Becoming Japanese

That's a lot of kids. Victoria Ferauge, author of the blog "The Franco-American Flophouse" , who is a graduate student in International Migration at the University of Kent Brussels School of International Studies, has reached out to me to ask our readers and contributors (not just naturalized Japanese, but anybody who is a native English speaker that lives in Japan) if they would participate in a small online survey about one's level of integration into Japanese society. I have known Victoria from her blog about living in Osaka and her own issues of expatriation, so I'm familiar with her work and opinions. I took the survey myself and it took me less than 5 minutes to complete. If you'd like to take the survey, please click on the link below. It is anonymous, and no ads or anything obtrusive is done. If you have any questions or would like to see the results of the study, please email her at: v... @kent.ac.uk . Here is the survey address: https://www...

Not necessarily part of a healthy diet in Japan I first started this website for two reasons: The first reason was that after I naturalized, I received a lot of the same questions over and over about acquiring Japanese nationality, especially from non-Japanese, both living in Japan and living abroad. Some questions were good. Others, not so good. Some from strangers, some from people I know. Rather than re-answer the same questions over and over from people that barely passed as acquaintances, I compiled a list of as many questions, along with answers , that I could think of and referred people to this site for longer answers. I also made a list of steps that a typical applicant has to take to try to demystify the process to those that wondered if the process was systematic or arbitrary. The second reason I made this site was because after I had gone through the process and talked and met others who had gone through the process, I was amazed at how much outright false info...

My credo. Not a single regret. Not even a single letter, ya know what I'm sayin'? I obviously can't speak for everybody; I can only answer personally. And my answer is: no, not at all. In fact, the longer I live in Japan, the more reassured and confident I have become in knowing that I made the correct choice (for me).  Perhaps this is because my primary investments in Japan are my Japanese family and Japanese friends. I've enjoyed watching my immediate and my extended family grow up and be happy and advance their careers in Japan; I'm made an effort to be on good and close terms with my extended Japanese family of in-laws and their children. Their upbringing and lives are built on the foundation of the country and society of Japan. There are probably other countries where this could have happened too, but in my case, my family is in Japan, and this is their home. Having the unconditional eternal right to be in Japan protects my ability to enjoy my maturing ...

(non-commercial blog-use license from CartoonStock) A few years ago we covered the 2013 Henley & Partners Annual "The Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions Index" in a post , noting that Japan is one of the countries that is lucky enough to be in the top five list of passports that can go to the most countries (as a visitor) without needing to apply for a visa in advance. As Henley & Partners is a visa/international residence legal firm catering primarily to wealthy expat clients, they do a few press releases every year to draw attention to their list, and journalists that are interested in international borders and immigration lap it up like the Olympics (giving them free publicity and drumming up business) because it pits countries against each other which the internet likes to talk about. "Which country is more open / better than another country?" Anyway, even though you can go to more countries with a Japanese passport in 2016 than you could in...

Permanent Residency can go rotten if unused. One of naturalization's benefits is that it truly is permanent, in that no matter how long you are outside of Japan, it never expires. Contrary to its name, there is nothing that is truly "permanent" about the Status of Residence ( 在留資格 { zairyū shikaku } ; SoR ) known as "PERMANENT RESIDENT" ( 永住者 { eijūsha } ; PR ) or even "SPECIAL PERMANENT RESIDENT" ( 特別永住者 { tokubetu eijūsha } ; SPR ). You do not have to promise, state, or even intend to live in Japan permanently to receive it. On the other hand, if you leave Japan for more than a year without a re-entry permit or you are outside of Japan for a long enough time that your re-entry permit expires, the PR SoR will become invalid. Thus, if a family or work emergency requires you to leave Japan for a long time (years), and it is not possible to occasionally return to Japan to renew the re-entry permit, it is possible to lose one's permanen...

A lot of news has been made recently about the United States' decision to not only massively increase the price for its renunciation (by a whopping 422%), but to also charge the same amount of money for either renouncing or relinquishing American nationality — a process that used to be free . {This graph, depending on your browsing device, may be interactive and may take some time to completely load (the United States should be last). Hover your pointer and select certain countries for more info. Green circles are the cheapest countries. Yellow circles are moderately expensive countries. Red circles are the most expensive countries. Initial $ conversion based on average 2015 dollar rates. Further interactive USD ⇒ JPY conversion is done in real time} <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <...

(image licensed from CartoonStock ) I sometimes get correspondence and communication from internet-based entrepreneurs who live in Japan, often with a Japanese spouse, who make an income from sources that have no brick-and-mortar or human presence within Japan. They are either internet-based businesses or they work for a company whose headquarters is overseas. Sometimes they describe business is described as a "start-up" or they are self-employed or a "serial entrepreneur"; they are sometimes the proprietors of their business and if they do have partners or employees, these relationships are not well-defined in terms of contracts, payroll, or legally recognized shares of a company. The fourth of the six requirements for naturalization is: 自己又は生計を jiko mata wa seikei o 一にする配偶者その他の家族の ichi ni suru haigūsha sono ta no kazoku no ​ 資産又は技能によって shisan mata wa ginō ni yotte 生計を営むことができること。 seikei o itonamu koto ga dekiru koto. which roughly translates to: Being a...