I Became a Citizen of Japan
derekwessman.comStopped when he said he waited forever to get naturalized, skipping 6 years, and then saying he never got his permanent resident card, so he was just living off renewed visas, and they thought it was strange.
It is strange. A lot of the things he said he needed, would have been done in the permanent residence portion of his time in Japan. Just as it is in any country.
> A lot of the things he said he needed, would have been done in the permanent residence portion of his time in Japan.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Having PR isn't a prerequisite for naturalization, nor does it waive any of the requirements. Do you mean he should have collected extra copies of documents and applied for PR in parallel?
Once you are living in the country for a while, you can pretty much do anything and people don’t care about your resident status at all. For my daily lives in UK I only need my address and driving license. You pretty much have the feeling that you’ll be fine without bothering to do the paperwork, that’s how things work in the last 20-50 years.
This isn't true. I knew someone that lived illegally in the UK for almost a decade.
They could only get terrible restaurant jobs that didn't report anything to the government and were visited by immigration multiple times.
Even after getting an immigration lawyer couldn't help with citizenship.
What finally worked was having a kid and marrying a citizen.
What do you mean? Any major employer in the UK will need more than that for you to work there.
Yes my friend moved from Sydney to London for work and he said it was a nightmare. He had his job in London lined up but he needed a UK bank account. He couldn’t get a bank account until he had a UK residence. His apartment lease needed his proof of employment.
He had to use his friend’s address for the bank account and then changed it.
I also moved from Sydney to Britain and just paid my rent from my Australian bank account until I got my British bank account. Your friend may not have thought to do this because he probably expected the ‘prison guard LARP’ attitude that Australian real estate agents have to also exist here in Britain.
Oh for sure, he was working for the UK government in some capacity so wanted to make sure everything was by the book.
So only a few times in many years, I think most need an NI number only
That is what many people think before risking deportation for no other reason than not taking this seriously enough.
This is so wrong in pretty much all developed nations.
Are you American? Have you been to a Home Depot on Saturday?
that's... really abd
I thought Japan requires 10 years residence for PR, but only 5 years residence to naturalize, in which case it wouldn't be surprising if many people naturalize before getting PR!
Not anymore.
> The preliminary documentation I would need to gather <insert unbelievable list>
It’s hard to imagine why they are having a decreasing population problem
Japan is one of those countries that doesn’t allow dual citizenship and they require proof of renunciation. Something to think about for those from other “strong” countries who want to go down that route.
If you renounce UK citizenship then you can usually get it back. But only once.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/form-rs1-guidance...
If by “strong” you mean visa free global access, Japan is tied for #2, behind Singapore.
How do you get proof of renunciation before becoming a japanese citizen? You would be stateless in between?
The state department specifically warns that this may result in statelessness, yes: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...
> Japan is one of those countries that doesn’t allow dual citizenship and they require proof of renunciation.
Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship if you acquire the japanese one later in life.
Plenty of people in Japan, like my nephew, have dual citizenship by birth. I don't know if they can keep both when they're adult. But as kids 100% guaranteed Japan allows it.
And then a great many mixed couple do, on purpose, give literally two different identities to their kids. One by registering them, say, in Germany with the name written in roman characters (say "Akane") and the other in Japan with the name written using kanjis (or kanas for that is allowed to).
I'm not talking about dual citizenships / two passports: I'm talking about the same person having two entirely different identities because his parents registered him, on purpose, differently in two different countries.
So, yes, there are literally a few people counted twice on earth. And you probably don't want to do that with the US citizenship (for US taxes its citizens worldwide and it's a reporting clusterfuck). But if you've got, say, a japanese identity and whatever european one: you're totally fine.
You are supposed to renounce your other citizenship by the age of 20. Not everyone does that, though, because it isn't checked.
They allow it until the kids are 19. Then they are supposed to make a decision about which one they want to keep.
I'm pretty sure this is more data than what's required for security clearance.
It absolutely is.
> every address you've ever lived at, and the dates you lived there.
Well cross Japan off my list. I would not be able to produce that residence list under any circumstances.
I can recommend keeping a list from now on. It's helped me quite a few times.
Fair, and it's not like it's hard to keep a google doc. But I literally don't know my apartment number from 10 years ago.
Anything that needs that data I can do without. Besides that, they'd never believe it in the first place.
Would have to be able to do without many jobs in the USA! (Obviously glad though you’ve got your options and they’re sufficient.)
Also recommend to others keeping a list of all places from the past seven years.
WTF is it that employers think they can get out of the last 7 years of addresses? That's private information, absolutely none of their business.
It helps catch attempted identity theft. Lots of people who are not eligible for employment steal the identities of those who are. But they will have to make up any data they don’t know, or that is inapplicable because the true holder of that identity died a while ago.
So basically I just need to hire a professional with access to a data broker to tell me what a prospective employer already knows about me.
The Work Number might be a good start there. Salary history and stuff apparently.
It's used for background checks to identify relevant criminal records, debt records, etc.
DHS requires 7 or so years of residence and travel history for Trusted Traveler Programs like Global Entry.
Well, I'm going to have to do without that then. This is no great loss because I had already decided to forego traveling to the US because the way the border guards treated me on my last visit was enough to make me decide I didn't need that kind of headache. They still owe me a pair of boots.
Yup, I think it's 5 years but yes.
Helps identity verification (or theft I guess)
If it’s ever lived in the country, the us has a similar requirement for applying to the greencard
Australia generally requires at least 10 years for some things.
Why is the word 'interrogation' (appears at least twice) interleaved with unprintable characters?
For some reason, the author chose to imitate a "strikethrough" text effect by following each letter with "U+0336 COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY", rather than just using the <s> HTML element.
They survive format changes. If copied and used as plain text, the meaning does not suddenly change from a joke to an ominous "interrogation consultation room".
The rules changed in 2025, as of q2 2025 it was only a requirement of five years residency within Japan to become naturalized and this route as considered easier than permanent residency.
Everything is now harder. Even business manager visa. So many 夢の日本 have been shattered and pushed into other Asian countries. I’ve also seen a push into Europe , Italy, which also changed the rules last year too which was considered a very easy way to become a European citizen, Canada for Americans protesting Trump, etc.
It really does feel like the prelude or reshuffle of the world balance, open borders, Covid, closing borders, higher qualifications..
Wonder what it all means.
It's because the economy sucks ass and we're all struggling more to get less. Countries only want somebody who's basically guaranteed to bring something to the table and not somebody perceived to be a drag on an already struggling economy.
What it means (IMHO), if things don't get better, is more unpredictable politics. The Old Guard is already seen as having gotten us into this mess, and people will be more likely to try something new. We've seen a more authoritarian turn on both the right and the left. The ship could still right itself, but a lot of our problems are feeding back into each other and we may be seeing the beginnings of a phase transition, to borrow a metaphor from complexity theory.
"Subconsciously, I think I expected to be recognized for surpassing specialness."
Having learned too my own share of languages and conquered bureaucracy and process across them, the manner in which this guy writes comes across as vomit-inducingly glib.