The LTO run and other stories

Follow this link to see JAPANESE VENDING MACHINES . This is but a small slice of life as I have experienced it. Some of the stuff is weird.

My trip to the Land Transportation Office, or, just how lost can I get??

I had always wanted to make my own run to LTO, but usually paid the lady $40 to do it for me because it was easier. So me going myself does not suprise me. Me waiting until such a time as there was no room for error to try it does surprise me. A lot. I'm usually much more cautious.

First off, I'm zipping along the toll road through Yokohama. When I saw my road it is because I am passing over it. But, silly me, I'm not for sure it's my road so I go another 30 km (in really slow traffic) before being sure my road is behind me. Then I get into the really slow traffic headed the other way.

About an hour after my original fly-over of the RT 45, I get back to it, albiet from the opposite direction. OK, kind of a pain in the butt, but no harm, no foul. I go back to following my map, which despite a few problems with scale, was surprisingly accurate and easy to follow.

As soon as I turn on RT 12, I will supposedly see a blue sign. I just assume it says LTO or something and has the in & out arrows to follow. Of course, as you know, if I am writing this then I must have assumed wrongly. I did.

I just kept on driving until I had passed through five of the one traffic lights I was supposed to pass. Again, I was sure my destination was behind me now. So I turned around and headed back. When I got to the area where the office was supposed to be in the first place I began to scan and concentrate mightily. Mightily I say. Then I saw something.

It was a sign. And it was not blue. But I knew it was the LTO sign. It was a white sign. And it was a transportation department sign hung over the road, not a billboard kind of sign along the road like I had been looking for. But it had blue writing on it (hence, the "blue" sign reference) and it was not traffic related informnation. So I supposed, correctly this time, that I was at LTO. As I started turning in I saw a bunch of temp plates on cars and noticed I was pulling into a large compound that was not really visible from the road. Eureka.

LTO is a complex of 5 buildings. Here is my journey through it. Remember yesterday's list? It just said "Go to LTO and get papers. Were that it was so simple as that.

First I go to the notary in building #3. He takes some paper, stamps some paper and gives me some more paper. Now he sends me outside to another part of building #3, which neither looks like an office nor like a part of building #3. Long story short, he ends up walking me there.

In other building #3, I pay some yen, we shuffle papers, I sign some crap I can't read and she sends me off all the way across the compound to building #2, (which of course is not beside #3) window #1.

At building #2, window #1 I hand him all of the papers I can't read and he hands me back most of them. Then tells me to sit. I sat, now parked in front of window #2, until they called my name. I listened closely, because this is not an English speaking facility. When he called my name, which he pronounced, "Mee-ster Ab....Ab....(then he set it aside and quit trying, so it's a good thing I was really listening for it) I went and got more papers I could not read, which I now carted all the way back across the compound to building #4 (which IS beside building #3).

This was the road tax office and she took some papers. Then she handed me another and asked for my name, which I wrote out for her. She promptly tore it up, put another one out for me and said, "Ah... sig-nah-ah-chur, prease." So, I signed it. She seemed stoked.

She handed me yet another paper and directed me to go to window #11. I went there, they took my papers, handed all but one back to me, then gave me a 5,000 yen bill (approx $48) and said, "You finish now. Tank you."

I went home without getting lost. What fun that was.

The remarkable thing is this. Once I got to LTO I was only there about 15 minutes. It was remarkably complicated, but not difficult or time consuming. Had I spoke Japanese, I could have named that tune in probably 7 minutes.

That's it for now, kiddies.

Blancmange, out
Travelin' Ed