Becoming Japanese

I received a mail a few weeks ago saying they read all the posts about names, but they still wanted to know a little more detail. This person had the following questions: Considering [one's new Japanese] name, [you] could go a couple routes. Should [one]: Katakana-ize it Kanji-ize it or choose a Japanese name that has a similar sound to it (maybe something like 城之内 { JŌNOUCHI } ) Do you recommend going a certain way over others? Do people back in the States still call you by your birth name? Similarly, for those who knew you in Japan before you naturalised, have they adopted to calling you by your Japanese name? How have your parents reacted? Has it affected you in any particular way? Regarding question #1, I chose 【ⅰ】 for my given name, and 【none of the above】 for my family name. For most of my life I had a family name whose pronunciation was not deducible from its spelling even in America. When I came to Japan, it just got worse because of the amount of non-Ja...

The quick TL;DR answer: from the confirmed experiences of people who've applied during the decade — less than a year, and taking less than half a year is not unheard of. For me, it took four (4) months, but your mileage may vary. It seems that the average for most people over the last five years has been around six (6) to nine (9) months. There are two phases to the application process: the time it takes to gather and get feedback for all the paperwork you need to submit, and the time from the formal submission to seeing a notification in the Official Gazette ( 官報 { kampō } ) regarding your naturalization and getting a call back from your case worker telling you to come to the local 法務局 { hōmukyoku } (legal affairs bureau) to receive your 帰化者身分証明書 { kikasha mibun shōmeisho } (proof of identity of naturalized person) — which is a one-time use breeder document used to create your family register ( 戸籍 { koseki } ) and other official Japanese-citizen documents at the city h...