Yesterday was the day I traveled to London to meet Carly and we would go to the Japanese Embassy in Park Lane to apply for our visas. There were a few hiccups along the way...
When Carly and I booked our flights with STA we asked for open returns which was all fine but the travel agents cannot book you on a flight 1 year in advance because the times and flights have not been planned that far in advance, 11 months is the furthest you can book. So what you have to do is phone STA up (while on holiday) and ask to move your flight date, they book you on a 6 month advance flight...I guess to kind of give you a return ticket...if you were retarded and forgot to ring up then you though "FUCK WHERES MY TICKET??". They are then able to book your time and seats and you pay a small fee.
The woman who was dealing with my application didn't understand this. She saw my itinerary was planned for 12 months, looked at my return date and proceeded to tell me they didn't match...
I KNOW THIS
My plan is to stay for a year, I am going to change my flight dates as soon as STA allow me to.
I can understand that it looks dodgy, what if this ISN'T an open return and my plan is to miss my flight that I've paid nearly £600 for...OK I kind of get it.
Maybe it was silly of me to assume that they would let it slide but then I didn't think it would be a problem. My worries were more focused on my bank statements to be honest! I had to get a print out from the bank showing my recent transactions with a special stamp on it but it doesn't say where the money is coming from so she asked me...I dunno I just felt like a criminal, like it was so suspicious to have 2 largish amounts of money going into my account! Obviously one was my wages from work and the other was a cash loan from a friend. Still I felt like she thought I was really trying to con her into giving me a visa!
Anyway so the itinerary and the plane tickets didn't match so she told me that I wouldn't get approved. So I asked her what to do, she said the only thing I could do was to change my itinerary to a 6 month plan. Seeing as I'd do pretty much anything for this visa right now, fibbing a little bit so the documents matched wasn't going to be a problem but it involved phoning my dad and getting him to edit one of the pages aswell as going into my e-mail and finding a receipt for the plane ticket then fax them over to the embassy.
Carly also had to get a photocopy of the cheque that had been paid into her account. All this stuff just seems so fucking red taped it's stupid.
C'mon Gaby! Jump through those hoops!!
Now would probably be a good time to say I dislike dealing with bureaucracy. I'm not very good at it for one thing. I don't understand terms and conditions and when I don't understand what an official is saying to me I go blank as keep asking them to explain, which gets us both annoyed and I look like an twat.
Anyway the whole process of getting the forms sorted took about 3 hours but I did express to the woman behind the counter how much I wanted this visa and how I wanted to make sure everything was sorted so I gave myself the best chance possible of getting approved.
I'll be honest she wasn't very sympathetic or helpful but then she might have been having a bad day...I made sure to give her big smile and thank her honestly for her help and she eventually smiled back and said they phone if there were any more problems.
Unfortunately now we have to play the waiting game. I doubt they will even get to review our applications until Monday, then if there are any more problems it'll take another day...then if we get approved our passports have to be sent back...that's another day. Maybe by the end of the week we'll know.
So Carly and I headed into London Town for some well earned food. Also we went to the puri kura place in China Town but none of the Japanese machines had paper....still we had fun on the crappy old ones!
I guess that concludes the visa part of my story. It's the last step apart from packing and actually getting on the plane.
On a personal note I'm meeting my ex on Tuesday to tell him exactly why I nearly smacked 7 types of shit out of him the other night. Wish him luck!
Gaby
When Carly and I booked our flights with STA we asked for open returns which was all fine but the travel agents cannot book you on a flight 1 year in advance because the times and flights have not been planned that far in advance, 11 months is the furthest you can book. So what you have to do is phone STA up (while on holiday) and ask to move your flight date, they book you on a 6 month advance flight...I guess to kind of give you a return ticket...if you were retarded and forgot to ring up then you though "FUCK WHERES MY TICKET??". They are then able to book your time and seats and you pay a small fee.
The woman who was dealing with my application didn't understand this. She saw my itinerary was planned for 12 months, looked at my return date and proceeded to tell me they didn't match...
I KNOW THIS
My plan is to stay for a year, I am going to change my flight dates as soon as STA allow me to.
I can understand that it looks dodgy, what if this ISN'T an open return and my plan is to miss my flight that I've paid nearly £600 for...OK I kind of get it.
Maybe it was silly of me to assume that they would let it slide but then I didn't think it would be a problem. My worries were more focused on my bank statements to be honest! I had to get a print out from the bank showing my recent transactions with a special stamp on it but it doesn't say where the money is coming from so she asked me...I dunno I just felt like a criminal, like it was so suspicious to have 2 largish amounts of money going into my account! Obviously one was my wages from work and the other was a cash loan from a friend. Still I felt like she thought I was really trying to con her into giving me a visa!
Anyway so the itinerary and the plane tickets didn't match so she told me that I wouldn't get approved. So I asked her what to do, she said the only thing I could do was to change my itinerary to a 6 month plan. Seeing as I'd do pretty much anything for this visa right now, fibbing a little bit so the documents matched wasn't going to be a problem but it involved phoning my dad and getting him to edit one of the pages aswell as going into my e-mail and finding a receipt for the plane ticket then fax them over to the embassy.
Carly also had to get a photocopy of the cheque that had been paid into her account. All this stuff just seems so fucking red taped it's stupid.
C'mon Gaby! Jump through those hoops!!
Now would probably be a good time to say I dislike dealing with bureaucracy. I'm not very good at it for one thing. I don't understand terms and conditions and when I don't understand what an official is saying to me I go blank as keep asking them to explain, which gets us both annoyed and I look like an twat.
Anyway the whole process of getting the forms sorted took about 3 hours but I did express to the woman behind the counter how much I wanted this visa and how I wanted to make sure everything was sorted so I gave myself the best chance possible of getting approved.
I'll be honest she wasn't very sympathetic or helpful but then she might have been having a bad day...I made sure to give her big smile and thank her honestly for her help and she eventually smiled back and said they phone if there were any more problems.
Unfortunately now we have to play the waiting game. I doubt they will even get to review our applications until Monday, then if there are any more problems it'll take another day...then if we get approved our passports have to be sent back...that's another day. Maybe by the end of the week we'll know.
So Carly and I headed into London Town for some well earned food. Also we went to the puri kura place in China Town but none of the Japanese machines had paper....still we had fun on the crappy old ones!
I guess that concludes the visa part of my story. It's the last step apart from packing and actually getting on the plane.
On a personal note I'm meeting my ex on Tuesday to tell him exactly why I nearly smacked 7 types of shit out of him the other night. Wish him luck!
Gaby
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