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Visa obtained

We finally got my visa! The process actually went quite smoothly. We booked a trip to Osaka for 8 days. We’d been told beforehand that the visa would take at least 4 days to complete. It ended up taking 6 full days, possibly a little longer than usual due to the fact that there was a holiday last week in Japan (Keirō no Hi).

The consulate in Osaka does not make appointments and was only open from 9:00 to 11:30 each morning. We were a little panicked and made sure to get to the consulate right at 9:00am the morning after we arrived in Osaka, but actually it was not very busy and we were able to get everything submitted and checked over quickly by 9:45am. They kindly do a sanity check (looking over your application for about 10 minutes or so) when you hand in your application, which was good, as I’d forgotten to write my address in a couple spots.

Thankfully no delays or anything. I will keep the visa application page on the wiki up to date, but actually it was a relatively smooth process. Next step now that we’re back in Korea: registering as an alien!

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Wiki

I’ve created an initial wiki, which is available at https://wiki.kocachic.com/

The idea is that Sinea and I are going through a lot of stuff (applying for visas, looking for a job, looking for an apartment) either now or in the near future, and it’s worth writing down the boring details of how we did it before we forget. Plus, some of the information we write down may not be totally right, or totally universal, or will change in the future, so it would be nice if other people can come and update it.

I do find lots of blog posts and forum comments of people’s experiences doing things like applying for a visa. The problem is that if someone else wants to add in their 2 cents, they do it as a comment, and you have to follow a trail of comments to get the whole story. I think a wiki format is better for consolidating the wisdom of the community. We’ll see if anything comes of it.