In the distance, a child is crying.

"Ohhh, I'm exhausted. I've been on this street a thousand times! It's never looked so strange! The faces... so cold! In the distance, a child is crying. Fatherless... a bastard child, perhaps. My back aches... my heart aches... but my feet ... my feet are resilient! Thank God I took off my heels, and put on my... HIMALAYAN WALKING SHOES!" - Elaine Benes, Seinfeld episode "The Hot Tub"

As I sat in the middle of the Saitama branch of Tokyo Immigration, holding tightly to my number (at least ten numbers behind the one currently at the window), and waiting with documents in hand casually not watching the Japanese news show on the small TV at the front of the room, my mind wandered into Elaine Benes' Himalayan walking shoes moment. I was exhausted of documents. The faces were strangers'. I was cold--it was a rainy day--and I was wet. In the not so distant distance, a child was screaming bloody murder at its poor, frazzled parents commanding all attention of the room, getting louder the more eyes laid on it. My butt didn't like sitting some two hours on those cheap plastic seats, but at least I wasn't standing in line waiting to get a number. I already had my number, it was six hundred and sixty four. I said it to myself in Japanese over and over and over again so I would know when it was called. And I thought, where are my Himalayan walking shoes? Why is this so difficult and so scary? Where do I get to be resilient? My god, could someone tie that screaming child to a tree outside already!? 

Okay, so perhaps not all immigration offices are quite so intense, and I'm sure for most folks involved it was just a normal day at work. But there I was, with all kinds of documents I hoped were the right ones, wondering why I didn't learn how to deal with living in a foreign country when I was in school. I had only just gotten my passport this summer. I never knew what kinds of visas there were, which ones I could get in Japan as a U.S. citizen...if I had time, why the U.S. only let us on a 90 day visitors visa, how to deal with legal questions in a foreign language, if they'd turn me away and put me plane back to the states...I was so nervous I almost didn't know how to function as an adult in a world that wasn't easy, comforting dorm rooms and Minnesota nice. Yeah sure, Google had a lot of information, but did that information really pertain to me? Could I trust it? And this was just the beginning. 

I felt inadequate, for the most part, sitting there waiting for my number to be called, and extremely anxious. And I felt that way for two hours before my number was called and I walked up to the Japanese official behind the counter, who was incredibly nice and spoke enough English to calm me down. And I learned a lesson that I should have learned a long time ago, being an adult will be difficult and nothing can really prepare you for all of the forms you'll have to fill out and all of the lines you'll have to wait in, but usually (and I really mean most ninety percent of the time) someone's going to smile at you to let you know: yeah, you can handle it. Here, you can borrow my Himalayan walking shoes for a little while.