Fukuoka, Japan wasn’t in our original itinerary. In fact, it was only added after Xiamen, China had to be removed from our travel plans. So, we didn’t have anything planned and I wouldn’t even normally write up a blog entry for this location given how little we did. BUT we learned something valuable that is worth sharing. First, when you leave Japan you have to “check out” of the country. We actually did this in Hiroshima before we left since we were leaving Japan and heading to South Korea. Then we had to check back in when we arrived in Nagasaki. Well, today, in Fukuoka, we had to check out again. They had this planned to occur between 2 and 5pm.

As with most days, we let the boys sleep while we did some work in the morning. Our plan was to explore after lunch, but that was cut short because of the immigration process. Namely, because the boys are underage, they can’t get off the ship without us, so we needed to be with them at 2pm to clear the ship and then get them back on. So, our plan was to do this and explore on our own (they were ‘passing’ on this stop) after that step. Mostly, we just wanted to spend the rest of our leftover yen before leaving Japan.

Well, we cleared the ship and as we were getting the boys back on, the Japanese authorities also checked us (John and I) out. Oops. We thought, “oh great, now we can’t go explore… oh well.” But then we asked an Oceania official if we were allowed to go back out – just to see if we were right about our assumption. The official actually said it was okay for us to leave – “no problem!” Just to make sure, John asked a second time to clarify we had been checked out by authorities. Again, “no problem!” STILL not believing it, I re-checked, restating we had been through immigration already and that we were asking to go back out to the city center to explore. Again, “yep, that’s not a problem.”

You know where this is heading.

John and I left the ship while the boys got back on the ship. We were barely off the shuttle bus when Matthew wrote us and said that an official on the ship was going to be writing us. Yep. We weren’t supposed to be out and about. Essentially, we were illegal at this point. What were we to do?

We went and had some pizza and beers and spent down our yen.

THEN we headed back to the ship to see if handcuffs and charges would apply. Thankfully, it was all fine. But still, I can now say I was an illegal immigrant for a couple hours once in my life. Never again… I can’t handle the stress. 😉