A Black Hole

So I realize that I've been a little AWOL on this blog, and there's a reason for that. Whether it was the Evil Eye, a debt to Karma, or just plain Bad Luck, I've just been having a soul-crushingly awful summer. So much so that I didn't want to relive it be blogging about it, even though the act of writing about it may have been a cathartic experience. So the blog sort of has this Black Hole in it, starting right around the time of my car accident. Allow me to put things into perspective.

In my head, I have this impression that this ought to be a blog about my encounters with Japanese culture, and therefore be a more Japan-and-Rebeca centric blog. But it's not really about Japan, is it? It's about me being in Japan, living in Japan. It has definitely taken a few odd turns, my life in Japan, that are largely unrelated to Japanese culture and more to do with bad luck. But I will talk about them now because dealing with these things in Japan has been quite the [frustrating] experience.

This summer has been full of really wonderful, fun, thrilling, exciting, happy things as well. But every day that I stopped to have some fun felt like a brief pause before returning to the doom and gloom of Things as Usual. Kinda like a big field of crap punctuated by the occasional bouquet of flowers. The flowers are absolutely gorgeous, but it's hard to ignore all the crap on the ground.

On June 26th, I fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed my car into a tree at 3 am. My friend and I emerged uninjured, about 10 minutes away from my house, and the car wasn't going anywhere. A very kind Japanese guy stopped to help us out. It was lightly raining and Kudo san was nice enough to call and talk to the police for us, and even stayed to help during the whole 2 hour process of towing the car and talking to the police. The really nice thing about not being able to speak the language is that I barely had to do a thing. I signed a paper here and there, I paid the bill, and I had to hang my head in shame, but all the paperwork was taken care of for me. It's like being a kid again.

The repairs on my car would have cost more than I originally paid for the car, so I decided to junk it and find another one. Fortunately, a lot of other JETs were selling their cars for cheap because they would be leaving Japan in August. I made an offer on one, but the guy needed it to move his stuff through the end of July. Meanwhile, I scraped by, renting a car for two weeks, borrowing the office car for work, and going to Europe for two weeks. I managed, and when I got back, I had a car of my own.

However, my international driver's permit expired in July. So in July I had a license, but no car. In August, I had a car but no license. This was not my plan, obviously. I had gone to the driving license center in June to apply to get my Texas license converted to a Japanese license. But there was a hitch. If you are a patient person willing to hear my paperwork woes, I will detail them below. However, you can also imagine that field of crap as it might have been in the beginning - just a small pile perhaps. Now if you imagine it growing bigger and more putrid and more idiotic every day for a month: that's exactly what this whole license-obtaining process has been like. So now you don't even have to read the description below :D

It's still like that today, in fact! I remain unlicensed and this is why. In April, I renewed my Texas license online, because it would expire in October and within 1 year of expiration, you are allowed to renew your license online, if you went in person the last time. So I did this, thinking it would be a good idea to be preemptive.  I had this license mailed to my Texas address. It never arrived. This was the start of all my woes. Had I not done this, I might have been licensed ages ago. Meanwhile, I was putting together my paperwork to obtain a Japanese driver license. I obtained a copy of my driver record (which, by the way, is called a Status Record, in order to further confuse us all) that showed how long I had been licensed. I needed to show that I had been licensed for at least 3 months before I came to Japan, and that I had been living in the U.S. for that much time. But the license I had in my wallet showed was issued one month before I came to Japan - it was a replacement for the license I lost over spring break. But the driver record also showed that my most recent license was issued on April 9, 2011 and would expire in October, 2017. That's right - it showed the data for my renewed license lost somewhere in Texas. For Japanese officials trying to verify my status as a licensed driver, I can understand why this was confusing. So I thought, "OK, no problem. All I have to do is get my license shipped again." So I called the Texas Department of Public Safety at 11pm on a weeknight, or 9am on a weekday in Texas, was put on hold for 30 minutes, then managed to explain my situation. They said they would mail my license to Japan, probably a 4 week wait, but if I wanted it shipped faster, I would have to set up a FedEx account and they would charge me through that. So I tried to do it online. FedEx Japan would only accept a Japanese credit card. Didn't have one. FedEx in the U.S. needed a credit card with an American address - my credit card showed my Japanese address. I finally found a different credit card that worked and called DPS only to find that my license was already being shipped. That was around July 15. I went to Europe and came back hoping to find my license in my mailbox. It was August 6th and it had not arrived. So I called them and asked them to reprint and resend my license, this time by FedEx. It arrived 4 days later, and cost me $75. I didn't care, I just wanted to finish this. But would you believe...the dates on this Shiny, New, Up-to-Date license did not match my status record. The record still shows, to this day, the renewal issue date of April 9, while the license I received shows an August 5 issue date (the expiration date is the same though). Mothereffingsonofa$#*%# So I asked my boss to call the license center and explain things and see if this was ok. It's not really ok, but they might accept a letter of explanation. Maybe. IN ADDITION, they have a problem with my original license issue date. In May, 2003 I qualified for a license - I had passed both the written and practical tests. However, I was only 15 years old on that date, and on the questionnaire I was given at the Japanese license center, I told them that I held a driving permit, or a restricted license, until I was 16 years old, when I received a real license. Now the center needs proof that I was given a real license when I turned 16, a process that is automatic and proof of which I have no idea how to obtain. My appointment to go to the center is next Wednesday, September 14. I have no idea how this will turn out. This is a most unfortunate turn of events. You can see that if just one of many things were different, none of this would have happened. If I had saved my old licenses (from when I was 16 onward); if I hadn't lost my license over spring break; if I hadn't renewed my license in April, if that license hadn't been lost in the mail. All these ifs. All these tiny circumstances that could have prevented all, or half of this. It's a perfect storm of bureaucratic insidiousness. And I just want it to finish already.

Meanwhile, my computer and kindle have both broken and been fixed. I've had several unhappy mix-ups with the post office along the way, though, trying to use Amazon's postage to return the broken kindle. They also seemed to have some problem with a money transfer, so I may have some more things to figure out.

But as crappy as all this has been, I have managed to get a boyfriend out of all of this. But he deserves his own entry, so I'll save the details for next time.