alien to resident to fuji

Recently Japan changed their "alien cards" for foreigners to "residence cards".

Since my re-entry visa was coming up for renewal, we called the Immigration office to see what we needed to do.

It turns out that all we needed to do was come in to change the "alien card" to the "residence card" and we no longer had to renew the "re-entry visa".

Talk about spending less time and money at the Immigration office.

I think we used to pay something like 6000 yen for the "multiple re-entry visa" every 3 years or so.

So, we got there after lunch, filled out the paper work, I took an ID photo in their photo booth....

Paying 800 yen for 4 photos & they only use 1 is a total rip-off! But I'm glad we received the card that day. The next time we need to renew this card is in 7 years...whoo!

On our way home, we noticed a board with a notice for the Noda Fuji Matsuri. Fuji is wisteria in Japanese and Noda is the area which this flower grows in Osaka, Matsuri is festival.

Since the area was kind of on our way back, we checked out some of the many spots they have listed on the festival map.

Some turned out to be duds because they were located inside of many school grounds or some hadn't started blooming yet, but for the most part, most were located at parks.

One location was in front of an apartment building this was really nice to see in the concrete jungle.

I wish they would've given more addresses than just points on their map, we had a "scavenger hunt" of a time finding some of the locations.

I want to go back to see some of the spots we weren't able to see.

If I get a chance to I'll definitely share the photos with you.

Have a nice week!