24 hour post office?

I couldn't believe it and I'm still pinching myself! Japan has branches of the post office that are open 24 hours a day! OK, I know most people wouldn't be to excited or impressed by this, but consider this story....

As part of the on-going visa application process for Hiromi, we have to get criminal background checks from all the countries she has lived in for more than 1 year. Since we lived in Singapore, we had to get a criminal clearance (apparently, they are concerned that she may be a criminal mastermind cleverly disguised as a Japanese housewife). We sent that off to the Singapore authorities 4 weeks ago and nothing arrived. Our visa appointment is tomorrow morning at 8:30a and it's our last chance to get this sorted before we move.

Given the fact that Monday was a national bank holiday in Japan, we had little hope that we would receive any mail or that the Singapore envelope had arrived, but we decided to check the mail anyway. To our surprise, there was an item in the mailbox! They had tried to deliver the mail from Singapore on Sunday, but it required a signature and we weren't home! We were kicking our self since we missed it. However, the delivery notice indicated that we could pick it up at the nearby 24 hour post office. 24 HOUR POST OFFICE? I asked Hiromi to repeat that 3 times - I was sure she wasn't reading it correctly.

We called them, and sure enough - they said you can come on down and pick it up. It was 10pm on a PUBLIC HOLIDAY and they said, come on down and pick it up? Sounded too good to be true, but we decided to try. So at 10:30p on a public holiday, we went down and picked up this mail from a friendly and courteous postal worker (no firearm in tow). There were other people who were bringing packages to be mailed and other postal business as well. Talk about 'in the nick of time' - we are off to our final visa appointment tomorrow morning!