Insurance issues

I'm a bit surprised by how many posts I'm coming up with before I even leave. The latest stumbling-block to turn up is what should be a simple step: insurance.

Reasonably enough, Japan doesn't want people turning up without health insurance, and I'm not daft enough to venture overseas for months without both health and possessions insured. Unfortunately, actually getting any is proving a problem. Several companies are unwilling to sell policies lasting more than three months, which puts them right out. Endsleigh sell what appeared to be the perfect thing, a scheme for people going to study abroad - except that it's only available to people studying at degree level, not to full-time students at a language school. I've finally managed to order a couple of quotes and am waiting to receive them.

The other problem is that tricksy "pre-existing conditions" bit. Having had therapy last year, I now have to tick this box everywhere, and even after giving detailed and personal information that highlights how I never even took a day off work, let alone any medication, it still triples the price of insurance. Not helpful.

Fingers crossed, I suppose. If I find out anything useful I'll post it for future reference by anyone in a similar situation.

On the more cheerful side, I've begun very slow packing. I have a lot of books, and usefully these can be packed up and put back more or less where they were, with minimal effect on space. Hopefully this kind of ambient packing will leave the final stages much less stressful, as well as helping me gauge just how much packing stuff I'll need. Another dozen or so printer paper boxes, for a start!

Book 2

A little milestone along the way - I just started the second textbook in my private Japanese lesson with Naoko-sensei. It's a very nice feeling to have made some progress. Especially when, having arrived a bit early, I tried to read the introduction to the book (all in Japanese, of course) and was able to puzzle out a good bit of it.

Sadly I won't be able to finish the book in the next, um, six weeks. We go pretty fast, but not that fast. Still, let's see what we can manage. Gambatte!

Things to do tomorrow morning: get travel insurance, discuss getting yen with the bank, get parking permits ready for moving out. Busy, busy, busy...

Confirmation

After a few rather fretty days, I've finally heard back from the school that they've received my tuition and accomodation fee, so everything is in hand. On the strength of that, I handed in my resignation letter today. It's the first time I've ever had to resign - although I had quite a lot of jobs before settling into this one, they all had fixed contracts that I completed and moved on from, or were day-by-day temping arrangements that I stepped away from. So that was a novel and slightly nervy experience.

I'm now feeling out of Limbo, and able to push on more with planning and researching Fukuoka. I didn't like to do too much of that as it felt too tenuous; I just hated the thought of building up excitement and getting disappointed if things went wrong. I'll also, of course, need to plan to visit family, and those friends who are especially keen to see me again before I head off to another continent! With things settled I felt safe to announce it publicly, and a couple of people who've been to Japan have offered to advise, which is really handy. The more, the merrier!

Waiting game

Still in the unsettling stage of waiting for things to fall into place. I paid my tuition fee to the transfer agency* on Tuesday night last week, but still haven't heard back from the school. The agency say up to 4 working days to process payments, and of course the school may be busy with applications right now. Still, it's day 4 now... I suppose if they put it through today I may hear by tomorrow. It's a bit nerve-wracking seeing that much money disappear from your account and not having heard that it's arrived, though!

*The agency have offices in many countries and handle tuition fee payments for international students. You pay one branch in your local currency, they pay the school in their local currency and take a small cut. It saves on two lots of bank charges, so it should work out better overall, but it's still a bit faffy and introduces this one-step-removed problem. If I'd paid the school directly, once the money had gone I'd presumably know they had it.

Tuition Fees

After many and varied tribulations with the bank, I have finally been able to pay my tuition, which should firmly seal the confirmation of my place at GenkiJACS. It might have been confirmed as far as they were concerned, but I haven't been easy - I won't really be until they get back to me and reassure me. Perhaps over-sensitive of me, but this is a pretty major step and derailing this at this juncture would wreck things spectacularly, since I've already given notice on both job and house.

I'm pretty sure that was the most money I have ever had to pay anyone, and it was pretty nerve-wracking to be honest. I had to get Mum to double-check the figures with me (over the phone!) as I filled in the payment form's various categories. Feeling rather harrowed over here, and badly in need of this here herbal tea I just made.

Still, one more step, 慢慢来　(getting there slowly).