All the Bureaucracy

A little over a month ago it was revealed to me, by one of my superiors at my workplace, that the best way to obtain a visa in my case probably wasn't to do so through my work. You see, my idea for staying in Japan was to go after a Working Visa. But Working Visas take a long time to process and have gotten harder to attain in the past few years. Instead, I'm going after a different visa: the Biological Child of a Biological Child of a Japanese National Visa. What a mouth-full. But it exists.

My "mildly annoyed by bureaucratic bullshit" face.

When I first inquired about it, I was told by a rather tired-looking man behind a desk that I would be needing several documents, notably:
- My birth certificate.
- My mother's birth certificate.
- My mother's marriage certificate.
- My grandfather's birth certificate.
- Grandfather's marriage certificate.
- A letter of guarantee from a contact within Japan.
- An attestation that I have no criminal record.

"Not this shit again..."

 However, all documents had to be originals. So the past month has been a rush to gather these documents from all over the world and get the translated into Japanese (which got done, in the end, courtesy of my own mother.) Today I submitted those documents after a two hour wait in processing.
 Should my application succeed, I'll have access to a 5 year renewable stay in Japan, with freedom to change jobs, go to school, or do whatever the hell I want. Fingers crossed.