NICK: I become a citizen of Matsuyama
Trip Start
Jan 25, 2006
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47
106
Trip End
Ongoing
Matsuyama,
Japan
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Residents of Japan are required to register with the city in which they move to within 10 days of moving there. I had no idea how to register, and if I did, what forms of information that I would need to register. That's where my mother came in. She helped me fill out my juuminhyo, or registration paper work. She picked up my family registry (koseki tohon) and other information (koseki fushyo) when she was in Osaka, and brought them with her. We then just showed my passport, filled out the paperwork, stamped the paper, and I was done. I then filed for health insurance, got a resident card, and I think got set up for taxes.
I was glad to have her there
01 Dogo Arcade
. She helped me figure all this stuff out. The best part was when they asked me the security question: What is your mother's name?
i was super confused, since the woman asking the question knew full well that the woman sitting next to me, translating all the paperwork was my mother.
Seeing as how it was probably just policy, I answered her question.
After that, we did some sight seeing. I felt bad since my mother had come to Matsuyama for 1 afternoon, 1 full day and 1 morning, and all she'd seen was my apartment, the inside of the Matsuyama city hall, and the train station.
We went around the city and we went out to Dogo Onsen (the most famous and oldest bathhouse in japan). We didn't go in, since my mother knows what a bathhouse looks like. We then rode the little tourist train, the Botchan Ressha (Botchan Steam train), and went around the city. We walked around the city center, and had some ramen
02 Dogo Onsen
.It was good spending time with my mother like that. I dared to ask her about somethings that had been on my mind about what my grandmother thought about her interracial marriage, and moving to the US, and other stuff. Pretty non-controversial topics these days, but for some reason I'd imagined that they would have been much more complicated issues in the 70s..
It started getting late so we headed back to the apartment to meet up with Ashleigh, who had just gotten off of work.
Mom wanted to take us out to dinner, so we tried to find someplace that was local to our house that we'd never been to. My mother noticed that there was an Okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake) house that was around the corner from our apartment building.
O' the wonders of the world, what lights along the path of life, if I could just read the friggin' signs!!!
We went to the okonomiyaki house and my mother poked her head in
03 Mom and I next to the Botchan Ressha
. Apparently they were closed, but after we'd threatened to go to the crappy overpriced restaurant next door, they opened up and let us sit at the bar. The woman inside was hilarious. She occasionally poured milk into her glass with shochu (japanese liquor) and downed it rather quickly, saying that 2-3 of those and she was wasted. During the whole time we were there, she must have had 4. and we were only there for an hour and a half. The whole time she talked Mom's ear off about various things from collecting pure water from springs in the hills, to the difference between Hiroshima style okonomiyaki to Osaka style okonomiyaki, and so forth.
Fascinating as she was, Ashleigh pointed out to me that her husband and mother were looking at the fish that he'd cooked during the entire time that she made our food. We then deduced that we should leave as we were preventing them from eating their dinner. We politely thanked them for the dinner and the company, and then left. Mom had been so fascinated by this woman that she didn't notice that they were waiting to eat. She then agreed it was best that we'd left.
We'll have to go back sometime.
