Becoming Japanese

This old description implies that the paperwork and form inspection and reception always occurs before the interview (and request for additional paperwork) A person who is currently undergoing the naturalization process asked me if the order of the steps is the same for everybody, and if it is different then does that mean a problem or rather a fast track to naturalization. Over the years, I have had many people report to me that some of the steps they took for naturalization were done in a different order from how I did them or how others who have written for this site did them. For example: Signed one or more of the oaths at the very first  or second appointment Did the interviews after all the paperwork was completed, or before all the paperwork was completed Had additional paperwork to complete far after they thought all of the paperwork had been turned in There are a few things which will always proceed in a certain order. For example, they will always talk abo...

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...

Photo credit [ CC BY 2.0 ] to Hideto KOBAYASHI There's a great article in The Armenian Mirror-Spectator about the origins of the "Melon-pan" ( メロンパン { meron-pan } ), sometimes called a "Sunrise" ( サンライズ { sunraizu } ) in some parts of the nation, that is: ubiquitous in Japan found in every single convenience store, bakery, and anywhere serving edibles for a train commute in Japan. Ōkura Sagoyan Introduced to Japan during the Meiji era by a talented Armenian  baker, イワン・サゴヤン { Iwan SAGOYAN } (Hovhannes "Ivan" Ghevenian Sagoyan), who was discovered by Baron Kihachirō Ōkura ( 大倉喜八郎 { ŌKURA Kihachirō } ) while working at the New Hotel Harbin in Manchuria, China. Poached from China, the baker invented the original versions of the famous candy bread while working at the Imperial Hotel ( 帝国ホテル { Teikoku Hoteru } ), basing it on the French galette ( ガレット { garetto } ) pastry bread using Russian techniques for fusion of Vienna/German...

In an old post, I mentioned how unlike the United States, Japan has no civics test quizzing applicants about their knowledge of the constitution, the country's history, geography, or government. In fact, most people are not tested on their Japanese ability either, because if your Japanese ability is comfortable enough that the case worker does not think you are struggling to communicate, understand them, and read or write simple forms, they will skip testing to see whether or not you have rudimentary ability. But what if there was a test? What would it be like? Of course, a real test administered by the Ministry of Justice would be entirely in Japanese. But for fun, I made a make-believe test a few years ago, and it was relatively popular. The post is now old though and some of the questions are dated. Additionally, Google Forms now has the capability to make a proper test that will provide graded results after you submit your answers. I have been told that the test is not e...

When people learn I'm a Japanese national , they naturally (and correctly) first assume, from my very non-Japanese appearance and because I speak Japanese with a slight non-native accent, that I was neither born nor grew up here. South Park creators parodied the Native American / Japanese conspiracy theory in " Cannibal! The Musical " So their follow-up question and assumption is often about how or "why" I am Japanese. Laughably, I have had many people ask if I was ハーフ { hāfu } (mixed race) , even though there is absolutely no DNA affecting my phenotype that should give people that idea. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren is probably more Native American than I am Asian. They ask this question because most Japanese and non-Japanese have met people who don't appear to be Japanese yet are, and the most common explanation is that their in Japanese ancestry in their lineage. There actually are Japanese people who were born in Japan, grew up complete...

It's been brought to my attention that the previous post (which was originally published first on Quora, then edited and posted here ) is apparently popular enough that some kind translator, Jerome Cohen , took it upon himself to translate it into French for better availability to non-English readers. I thank him for making this popular post available to a wider audience. Please do check out his French translations of other questions about Japan and Japanese from his Quora profile as well as the Quora in French page on Facebook . Je suis en fait une personne qui a fait cela (je suis devenu légalement japonais). La réponse courte est que vous pouvez avoir le nom que vous voulez, avec quatre conditions: Il doit être écrit exclusivement en, ou une combinaison de, hiragana (moderne, pas archaïque), katakana, ou kanji. Tout comme vous ne pouvez pas écrire un nom sur des documents officiels américains en thaïlandais, cyrillique, hangul ou arabe... ou même utiliser des signes ...

You can have any name you want,  and it can be as long as you want , providing four conditions: None of these characters are allowed in a Japanese 戸籍 { koseki } (family register). It has to be written exclusively in or a combination of ( modern, not archaic ) hiragana, katakana , or kanji . Just like you can’t write a name on American official documents in Thai, Cyrillic, Hangul, or Arabic … or even use diacritic marks used in European languages ( ex. the German sharp S [“ß”] or French cedilla [ç] or others [ÂÄÅÀÁ]) — people becoming American must adapt their name to the plain 26 character alphabet — you have to adapt your name to Japan’s writing system. Because there is not a perfect one-to-one correspondence between either Japanese language "spelling" or pronunciation and other languages, most non-Japanese names will need to be adapted or modified for the new writing system. "Adrian" for example would become 「エイドリアン」 which when literally converted t...