big in Japan.) When I pointed this out to mother, the guard said that we had just missed him. He was in the....oh. Mom teased me about this afterwards, but we didn't really make a big deal out of it. It was more odd than anything else.
When we went in, I was rather surprised to see that the consulate looked very much like a bank.