Well I messed up and forgot to send my Japanese tax forms to Apple. I could see that Apple kept on withholding 20% tax in Japan even though I filled out the forms. However, I thought it was ok just to fill them out online, but after I asked Apple about it, it turned out that you have to sign them and send them to Apple via (snail) mail.

Since I made a substantial amount of money in Japan this month I wanted the forms mailed as fast as possible. I didn't have any stamps, but my girlfriend had a bunch of them. I wasn't quite sure about the weight of the letter so I wanted to be on the safe side, and as far as we could tell all her stamps were barely enough.

The envelope ended up with 12 stamps on its front. It looked incredibly silly:

On another note, I got the description of Strip Designer translated to Japanese and it looks like it paid off. At least I could see that Strip Designer increased in rank on the Japanese app store. This is good, because it did drop quite a bit the last couple of days.

It took 2-3 days before the translation actually appeared. I am not sure why because Apple says that changes should appear within 24 hours, but perhaps adding localization takes a bit longer.

The translation costed around $60 and my girl friends asked her Japanese colleague to check it; Supposedly, it was really good. Now I am wondering if the surge I saw today was due to the translation or something else.

I've also seen a significant surge on the US app store about two days ago that I cannot explain.