Category: Japan

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…

When I went to the Legal Affairs Bureau to start the process of naturalising, I was given a long list of documents to gather. I decided to start by gathering the UK-issued documents, as I foresaw the most problems with those. I seem to have been correct. One of the documents required was a certificate…

Yesterday, I went to keep my appointment at the Legal Affairs Bureau in Kawasaki for my first interview about naturalising. The interview took about an hour, and mostly consisted of explanations of the documents I need to prepare in order to submit my application. The whole thing was conducted in Japanese, so if your Japanese…

Today, I started the process of applying to naturalise as a Japanese citizen. Well, to be strictly accurate I called the local Legal Affairs Bureau to make an appointment to start the process of applying to naturalise as a Japanese citizen. There’s a good site about the process in general at Turning Japanese, and my…

The page for my television appearance is online at last. It has some details about the programme, so feel free to take a look if you are interested. The programme is half an hour long, and will be broadcast six times over the course of 24 hours on July 16th GMT. The times are on…

In mid-December, a new right wing government was elected in Japan. Some people have even described it as “far right”. So, now it’s in office, what has it done? The first concrete policy announcement was a Â¥20 trillion (about $200 billion) spending package to boost the economy, with an emphasis on public works, such as…

I see that today’s earthquake has also made the international news. We’re all fine. We felt it, and it was long, but it wasn’t that strong here. Much smaller than last year’s. NHK are still broadcasting tsunami warnings for Tohoku, though.

Today I went to the immigration office to exchange my Certificate of Alien Registration for a Residence Card. The system for foreigners resident in Japan changed in July, and everyone needs to change to a Residence Card. They don’t need to do it immediately, but it’s not entirely clear when they should. If you have…