Becoming Japanese

Japanese Alien Registration Card 明けましておめでとうございます！ { akemashite omedetō gozaimasu! } (Happy New Year!) As this is New Year, I figured I'd start off by answering very simple, yet still good and often asked questions. Do you need to be legally Japanese — as in "have Japanese citizenship?" No. That's way, way down the road and something you do after having lived in Japan for a very long time and you want to be here forever. It's not even necessary for living in Japan forever if you do want the rights or responsibilities it has or you don't qualify. But you do need to be legal to live and work in Japan. For almost everybody but a few special cases that are beyond the scope of this blog/site, this means working or living either full or just part time or temporarily on a fixed length contract as a legal visitor/tourist on one or more fifteen (15) day or ninety (90) day (depending on the country) "temporary landing permit" status(es) — which...