Becoming Japanese

A few months ago an American interested in becoming Japanese mentioned to me that he looked forward to not needing to repay his crushing student debt he left back in America. The United States has gone through an unfortunate bubble of costs for real estate in tech areas (ex. Silicon Valley), healthcare, and education, have seen its costs escalate wildly out of control over the past few decades. Most people attempt to solve the education cost dilemma by taking on student loans, which is a special type of loan that you must eventually pay back — you cannot escape the debt by declaring personal bankruptcy. This seemingly inescapable debt, compared with the changing nature of the workforce where people who choose non- STEM  employment find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet compared to past generations, has led some to consider desperate measures. Some have proposed intentionally forcing the government's hand by collectively not paying student debt en masse — suc...

According to the published statistics by the Ministry of Justice ( 法務省 { hōmushō } ), once a case worker decides that your application is in order and submits it to the Minister of Justice ( 法務大臣 { hōmu daijin } ) for approval, the chances of being accepted are 98% or higher . However, the Ministry of Justice and the Nationality Departments ( 国籍課 { kokuseki-ka } ) do not publicly publish the amount of people that begin the naturalization process but never get their case officer to submit their paperwork. This is for many reasons. A big reason is that many people don't get to the point where they actually submit anything to a case worker or sign up for an appointment with a case worker, so there is no written record. The only way to get an idea of how many people actually begin the process then either decide on their own not to finish or have the case worker recommend they not try to proceed with a formal application is to ask immigration lawyer specialists. According t...