This morning I have been to the Russian embassy in Japan in order to apply for a Russian visa. Russia is one of the few countries where Japanese are required to have visa, even for tourism. An applicant for a tourist visa has to prepare documents, which are an invitation letter and a travel voucher from an appropriate Russian travel company. The Russian visa system is really complicated and a real hassle for me. What I found interesting during learning the complicated procedure is that there are different explanations between Japanese sites and English sites on the internet. Lots of Japanese sites, especially in travel agents, are written that the entire journey must be booked in advance, so it is almost impossible to travel freely in Russia. However, in English sites free travel is possible. I do not know which the correct answer is, but I would like to travel by myself freely and stay in cheap accomodation. This time I chose the latter. In either way, there is a lot of paper work and travellers have to pay for their visa application. Indeed, the system would make a profit for some travel agents, but I think the complicated visa system is inefficient in the situation where the government personel and applicants have to do a lot of paper work. Although Russia has lots of touristic sites, it has been still terra incognita for tourists because of its visa system. It would be more profitable for thr Russian government and Russian people if they allowed us to travel Russia without visa. The strict visa system sounds a little bit out of date. Anyway I hope my Russian visa would be issued without a problem two week later.
