Banking Transaction Woes - Trying to conduct banking in Japan

In order to move into an apartment, you have to pay a renters fee, landlord fee, Japanese renters insurance, and three months advance rent. Oh boy, what a headache. That is a lot. Today, I had to figure out how to pull out $7,000 out of my ass. The military hasn't paid me a dime to live out in town yet... Here is how it went: I went to Navy Fed and asked if they could cash a check. I had the money in another bank account that I had to transfer from my emergency funds. I wanted to write a check and put it into my Navy Fed account. Sounds simple right??? Nope. Now keep in mind that I have been living in the Navy Lodge for 17 days and Christmas holiday is coming up. The Navy has a policy about the limit for the lodge is 30 days INCLUDING weekends. Technically, I only have 14 business days to play with, which started the day I went to my housing brief. 6 of those days were consumed with routing a stupid request chit asking to move out in town... so that leaves me with 4 days to actually process the paperwork and get my pay fixed. And 4 days to move into my apartment. Unfortuanately, my realtor goes on vacation the last week this month... so how the heck am I going to process my move without extending my stay at the Navy Lodge? Impossible. I don't know, I'm praying a miracle will happen. Well, back to the story: Navy Fed has to hold on to the check for 10 business days before the check clears and the money is deposited into my account. In the US, it takes 3 business days. I DON'T HAVE TEN FREAK'IN BUSINESS DAYS!!! I was literally pulling my hair out, because I needed to move out of the Lodge and fast. My options were to take out a loan or ask for a cash advance. I didn't know what a cash advance was, but I knew what a loan was. So I started with the paperwork for a loan. Knowing that my loan for $7,000 was probably going to be turned down (I had zero dollars in both my checking and savings account with Navy Fed) I asked about the cash advance option. Technically, they can take out money straight out of my credit card (bank card) and deposit it straight into my account! And you know what? It doesn't cost anything to do that! So that is what I did. The only problem was, is that it could be denied. What a headache! Well, the transaction went through and I had a good learning experience about "cash advances". Now, I can pay my first month of rent. A whopping $7,000.