Today, I had my second interview about naturalising in Japan at the Legal Affairs Office. I thought I was going to get to submit at least some documents today, but that was a misunderstanding.
As I mentioned before, I ordered all the documents I needed from the UK, and that was fairly straightforward in the end. My first email to the court for my parents’ divorce certificate seems to have just got lost in the end-of-year rush, because my second email, in the New Year, was answered promptly, and that was very straightforward (and only £9, thanks to Dad having the certificate to hand so he could tell me the case number). My parents managed to fill in the form affirming that I was their eldest son, and send it back to me, so I had everything by the end of January.
Then I needed to translate them, because all non-Japanese documents must come with a Japanese translation. That wasn’t too hard, although I spread it over several days. Official documents for universal things, like birth and marriage, tend to be fairly easy to translate, because there are words for all the necessary bits in both languages.
Around the same time, I started drafting my statement of motivation. That went through three drafts before I had a version I was happy with. I tried to keep it relatively short, since you have to write that out by hand.
Then I started collecting the Japanese documents. This was straightforward, apart from the fact that I forgot my seal the first time I went to the national tax office. I needed proof of payment of national tax, total taxable income, and payment of consumption tax from the national tax office, proof of payment of prefectural business tax from the prefectural tax office, a copy of the deeds to my flat from the Legal Affairs Office, proof of payment of local income tax, statement of liability for this year, and statement that Yuriko is not liable from the city tax office (which has branches in the ward office), and copies of our residents’ register entry, Yuriko’s family record (which has Mayuki on), and the notes to Yuriko’s family record. It’s quite a few pieces of paper, but they are all standard things issued by the relevant offices, so they are easy to get if you show up and fill in the forms.
Once I had everything, I filled in the forms I had to write on, and made copies of everything.
That took two whole days.
Copying out my statement of motivation took a while, as did preparing and filling in my CV. They want all your addresses and jobs, and I think it’s basically right. I’m not absolutely sure about the dates from 15 years ago… Fortunately, I have scans of my old Gaijin Cards, which have all my addresses in Japan, with the dates I moved, written on them, so I know that the Japanese addresses are right. Anyway, I prepared it on the computer, let it rest overnight, filled in the other things I had remembered the next morning, and then copied it. The CV also has a page for listing all the times you have been in and out of Japan in the last few years (3 or 5, depending on your situation). The dates for those are, of course, in your passport.
I also needed to fill in forms about my immediate family (my parents, siblings, and children, Yuriko, and her parents). This had a space for whether they support or oppose your naturalisation, or don’t particularly care. Fortunately, all the adults were good enough to support my application. Mayuki strongly asserts that I cannot become Japanese, because people will know I’m a foreigner just by looking. So I left her blank. “No particular opinion” is clearly wrong, but “strong opinion but does not actually understand what it is about” was not an option.
Then there is a form for your income and savings. For that, I needed to submit all the tax documents. I also needed to supply copies of the bank books, although only the cover, first page (with the account details on), and last page, with the current balance, are necessary. Also, you don’t need to submit all your bank accounts, if some only have a bit of money in. As I said to my initial case worker today “This isn’t the tax office, after all.” “Exactly,” he replied. You have to prove that you have enough to live on, not show all your assets. Mind you, I would advise against trying to hide substantial assets. That’s the sort of thing that could make them suspicious.
Because I’m self-employed, I needed to fill in a form giving details of my business. It’s very high-level, though, so it just meant copying some numbers across from my tax return. Normally, you give details of your clients, but because all my clients are individuals I was told to leave it blank for now.
Then there were the maps of the area around where I live, and work, which are the same map in my case. You are allowed to print out online maps these days, which saves a lot of time. The one about your work asks about your superiors or inferiors, which I left blank because I don’t have any, and the one about home asks if there is anyone in the area who knows you particularly well. I put our local jinja, Shirahata Hachiman Daijin, in there, after asking them. It is possible that my next case officer will go round to talk to them, so they need to agree in advance. That form asks whether the people living around you know your nationality. I said yes, and got proof the following day. I went to pick Mayuki up from her after school club, and one of the girls there said “You’re from America, right?”, only for another girl, whom I didn’t recognise, to say “No, he’s from England”. So, random small children in the area know my nationality. (Although, interestingly, both the girls used the Japanese for “born in”, not “citizen of”.)
In addition to all this, I needed copies of my passport, and of the previous passport, which I still have. For this, you need to copy the cover, the photo page, and every internal page with a stamp on. You don’t need to copy the pages that are the same in every passport, because they know what those look like. Also, it would appear that you do not need to translate the ID page. They know what that means, as well. One thing to note, however, is that your passport should still contain the embarkation card for foreigners that you received when you first came to reside in Japan. You will need to copy that page twice, to make sure that you have copies of both sides of the embarkation card, and of anything that is under it when you put it one way or the other. You don’t need to copy pages with nothing on them.
The other things I needed were a copy of my PhD certificate, with translation, a copy of both sides of my Residence Card, and a copy of the document certifying that I paid my pension contributions last year. (Note that, despite rumours I have heard, I was not asked to certify that I had no gaps in my pension record; just that I had paid for the most recent year. This is something you might be asked later, but it doesn’t seem to be on the initial list.)
Finally, they need two or three photographs of your daily life. You only need one copy of these, because they are for the person in the Ministry of Justice who makes the final decision, and doesn’t actually meet you.
For everything else, you need two copies; an original if you can submit it, and one copy. I made a third set of copies, so that I will have a set of all the documents I submitted. When I’ve actually submitted them. With each set in an envelope, and a fourth envelope for the documents I was just going to show them, like my passport and bank books, the documents looked like the photograph. They are quite heavy.
So, today I took all of these documents to the Legal Affairs Office. I arrived 15 minutes early for my appointment, and my case worker saw me within five minutes, so we got off to an early start.
We started by discussing the non-passport proof of citizenship. Apparently, the story that the Legal Affairs Office is getting from the embassy is not quite the same as the story I’m getting, so I need to contact them again to sort it out. If I can get a definitive statement that they do not issue those certificates, the Ministry of Justice will have a think about how to deal with naturalisation applications from the UK. If they do issue them, I’ll have to go and get one.
Then my case worker started going through my documents, pausing occasionally to mutter things like “wow” and “amazing”. Apparently, most people can’t follow instructions. Apart from the proof of citizenship, I was missing two things. Apparently, I do need to certify Yuriko’s income. I also need to certify my income. As I am self-employed, that means that I need to fill in the form and put my own seal on it. Yes, this is a bit silly, and if this had been the only thing missing I could have done it right there. Everything else looked fine.
However, your initial case worker does not check the content of your application. He (or she) checks that you have all the right documents, with translations if necessary. Your second case worker checks the content. So, today we just confirmed that I had (nearly) all the right documents, and that my application was almost ready to go.
We talked a bit about the next appointment, and my case worker said that he would pass me on to the assessor immediately. Apparently, in all the years he’s been doing this, this is the first time he’s been able to do this after the second meeting. (The first meeting is the one where you are told what to gather, so it’s impossible to complete the application there. The documents they ask for vary depending on your situation, so you shouldn’t get things ready before your first interview.) Now, I do get the impression that he is overloaded and trying to get me off his books as quickly as possible; when I called a couple of weeks ago to confirm the details of some documents, he strongly encouraged me to book an appointment for today. However, I’m a bit surprised that no-one has done it before.
This raises another point about the process. There is no charge for the meetings with your case worker, and they last over an hour. In those meetings, she (or he) goes through your application with you, tells you which documents you need, and where to get them, and, presumably, points out problems if you have filled things in incorrectly. (Incidentally, I can confirm that crossing out mistakes, with two lines, is acceptable.) As I understand it, you can keep having meetings until you get it right, within reason. Three or four is normal, from what my case worker said. As I’ve mentioned, you can also phone your case worker in between meetings to ask questions or confirm things that are not clear. This is really a fantastic level of free support. If your Japanese is good, I suspect that you do not need professional help with the application, at least not in Japan. You might need to hire a lawyer in your own country if it is hard to get the necessary documents out of it, I suppose. On the other hand, if your Japanese is only just good enough to naturalise, it might be a good idea to hire a Gyouseishoshi lawyer who speaks fluent English.
My next meeting will be my first meeting with my assessor. This will, apparently, take about three hours. The first hour will be going through the paperwork again. The second will be an interview with my wife. The third will be an interview with me. The reason for this is, apparently, to spot fake marriages. It seems that these are common enough to be a real problem. Fortunately, Yuriko can leave after her interview, to collect Mayuki from school. That meeting will happen in a couple of weeks, and I think that might be the one where I formally apply for citizenship.
After the formal application, it takes another few months, and I might well be asked to produce more documents. My case worker told me that someone, recently, had got sick of it, and refused to produce some documents. The application was denied on the grounds of lack of cooperation with the investigation. He strongly encouraged me to produce whatever I was asked for, and I’m inclined to agree with him. It’s not as if I have a right to naturalise in Japan, so arguing with them about what is necessary for the application does not seem like a good idea.
In any case, I have moved to the next stage, even if I still have all my documents. I suspect that hoping for fast progress on this would be unwise.
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