Wow who would’ve thought this visa process would’ve taken so much time. (Ok so we slacked on it a bit, but its hard when you’re working, and juggling around other stuff.) But enough excuses.
We’ve been hard at work on getting our Russian Visas since they were the only ones that could fit in our budget, instead of having our passports go down the Embassy line of Kazhakstan, China, and other Countries on the way and between the EU and Mongolia.
One thing you need to know is that applying for a visa through a Russian Embassy in Japan we’ll need the original copy of our Invitation and our real passports. While most agencies usually use Telex to directly send scanned passport copies electronically to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia, we actually have to have the actually paper copy in hand.
Joel is using a Russian Visa support group WaytoRussia.net (aka Intel Service Center in Moscow) recommended by the Adventurists website, and we’re working on hopefully getting processed before the start of the rally next week! We ran into a few stags with changing our plans because we wanted to see if the Support Group could help process my visa invitation as well (which it was too late unfortunately). But good news, it looks like the original has landed in Osaka and hopefully should arrive within the next couple of days. Thanks Tatyana, good work and thanks for being patient with us!
Thus I figured since we’re in Japan now, that we should see Russian Visa Support companies here in Japan. We tried ACFES Seiyo, where a gentleman (I’m deciding to keep his name anonymous) who was quite helpful at first, but then realized that he assumed that all prices and paper processing for Americans is the same for Japanese people…WRONG. He said he was pretty sure they could take care of it and have it processed within the week, but it turns out that they didn’t really have much experience with processing a foreigner’s visa iniviation.
So in several tries, our third time was finally a charm. We tried a Russian, Japanese, and finally a US Company by the name of RussianVisaGuide.com (partners with TravelVisaPro.com) located in San Francisco, CA. Having their company located in PST helped a lot since we got in contact with them the first thing when we got the DAIBATSU (Big “No” in Japanglish) from ACFES Seiyo, they pretty much had us processed and within 24 Hours had our Invite Processed and it is now being Shipped from Moscow as you read this. These guys are fast! Thanks Renatas and Kestutis.
Now its just a matter of time before we can go and apply for our visas with the invites, hopefully this week or next. Wish us luck!!
