Becoming Japanese

The "No Entry" road sign in Japan is also the same in much of Europe. Legally in Japan, there is no difference in the rights between Japanese nationals who were born with the nationality (often called "natural born citizens" in American terminology) and those who changed from one nationality to another voluntarily via a qualifying process (usually referred to as "a naturalized citizen" or national). Some countries may small differentiations between natural born and naturalized citizens. For example, the United States requires U.S. Presidents to be natural born. Some countries make it easier to lose or forfeit their nationality if the nationality was acquired via naturalization (ex. Mexico). But in Japan, a naturalized person is legally capable of becoming, for example, the Prime Minister. Just like somebody who has only had Japanese nationality their entire life. A naturalized Japanese citizen "commoner" woman could even theoretically become a me...

...the Bureau of Legal Affairs is, too TL;DR: yes and no, sometimes in surprising ways.  So since I have finished the document-gathering and initial submission phase of my application, I thought I would write about how the current pandemic is affecting the process. Note that I am writing from the perspective of someone doing the process in mid-2021 . As such, my experience will definitely be different from someone doing the same in 2020, when lockdowns were stricter.  Part 1: In terms of time and money Making appointments with the Legal Affairs Bureau: Yes First, for scheduling consultations: yes, but not directly. At the time I was having consultations with my local Legal Affairs Bureau, which was April-July 2021, the average waiting time (which I mean to be the earliest future date when an appointment slot is available) was 1 month. When I went for my third consultation , I asked the case worker if the pandemic affected how busy the Legal Affairs Bureau was with naturaliz...