Traveling with two passports
I had learned that both the Japanese and US governments require their citizens to use their respective passports when reentering their respective countries. In other words, I had to use my old US passport at the airport in Honolulu.
I wondered if this would cause any complications. As it turned out, there was no serious problem. But there was one minor glitch: When I arrived in Honolulu, I went to the line for returning US citizens and presented my US passport to the immigration officer. He looked at it, but instead of handing it right back to me, he did a bit of tapping at his terminal (I suppose they always do that, though I hadn't noticed it on previous entries), and then he said, "Can I see your boarding pass stub?" Oh.
The name on my boarding pass was my new Japanese name. So I pulled out my Japanese passport and handed that to him along with the stub. And I nervously explained that I was was recently naturalized and was complying with the above "use your Japanese/US passport" rules.
To my relief, the officer was satisfied with my explanation. He said he just needed to fix some data, and he started tapping at his terminal again. After a minute or two, he handed me back my passports and stub, and I proceeded to the baggage claim area, picked up my bag, and exited without incident.
Though I don't know the details of the system, I presume that the immigration officer was looking at a list of that day's expected arrivals based on information provided by the airlines. And of course my US passport name wasn't on the list, since my ticket was under my Japanese name.
Not much of a story, but I thought I'd share it just for the record.
