But Korea wasn’t home, so I guess I can go back there.
As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I’m making a trip back to Korea soon.
In three days, actually.
I fly over on Thursday and back on Tuesday. The reason? Mainly (and most importantly), to get my work visa for Japan. That way I can stay here all nice and legal-like. It only takes a day to process (or so they say), so why am I going for 5 days?
Well, Japan, like some other countries, is happy for people to come and visit, just not stay for too long. Unless you have a valid visa (other than a tourist one) you have to have a ticket out of the country when you arrive. Or the means to buy one. When I flew here in September, my return flight was for November 25th, back to Seoul. Why that date? Well, you can only stay for 90 days as a tourist, and the 25th would be 12 weeks to the day from my arrival. Sure, only 84 days, but that would show them I wasn’t going to run the risk of overstaying my visa since I’d be leaving before it ran out.
That was my excuse, anyways.
I hadn’t even planned on using the return ticket. I got it using my air miles, so the round trip only cost me $50. Made sense at the time. Save money flying to Japan since the startup costs over there can be very high. As luck would have it, all the paperwork for my job came in earlier this month, and the timing was good for using the return ticket to go get my visa done. But how do I get back to Japan?
One-way ticket, of course.
Since I’ll have a valid visa, I only need a one-way to come back to Japan. That was $250, so the total cost of Seoul to Tokyo to Seoul to Tokyo is only $300. Not a bad deal at all.
Like I said, the visa only takes one day to process. Since I’m arriving on a Thursday, I’ll have to drop it off on Friday, which means I can’t get it back until Monday. I suppose I could’ve made a mad dash to the airport to fly back out on Monday evening, but that’d be a real hassle. And if there was some unforeseen delay, I’d be scrambling to change my ticket at the last minute. And that wouldn’t be any fun. Tuesday just made more sense to everybody.
So that means I get a long weekend off from work. ^.^
Of course, getting my visa is work-related, so it’s not like I’m not getting anything productive done. I’ve also been tasked with finding some English board games for the school, so there’s more work stuff as well. I guess that’ll make the weekend a “working holiday” of sorts.It should be fun. I’ll be staying with friends in the town I used to live in, hanging out, doing a bit of shopping. I’m looking forward to it.
Wait….did I just say I’m looking forward to going to Korea?!? O.o