Thank you for sharing that - I had joined it a long time ago and forgot about it.
Japan doesn’t have its own visa office. I think the only visa offices in Asia are New Delhi, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Manila. Manila is the visa office for all tourist and PR applications from Japan. Sometimes applications from Japan havealak stayes in Canada, from other people I’ve talked to. I don’t know why ours went to Manila. My husband has been in Japan eight years.
Our timeline is:
6/22: application sent to Sydney, NS
8/30: AOR
9/14: medical request (medical done next day in Tokyo)
9/18: medical passes on GC Key
9/28: email for transfer to Manila