I'm zonked

I just played with PHP for a bit to write a temporary front-end to my translated box scores which nobody will use anyway but it's still nice every now and then to go hacking on something just so I don't forget how.

Today I ate lunch at 1pm and I ate dinner at 10:30pm and that sucked. But I had too many classes to do otherwise. Also it turns out that my student who went to Vancouver for two weeks was staying right near Metrotown. Go figure.

I played one game of Pop'n 16 tonight. The machines both had a line at Kawaguchi, but I figured 2 machines was better to wait for than one. I played uhh... some level 22 Mr. T song, the level 24 cover of Arashi's "Love So Sweet", and the level 25 "Sobakasu". Turns out you don't get an extra stage for a score of 89...? Or maybe that was just turned off on this machine for now, who knows. But next time I wanna try Tentaikansoku and some other pop songs they added to pop'n. Pretty cool though.

I'm hoping to go get a re-entry permit tomorrow... but not really particularly into heading down to Shinagawa, bleh.

I'm a legal alien (with my re-entry sticker, yay)

Hey, it looks like someone has been reading my Livejournal from the computer at GEOS... and it wasn't me. HELLO JON AND ERI!! Care to say hello?

Anyway, today I went down to Shinagawa and got my re-entry permit for my America trip. Turns out it really isn't that hard; it just takes a whole lot of time and a chunk of money. First the time to get to Tennozu Isle or Shinagawa station; I chose Tennozu Isle and walked to the Immigration Office from there, and boy was THAT an experience, it's literally on this island that is filled with shipping companies and industrial seaports and is polluted as all hell.

Once you get into the building, believe it or not, there are VERY few useful signs in English. I had to go downstairs and ask the information desk what the hell I was supposed to do, and they ALSO didn't have anyone around at the time who spoke English (though they said I could go wait at another desk to be helped by an English speaker), so I just explained what I wanted to do in Japanese, pointed to the kanji for "re-entry permit", and she told me to go buy a stamp at the AM-PM convenience store for 3000 yen, and then go get a waiting number and fill out a bunch of forms upstairs.

My number was #666, go figure.

I watched the Koshien senbatsu while waiting, since it was on NHK. So that was a bonus. The Seikou-Okinawa game had just started. And so I don't remember how long it was before they called my number -- when I got there they were up to number #598 or so. I went up, gave them my forms, the stamp, etc, they took my passport and put a sticker in it, and that's it.

When I left the building, the bus to Shinagawa station happened to JUST arrive, so I got on. It took maybe 15 minutes to the station, then another 40 minutes on the train, and I got back up north around 4:30, I guess.

Out of curiosity, does the US have this kind of thing? Like, if a foreigner with a valid visa is living in the US, and wants to go out of the country for a few days, do they have to apply for a permit to get back in before their trip (and pay like $30 for it)?