I appreciate you saying that but I don't think that I have made anywhere near to the contributions that Typhoon has!
Since the merger of pax and cargo flying, the roster stability at work has decreased quite a bit, the days of months and months without a single change to your schedule are long gone, so it varies from month to month as to how many nights you will spend at base, could be as little as 6 and as much as 12 nights in Narita, don't count with doing much passenger flying though! These days it is a selected few that does most of the passenger flying. Thus far the days off requests have been granted on the majority of the times but as we grow I'm not sure that will remain the case, the scheduling department is extremely inefficient since rosters are done by hand. Japan has scientists exploring the biginings of the universe with their particle accelerator, their space program rivals some of the big players, their advances in robotics are just breath taking, but AJX does their rosters by hand lending itself to gross inefficiency in pilot utilization and fatigue management, someone explain that one to me because I sure as hell don't get it! Ok, done with the rant!
AJX will NOT sponsor you nor your family for resident visa, we have been pushing for this for years now and they will not do it. Some guys stay for periods at a time on their shore pass but it is without an official residence status, as to the ability to claim foreign residence without the gaijin card? That is something that I will not explore, our dear uncle is pretty heavy handed when it comes to collecting his taxes and it is notorious for letting it go for years and years, just to come with a BTW you owe us the GDP of a small nation in taxes and interest! Lets just say that I file my taxes conservatively!