Misinformation: You can't bring your girlfriend (or even your wife or lawyer) with you to consultations

Can You Bring Your Spouse, Family Member, Boy or Girlfriend, S.O., Lawyer, Friend with you to all the personal interviews?

The placeholder photo that serves as the avatar
for the pseudonym "Ken Seeroi" aka "Ken C Roi".

TL;DR: "No".

I noticed a popular blog, called "The Japanese Rule of 7", had written recently an anecdote about attempting to acquire Japanese Citizenship because it had a link to this site, which generates an automatic notification to me.

I read it. And I enjoyed it. Very funny tale. However, it's important to keep this in mind while reading it:

It's a fictional account.

Normally, I'd leave fiction alone and not file it in the "Misinformation" page. Unfortunately, from reading the comments on the post and other entries in the blog, it's not clear that most of the blog's fans are in on the joke.

In the real world, they want to interview only the actual candidate (or if it is a legal family, the candidate's legal family), and it is only until the later stages that they interview any legal family members — such as your legal spouse or dependents who will be affected by your change of nationality. "Affected" means their 戸籍 {koseki} (Japanese family register) status and/or nationality changes (for example, if a foreign family is naturalizing together). When they interview your spouse, they may interview him or her separately at first, to see if their answers about your relationship make sense; they are determining if the relationship is legitimate or not.

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT DETAIL because they want to speak to you individually because they want to hear your answers and not anybody else's answers. They do not want anybody to coach you or answer for you. They also want to speak to you alone as it helps them assess your Japanese ability.

Many people are surprised when they discover that they can't send a Japanese legal scrivener (司法書士 {shihōshoshi}) to the interviews in their place or even have one sit with them. If you hire legal help, the only thing they can do is help you prepare your paperwork (and even then, some things, such as the 動機書 {dōkisho} (Motivation Essay), have to be not only your own words, but your own handwriting). Some people give up here, not having the confidence to speak for 40 minutes exclusively in Japanese about a non-trivial or daily banter topic in a formal interview setting.

Understanding What "Ken Seeroi" and "Japanese Rule of 7" Is

David Ury, and, with the help of digital editing,
his "Caucasian Japanese" alter-ego, Ken Tanaka

Ken Seeroi, much like "Ken Tanaka" (a YouTube "Caucasian Japanese" played by actor David Ury), is not technically a real person. "Ken Seeroi" is an internet persona / pen name, most likely written by foreign person who is living and working in Japan but chose a pen name either for anonymity and/or to give him the ability to take an "artistic license" with the stories in his blog entries.

Authors and artists sometimes choose this method of communication because frankly, if you aren't confined to the truth of your own life, you can make your stories far more interesting, humorous, and entertaining. The author of "The Japanese Rule of 7" creates tales surrounding the character Ken Seeroi and tells them in the first person mode. Without the limitations of needing to be truthful, the author can create a tale to encapsulate the opinion or morale regarding Japan that he wishes to convey.

There's nothing particularly wrong with creating a first-person pen name, but it's important to understand that not everybody will outright identify their character as being fiction or semi-fiction — because it's important for his audience to believe that Ken Seeroi could be a real person and those events could have happened. When a magician performs their act on stage, they do not usually tell people in advance that what they're seeing is a sleight of hand or describe how the trick works. To keep the audience entertained, it's important for the audience to suspend their disbelief.

Many have been duped by Sacha Baron Cohen's
character "Borat", believing him to be real.

Some people, such as David Ury, take their "character brand" to such extremes that it is not uncommon for people to misunderstand the in-character performance art for reality. I have had to correct not one, but two, social justice advocates who mistook David Ury's character "Ken Tanaka" for a real person, for example. Even Japan Times article writers have quoted "Ken Seeroi" content without noting that it is a pseudonym and the contents and details and events described in the blog cannot be verified.

While the blog entries are humorous and well written, it is important to remember that, while they all have a kernel of truth and believably to them due to the author having lived in Japan for some time — and it is obvious he watched and read quite a few YouTube videos and web pages to prepare his "Applying for Japanese Citizenship" article, anybody who has ever done the Japanese naturalization process can easily identity embellishments, that were written so as to be entertaining, rather than factual.

Much like reading Dave Barry or listening to comedy material from Bill Burr or Jerry Seinfeld, I know that the story about the person's family or interactions with others is fabricated. For example, the whole mid-story about his encounter I noted the following:

• You do not take a number like 12 and wait for your name to be called like at the post office, a bank, or traditional immigration. You make a reservation (preferably by phone), linking a specific time and date slot to your name.
• There is no …table in the middle of the cavernous room, inches from Japanese women tapping intently on their keyboards… (the largest Nationality interview room in Japan, located in central Tokyo, could hardly be called cavernous — "cramped and tight" is a better phrase, and the interview rooms are not laid out as to have a table in the middle nor are they visible to a cadre of male or female staff workers — clearly the author was inspired by the opening scene in Blade Runner when he imagined this.
• There is no …4-page form… with a final question asking Why do you want to be a Japanese citizen?
  1. That's what the "Motivation Essay" is for.
  2. The longest official form is the naturalization permission application form (帰化許可申請書 {kika kyoka shinseisho}).
  3. The case workers are too busy to wait for you to write anything of length in front of them — that is considered to be homework to be brought in for review during the next appointment

Of course, the tale of his failure with the fictional form — it beggars belief that somebody can't write — even in 仮名 {kana} (a simple 46 character Japanese syllabet) — or even remember their address in Japanese after 10 years yet they can read an 居酒屋 {izakaya} (Japanese pub) menu — which can be quite difficult and obscure unless your only experience with an Japanese drinking pub is an urban chain that caters to tourists and foreigners with picture menus and lots of foreign snacks and libations transcribed from English into カタカナ {katakana} (Japanese syllabet script). The convenient switching from Japanese literacy to illiteracy and back (especially if you read his other blog entries — his Japanese ability varies from story to story) most likely is to serve a plot point. The "form" the author fabricated is simply a narrative device to setup and lead to his preconceived opinion delivered at the end point of his blog post: that he doesn't think that Japanese citizenship is a good idea for him or his readers. And there's nothing wrong with that. Naturalization is not for everybody.

However, it's important to note that while the author of the "Ken Seeroi" character does not want to naturalize nor does he want his readers to naturalize, it's quite clear that he has never been to an office for a naturalization appointment. And if he has, he for some reason chose to substitute a fictional account rather than describe the true interaction in order to frame his opinion.

Enjoy the blog for what it is: fictional comedy from the point of view of an English speaking foreign teacher in Japan. And there are interesting opinions in it.

Just don't assume what is written in it actually happened in real life.