Today was quite possibly one of the longer, more exhausting days that I’ve ever had that didn’t involve experiment time at a synchrotron facility. I was up with little Emi-chan at the crack of dawn and played the role of Super Daddy battling the onslaught of the maniacal criminal genius himself, Poopy Diaper. Once again, the forces of good had triumphed, and the streets of Matsuyama proved safe for little Emiko to go about her business, allowing breakfast to be underway in short order. I hopped into the shower and got ready for work, and by the time I was finished, little Emi was back sleeping in Mommy’s arms, which made it much more difficult to leave.
Daddy’s gotta do what Daddy’s gotta do, though, so I sucked it up as best I could, kissed my girls goodbye, and made the three-point-something kilometer walk into work, arriving just after 8am. It was an eventful day at work, with a lot of interesting things going down. I think I will discuss all of that in a separate post, because if this one gets anymore tangents, it’ll start feeling like having a conversation with Keith Richards.
Much of my day was again taken up by dealing with all sorts of paperwork regarding Emi’s birth and things related to it. At the University I got the following items taken care of:
1) Reporting of Emiko as a new dependent.
2) Renewal of Health Insurance (for Sara and I)
3) Addition of Emiko to my Health Insurance plan
4) Documentation providing for Sara’s maternity leave
5) Hospital stay/delivery verification forms
6) Financial reimbursement form for the hospital stay and delivery
7) Paperwork to allow for the addition of a new dependent allowance in my salary for Emiko
8) Receipt of new Health Insurance card that lists all three of us as valid beneficiaries
9) Filled out bank account information form for submission at City Hall
I had to go back and forth between a few different offices to get all this taken care of, but it was time well spent because I was able to get everything done that I could possibly need to get done before returning to City Hall. Speaking of City Hall, that’s where I spent a couple of hours this afternoon. After bringing all of the above paperwork with me, and including the hoops I jumped through like a good little monkey yesterday, I now have the following things completed:
1) Filed Emiko’s Certification of Birth
2) Received certified copies of Birth Certification for US Passport application (the certified copies are literally photocopies with red stamps on them, which disturbs me a little)
3) Registration for mother/baby health care discounts
4) Receipt of coupon packet for pediatric appointments
5) Registration for Infant Health Care Assistance
6) Receipt of Emi’s Infant Health Care Assistance Card (when presented with my Health Insurance card, her appointments are FREE!!!)
7) Filed paperwork for Child Allowance from the city (13,000 Yen/month, paid 3 times yearly – bonus!)
8) Registered Emiko as a foreign resident of Matsuyama
9) Received Emi’s Alien Registration Card
So, now that all of that is done, and my head is spinning from the exorbitant amount of paperwork required to do ANYTHING here, we only have 5 simple steps left to go before everything is all squared away with Emi-chan.
1) File for the U.S. Passport at the U.S. Consulate in Osaka. The kicker here is that we actually have to go to Osaka to do this. Mother, Father, and Baby all have to go to Osaka in order to apply for the passport for a foreign-born United States citizen. No exceptions. So, Sara, Emi, and I have to fly to Osaka to do this. We are slated to do that this coming Wednesday, October 6. That’s right, thanks to overloaded bureaucracy, we have to fly our 14 day old baby across the country to file paperwork and make her officially a United States Citizen.
And yet someone visiting for three days from another country can give birth in the U.S. and their child is a citizen with no problems. The imbalance is striking.
2) Wait. We have to wait 2-3 weeks for them to send us Emi’s passport. For some reason it’s ok to mail the actual passport itself to us when they finish it, but we can’t mail the paperwork requesting one to them. Instead, we have to uproot our baby girl and drop about $600 to fly out there and back. Can you tell this is a point of contention for me?
3) Once we have the passport, we have to take it to the local Immigration Office in Matsuyama to apply for a visa for Lowercase Emi so they don’t deport her. Not Sara and I, as we have visas already. Just her. The baby. Deported. Awesome.
4) Once we have the visa, I have to go back to City Hall to have Emiko’s Alien Registration Card updated to reflect her new passport, visa, and citizenship information.
5) Once we have all of this done, we can see about looking into the availability of Day Care. Sara’s ability to return to work after her maternity leave of eight weeks hinges on this prospect.
So, all in all, not too bad. Although I am glad I have been shaving my head, because I have a strong feeling that whatever hair hasn’t been falling out of its own volition would be violently torn out in a fit of unbridled rage while navigating the maze of red tape. Fortunately, it turns out that I love my little girl so much, that I almost don’t mind jumping through all of these hoops. Almost. I might be sensitive, but I’m not devoid of anger.
Speaking of being sensitive, I swear that becoming a father is starting to turn me into a woman. I find myself tearing up at random intervals and becoming a lot more sentimental than I’ve ever been before. I told Sara the other day that I think once Emi was finally out of hers, I started to grow one of my own. I know I’d rather be that way than one of those fathers who is aloof and doesn’t much care, but I would like to scale it back at least a little bit. It’s embarrassing.
Embarrassing or no, it’s that streak that gives me enough pride in my little girl to keep posting on here about all the little things she does. I finally got home from work just before midnight, and I found everyone in the house was asleep. Well, except for the dog, who generously stuck around long enough to help me clean my dinner plate. Once again, I left the camera in the hands of the women folk while I was at work, and once again it came up a tad on the short side (about 10% of the pics I usually take in a day). Still, they had some good ones.
With me being at work all day, Emi’s gotten the chance to get to know her Aunt Siobhan and Grandma Rebecca a bit, and she seems pretty comfortable around them. She’s also continued expending her repertoire of facial expressions to include these new additions:
“Eeeeeeexcellent…”
“Bring it.”
Snooty.
-or, alternatively-
British.
“You Can’t See Me!”
“Alright, new sweater! … Get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off…”
And with that, I will bid you all a good night, and pleasant Dreams. Big weekend ahead. Much love, people. Stay Metal.
-Matt