Permission to Reenter

A couple of weeks ago I was going to post a rant about the need to trail all the way over to the bureaucratic facility adjacent to the Minato Ward Garbage Factory and pay the Japanese government some money for the privilege of abusing their hospitality by having the temerity to take a short trip outside of the country, a discriminatory system of foreigner taxation known as "Reentry Permits". The deal is 3,000 yen for a single permit, or 6,000 yen for an all-you-can-leave deal valid until the expiration of one's current visa, which in my case will more than "pay" for itself if I take just one annual visit to that strange and scary place known as "abroad".

However when it came down to it I couldn't be bothered (posting the rant, not obtaining a reentry permit), although in an act of rebellion against the system I did refuse to fill out all the fields on the application form, including the one which required me to provide my "home town" in the country whose nationality I hold.

Then something happened yesterday which caused me to change my mind on the whole system. I reentered Japan. (Hey, I'm allowed to. I have a stamp in my passport which says I can). Even better, rather than queuing with the foreign-passport-wielding hoi-polloi temporary visitors, there was a special "Reentry Permit Holder" counter at immigration which enabled my penguiny self to zip through at a speed which would have probably beaten even the Japanese passport holders from the same flight, had I not made an extended bathroom break to deal with various hygiene issues resulting from the preceding 14 hours of airports and flying.

Now all I need to be really happy with the system is for the Japanese government to realize that maybe they don't need to keep chopping bits off my fingers.