New Passport - Alex

In the UK we usually renew our passports every ten years. The time to renew was nearing and I started looking at how I could do this while living in Japan. The process seemed fairly simple, I had to apply online, send my old passport to the UK and then when everything was finished, they would send it back to me.

When I started the application I had about six months left on my passport, which isn't enough to travel to some countries, even though I didn't have any plans to travel soon (obviously) I still felt it was a necessary thing to have, especially while living abroad! I had also been reading stories about how more people than usual had been applying to renew their passports in the UK due to Brexit, the UK officially leaving the EU. This meant that the process was taking longer than usual, some people reporting up to 5 months. As I was doing this from abroad I automatically assumed that it would take a while.

I started the application in the beginning of December online. It was very simple, I just had to add some information about myself and of course pay the fee. It was a little pricey, but as a passport lasts ten years I guess they are actually quite cheap...if you use them. Once I had paid, I recieved an email with an address in the UK which said "Please send us your old passport."

I went to the post office and sent my passport a few days later via th express mail service. I thought I would try and speed up the process in any way I could. Using the Japan post website I could see that my old passport had left Japan about a day and half after I had posted it. Very efficient! Then the waiting began...

I knew that it wasn't going to happen quickly but I was also a little worried about it as I only have one old passport to send! "What happens if it is lost?" I thought. "What if I did something wrong and they have to send it back?" I wondered. I also knew that as I had sent it in December that the combination of Christmas, New Year, Covid and Brexit could potentially slow down some things in the UK, especially paperwork which is, in my experience, usually pretty slow. 

I received a few more emails asking me to "Please send us your old passport"which started to get quite annoying and only added to my anxieties. Until I finally received and email in the middle of January saying "We have received your passport." This was obviously great to know as it meant that any responsibility was no longer up to me, however I still expected a long process.

But then! A few days later I received another email saying "your new passport is being printed and we will send it back to you soon." I was amazed at how fast the process was! I set a delivery date and that was it, I got my brand new shiny passport.

This time was different though! Due to Brexit, the UK had decided to change the old burgandy coloured passports to a dark blue colour, also removing the words "European Union" from the front cover. Although I didn't and still don't support the idea of Brexit, I was quite excited about seeing one of the new passports. Not only is the cover different but the inside is also completely different, there are a lot more holograms and shiny bits and other things that I imagine are designed to make it very difficult to forge.

Now I have my cool new passport, my only problem is I don't know when I will be able to travel anytime soon. Let's hope we can all get back to normaility soon.

My new and old passport

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Apple thieves! - Alex

My wife and I both enjoy listening to birds and always point out a cute one when we see them. We live at the top of a big hill near a park and a kind of nature reserve so luckily we can often hear and see a lot of birds. In Japan there are many interesting birds with many of their own little tunes that you can hear in the mornings, my favourite being the Japanese bush warbler (ウグイス) which has a unique tune.

We don't have our own garden as we live in an apartment, but we still wanted to try and attract some birds to our balcony. We did this once before by cutting an apple into small pieces and placing it on the edge of the balcony, it look a long time (the apple actually dried out) but eventually we saw a couple of little birds on the balcony. A success!

Recently we had another apple that we had forgotten about and was getting a bit past its best by date, so we decided to share it with the birdies again. I cut up the apple, admittedly in much bigger pieces this time, and placed the pieces on our balcony just like last time. I thought it would be there for a while the same as last time, and so I didn't check the balcony again that day.

The next day, we went to check the balcony and all the apple was gone!

Where did it go? There were a couple of pieces on the balcony floor, and I could see one piece that had fallen off the balcony to the ground but the rest of it was gone! After a good laugh my lovely wife and I put it down to a bit of a mystery, we had absolutely no idea what had happened. We put the few pieces of apple that we had recovered back up on the balcony for any other takers.

While watching TV, suddenly the apple thieves were back! A swoop of black by the window and a slight scratching sound, and another piece of apple was gone.

We had attracted some birds, but not the kind of birds we were aiming for. If you have ever been to Japan, something you will notice quickly is how many crows there are, and how big they are! They will eat anything they can get their claws on and I think our apple buffet was just what they were looking for on that day. I wondered why that didn't happen last time, maybe it was the size of the apple pieces?

I think we will have to rethink our strategy for next time to avoid another crow ambush.

This is more like it, I hope to see these two again.

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Snow day - Alex

 I recently saw some pictures of the street I grew up on in London covered in snow, with lots of children and families playing. The UK has recently had quite a lot of snow and seeing some of the pictures has brought back some nostalgia for me.

When I was younger we didn't have snow that often, perhaps once every few years, and so every time it did snow it felt like a treat. It usually meant that school was cancelled so I could play with my friends all day, maybe even for two days! You might be wondering why the UK was always so unprepared for snow. It is still a bit of a mystery for me too, but it probably has something to do with the notoriously unpredictable weather of England.

Now I live in Nagoya, it rarely snows here either. For the five or six years I have been here I think I have only seen snow on the ground two or three times. This year has been quite chilly and I have seen some snow falling, but so far, no snow day...

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