Some different goings-on

17 Dec 2019

Some time ago, I lost my health insurance card. I had no idea when that had happened–it’s just that when I went to the dentist last week, she asked for my health card as she is required to by law, and I realized that I didn’t have it on me. Or at all.

After conducting a completely thorough search of my entire apartment for the card, I realized that I’d put it down somewhere, some time in the past, and had completely forgotten about it.

I went through all of the possibilities. I had an encounter with the police a few weeks back (I fell down some stairs, they took me to the hospital to check me out just in case) and thought that maybe the hospital had mailed me the card after realizing that I’d left it behind.

That wasn’t the case though.

I took the precaution of telling the police about the missing card, because if it got into the wrong hands, it could potentially be used to impersonate me (although in Japan, an evil-doer trying to pretend to be me would have to resemble me in quite a lot of important ways, which would make them that much easier to find to boot).

Then I remembered that I’d needed to take a photocopy of the card to apply for my permanent residence permit. From there it was simple enough: I’d clearly forgotten the card in the photocopier after I’d made the copy of it.

So I went back to the convenience store which had the photocopier that I’d used, and asked one of my favorite employees there if maybe I’d left the card behind. I gave her an approximate time frame (I thought I’d forgotten it in November), and she went above and beyond the call of duty, and discovered that I’d forgotten the card in the photocopier in, ridiculously, September.

So hurrah for the staff at the Family Mart by Urawa Station! My card has been restored to me, and I can go to the doctor again.