Flights and Visa to Japan
I will start with a question that interests many – getting Japanese visa. After reading the Internet a lot of frightening and straining information about the complexity of obtaining this visa, I started worrying about it for another six months before the trip. How numerous sites tell, getting a Japanese visa. For this you need to have a guarantor in Japan, which will make you an invitation and will be responsible for you during your whole trip. In addition, the guarantor together with you should paint every day of your stay in the rising sun. Well, in the case of a certain force majeure, financial obligations will take. Of course, I have familiar in Japan, but I strained them with such a burden, I naturally did not. Therefore, I began to actively seek who could provide such a service for a certain fee.
Many travel agencies specializing in Japan offer visa services subject to the order of the tour through them. Not my option. Another part of the agencies offers assistance in obtaining a visa if they book hotels through them. Also not my option. After long searches, I found a Japanese company, ready for a certain remuneration to issue a package of documents using the hotel’s armor, made by the client in almost any booking system, including Booking.Com. This is exactly what I needed, t.To. Booking.COM, unlike many other similar systems, does not charge a prepayment for booking and, with regard to Japanese hotels, in 99% of cases, cancellation of the reservation does not entail any penalties.
Planning your route, from Kagosima to Sapporo, I booked through this site hotels in key cities. I already knew that these armor would cancel and make a more thorough elaboration of the route, but it was enough to obtain the necessary documents. Still on some sites scare that allegedly, if book hotels for a Japanese visa, and after receiving onau, cancel the reservation, then there is a high probability that an employee of a passport and visa service can not be in the country. Indeed, the receipt of a Japanese visa does not guarantee entry into Japan, the last decision takes this very employee. But in the firm that made me an invitation, calmed, saying that all this is not true. So do not believe the Internet!
Well, in fact, sending hotel armor, copies of our passports and money I began to wait for the invitation. The fact is that according to the rules for obtaining a visa, an invitation, together with another bunch of all paper, confirming the integrity and law-acting guarantor, should come to you personally. And here the ambush begins. Invitation I sent EMS the day after sending documents by me, and it went to me almost 1.5 months! And this is EMS – ultra-speed postal shipping! What to say about ordinary letters. It seems to me that our Post is broken down by departures from Japan. Somehow for the new year the familiar sent me a postcard from Tokyo, Judging by the stamp, December 13, and it came to me on February 28. Several times I sent the postcard myself to Japan on the Internet system Postcrossing and each time passed more than 60 days before the postcard came to the addressee. But, whatever it was, I received an invitation.
The next step was the transfer of documents to the embassy. Everything is simple here. Documents to the embassy can be submitted through the visa service of some courier companies, such as, for example, PONY EXPRESS. A pleasant moment … The Japanese visa itself is not a penny (all the same, at some moments, the Japanese are great), it was necessary to pay only for Pony Express services for the delivery of documents to the embassy and back. After the documents fall into the embassy, their consideration usually takes 4 working days. During this time, the embassy may have additional questions and requests, so the granting time can stretch to the month.
During the consideration of our documents, the embassies were called twice. First time Alexander, the second time me. Asked various questions and when I learned that I study Japanese for two years, asked to send scans of documents confirming this fact. But this is not the main thing. The main thing is that in some issues, which, as it turned out, asked me and Alexander, we seriously diverged in the answers. Therefore, after clarifying this, we all started to worry much about, and whether we will give us visas at all. Scrobing yourself for failure, I slept badly at night.:)) However, a week after sending documents, information appeared on the Pony Express website that the documents are returned to us back. What is there? Visa or refusal? Another 12 hours of painful expectation and now she is the benefit of the news – Visas Dali!
The experience that I received when making a visa finally convinced me in the correctness of the our proverb – it’s not so terrible, as his little. Japanese visa is not so difficult in obtaining, as they paint on most sites dedicated to visa issues.
Flight tickets
About air tickets to tell especially nothing with the exception Except that the fact that for our journey, I specifically booked company tickets Korean Air. Of course, they are not the cheapest, flight from Moscow to Japan and turned around 30,000 rubles. I met the promotional offers of various airlines, for which you could fly to the country of the rising sun even for 20,000 rubles, but the choice was not changed by two moments. First, only on Korean airlines, it is possible to fly from Moscow to the south of Japan, in Kagosima, and fly back from Sapporo. Thus, a bunch of time and money is saved, on transfers from Tokyo and back, where flights of the rest of the airlines are usually departed. Secondly, we planned our flight so as to spend another day in the capital South Korea And thus, along the way, still see this wonderful country. Moreover, for us, the 30-day transit visa is completely quietly quietly provided. Agree, it is very convenient! And so, I’m on board the Boeing 777-200, flying to Inchon, Seoul Airport, I am writing this little note … :))
In the next story, I will tell about the day spent in the capital of South Korea.
