Hope?

Well the AT's got paid on the 28th, which was a relief to us all. What that means as far as the future of my company goes is anyone's guess.
Friday was the staff payday as well, and Megumi, my j-staff, was unable to tell me if she got paid, cause, well, she hadn't checked yet. Who does that? I mean seriously, you're working for a company that might not have paid you and you somehow just don't get around to checking to see if your check was deposited? Silly Japanese, even if I do understand them someday I'll always think they're bass ackwards. I asked her the next day if she knew, and lo and behold, she still hadn't checked. I repeat, who does that? I mean, really.

Anyway, the upside to this is that people got paid. The downside is that it has given us lazy folk, of which working for Nova there are quite a few, that sort of lazy man's hope that addles us and prevents us from taking decisive action towards the inevitable. See, Richie and I both said at the exact same time on the bus after learning the ATs had been paid that now we suddenly feel like everything's going to be ok, and of course we're going to get paid on time, and no we don't have to bother looking for a new line of work any sooner than we had originally planned.
Which clearly isn't true, them having gotten paid means extremely little until our next payday rolls around and we see how things go from there, but in either case we shouldn't be waiting around for something like that to make our decision. We should be doing shit now, before the hundreds or thousands of other lazy folks like ourselves find themselves out of a job and all start looking at the exact same time. But no. ATs got paid, so, we're waiting it out now, confident as only the willfully naive can be.

But, at least in Richie's case he can go about looking for another job whenever he pleases. I, on the other hand, don't have that luxury. See, on Friday morning I went down to the immigration office and dropped off my application for my new visa, a 3 year one, by the way. See, my current visa expires at the end of this month, which means that I can't even apply for a new job somewhere else because already living in Japan employers will require that I have at least 4-6 months remaining on my visa so they can determine whether I'm going to stick it out with them and want to sponsor me for another visa. So, until I hear back from the immigration office regarding my visa, I can't even start looking for another job. Well, I can look, but I can't really do anything about it.

The worst part about it was, and this happened to both Big Jenn and I on the same day at different immigration offices, that after they took our application and we put our addresses on the little postcard they send you when your visa is ready to be picked up, IF, not when mind you but IF we receive this postcard then we should come back to the office to pick it up. They didn't say what would happen if I DON'T receive it, just that IF I do, I should come on by.

Now, when you think about it, that makes sense, right? I mean, there's always a chance that for whatever reason your visa might be denied, and as such the appropriate word is IF I receive the card. But, see, I've done this once before, and between me, Big Jenn, and everyone else I know, no one has ever heard them use 'if' rather than 'when'. It's disturbing. The thing of it is Big Jenn and I are both Nova instructors, and both went on the same day, so it could be that they just updated their script to use 'if', but it also could be that they both saw Nova on our forms and that caused the 'if'. Unsettling for both of us.

So anyway, my fingers are crossed and we'll see how it goes. Hopefully I'll still be around in another month.

In other news, Saki and I are going to Nikko this weekend. We're renting a car and driving down there for a two day one night excursion to see the changing of the leaves, and the world famous "Hear no evil, etc" monkey statues. Oh, and do some hot spring stuff. And enjoy our first overnight vacation and road trip together. Ahh couple stuff.

I'm not gonna have much money left over come payday, so I've gone into mega yen conservation mode. I can't be certain I'll get paid on time or at all, so, I gotta make these yennies last as far as possible. I know, a vacation to Nikko with Saki isn't exactly spendthrift, but, it was planned a while back, and well, I'm just gonna do it. I don't care. I've got one shot at life, I'm gonna enjoy it, damnit.