(beware: long and whiny)
Two things are going on right now that are causing me a bit of stress. The funny thing is that the one that causes everyone else to jump when they hear about it isnft the one thatfs making me lose sleep at night.
Over the past year, Ifve posted a couple of threads about the Bakerfs Cyst on the back of my knee. It was looked at by three different doctors who X-rayed & MRIfed it and all agreed on what it was. Recently, though, I went to an orthopedic specialist who took a look at the MRIs and immediately said gthat ainft right.h He couldnft find any ligament damage and I wasnft in any pain, which are the two main signs of a Bakerfs Cyst, so he decided that someone somewhere goofed. He diagnosed it as a lipoma, or fatty soft tumor, and referred me to the National Cancer Institute, where I went this morning. The doctor there agreed with the new diagnosis and sent me off to have some tests done. I was poked and prodded and tweaked and drained and told to come back next week to discuss the results. Most likely, sometime in the near future, Ifll have surgery done to remove the tumor and theyfll run a biopsy to see if itfs malignant. From what the last two doctors have told me, and from what Ifve researched on the Internet, the chance of this is very low.
At the same time as all of this, my visa to stay in Japan is coming up for renewal next month. Having gotten married last year, Ifm planning to change my visa status from a work visa for gCulture, Humanities and International Relations Specialisth [English Teacher] to a spousal visa. There are a few advantages to this, partly that I could work at any job I want (including starting my own company), and partly because my relationship with Mrs. Light over the past six years has been far more stable than any company Ifve worked for. Regardless of what changes I want to make, I still have to go to The Immigration Office, an experience I am most definitely not looking forward to.
Getting my visa renewed was never a pleasant experience, but the degree of unpleasantness has varied somewhat. When I first arrived, the immigration office of the city I lived in was caught in a bureaucratic bind: because the town was so small, the national government had only allocated them a one-room building with three employees. Due to some sociological fluke, however, the town had a foreign population that was (percentage-wise) ten times that of Tokyo, so that there were at least fifty people lined up waiting for the doors to open every morning. Not a good time for anyone involved. Since moving to Tokyo about six years ago, things have been different. The first year, I found a little, out-of-the-way office at the Air Terminal that was set up mainly to process re-entry permits, but could handle visa paperwork as well. Nobody knew about this place, so I was able to get in and out in only ten minutes or so. Heaven. It was so convenient that when I came back the next year, it had of course been shut down. From then on, I went to the central office in Otemachi, which was big and crowded, but easy to get to, relatively fast-moving, staffed with some very nice folks and had plenty of places to sit. After going there for a few years I was at last rewarded with the Holy Grail of foreign workers: a three-year visa. No more would I have to sweat over my job status every June and spend a month of every year carrying my passport everywhere I went. My worries were gone. Until three years passed. Until now.
In the three years since my last visit, the Immigration office has undergone a few changes. As a national department, Ifm not sure what input, if any, Tokyo Governor Ishihara had in creating the new system, but it seems to reflect his internationalist policy of gget the fuck out of my country right now.h All the local immigration offices in Tokyo have been shut down, and a new central office has been set up. Upon visiting the new central office, three things immediately leap to onefs attention.
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Itfs on an island. By itself, this isnft quite so remarkable; there are several popular neighborhoods in downtown Tokyo that are also islands, and this one at least is still connected by a road. Whatfs remarkable is that in a city where I can step out of my office and walk to any of six different train stations in under fifteen minutes, they managed to find the one spot in all of downtown Tokyo that was not within 20 minutes of any station.
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Itfs next door to a garbage dump. Ok, ok, erefuse disposal facilityf, it doesnft change that fact that the only vehicles driving out to this island are buses filled with foreigners and trucks filled with trash.
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Itfs a prison. I donft mean that it looks like a prison, or that it feels oppressive enough to make you think youfre inside a prison, I mean itfs a real, honest-to-god-damn prison. Most of the building, in fact. The people Ifve gotten directions from have said gYoufll see two entrances: donft go through the big front entrance, thatfs for the prison. Foreigners go in through the side door.h Personally, I worry that if anythingfs found out of order with my paperwork, Ifll simply go in and never come out again. It doesnft help matters that every time I or my wife or coworkers calls them to find out what papers are needed, we get completely different answers.
So now, Ifm running from one government office to the next trying to get every kind of documentation I could possibly need (and convince my wife to do the same), while at the same time getting all the tests done that I need for surgery (and preferably get that out of the way before therefs a chance of being deported). When I tell people about these things, however, the one everyone immediately gets concerned about is the tumor. Thatfs understandable; itfs a scary thing with a scary-sounding name. But it just seems so much more straightforward: you find it, you cut it out, you check for its buddies. Rinse, lather, repeat. Besides, from everything Ifve seen and read, this type of tumor is almost always benign, and I like those odds. Basically, Ifm stressing more over the visa than the tumor because while both of these things have the potential to seriously fuck with my life, the former is the far more unpredictable of the two.
At the very least, I hope they let me take the tumor home afterwards. It’ll make a keen paperweight.
