This Monday, my wife and I went to the Tokyo Immigration Bureau to pick up my wife's new residence card.
This is the second time I have applied for the renewal, and I applied for the longest period of stay, five years.
I knew that it would be almost impossible to get a five-year validity period on the second application.
The residence card I received was valid for three years, so the result was as expected.
Now I won't have to renew it until September 2024.
The Tokyo Immigration Bureau is about a 10-minute bus ride from Shinagawa Station.
The closest station is Tennozu Isle on the Tokyo Monorail, but most people go by bus from Shinagawa Station.
The eye-catching photo was taken from the train of the Tokyo Monorail.
I always thought that the building of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau was a smaller version of the Tokyo Detention Center in Kosuge.
Both are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice, so I guess they are the same kind of building.
By the way, it is not widely known that the Tokyo Immigration Bureau in Shinagawa houses illegal aliens.
Large-scale detention facilities for foreigners with deportation orders are located in Ushiku City, next to where I live, and in Omura City, Nagasaki Prefecture, but there are also detention facilities in Sapporo, Sendai, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima, Takamatsu, and Fukuoka immigration bureaus as well as in Tokyo.
Once you are incarcerated, you are not allowed to go out unless you have permission, so you can call it a detention center.
This may be the reason why the buildings of the Tokyo Detention Center and the Tokyo Immigration Bureau are so similar.
I have been to the Tokyo Immigration Bureau seven or eight times to apply for and renew my wife's status of residence, but now that her stay is valid for three years, I don't have to go there for the time being.
