Getting Closer

I received my Certificate of Eligibility on Thursday of last week, filled out my Visa application (with included awful picture) and sent all the necessary documents to the Embassy of Japan in New York on Friday. It takes 7-10 days to process, so by the 12th or so, I hope to have my documents back and ready to go.

I've also set my departure date, which is very soon - January 21st, Sunday Morning. Bought my tickets and everything. I plan on arriving at Narita on the 22nd, spending the 23rd and 24th with my host family, then taking the train down to Shiga Prefecture on the 25th. I've plotted out the train course and everything, using a nifty tool I found:

http://www.japanrail.com/JR_hyperdia.html

My spacebags aren't here yet... I contacted their customer service, to no avail... If worse comes to worse, I'll just pack the old-fashioned way, just my winter stuff, and have Julian ship me the rest before he heads over himself. As for the computer, there's no way it's fitting without the spacebags, so that will be shipped too, I guess. Sigh... It's better that I'm going ahead of Julian, in the event that I forget anything.

I realized that flickr posted the pics in a format that's a little big - I changed the output already, so when I post more pictures, they won't be so wide.


That's about it for now.