This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

Fun things Schazer's learning on the fly about Japanese culture (as she assembles the necessary documents to renounce her nationality and go earn filthy lucre schooling kids for a year):

Births, marriages, adoptions and deaths are all recorded on a single family registry, which is a literal single sheet of paper with all the family members listed on it (koseki touhon). This registry is stored at the city/ward office that the family's head resides in. You can only be on one family registry at a time; when one Japanese gets married to another they'll be removed off their family registry and added to their (usually) husband's. I'm not too sure when a married couple will have their own registry that doesn't have the parents/in-laws heading it; maybe it's when you have kids on your own? Haven't done the research.

This registry cannot be relocated from the ward/office it started out in. My mother's is in the rural ward my grandparents lived in, and in order to modify or get official copies of our registry (which has my mum, my dad, me and my two sisters on it) you need to apply in writing. And you have to have residence in Japan so it can be posted out. If you don't live in Japan, you need a resident to receive your written permission, send it to the municipal government in question, and then receive the goods once they're printed out.

You can also get birth certificates or marriage certificates from the hospital or city/ward you were born at/married in, but these things aren't technically official until they've been added to your koseki touhon. Which can't be amended if you're not in Japan (without an intermediary to do it for you, which is what my mother must've done when my sister was born in New Zealand).

Why do I care? My sisters and I are technically able to claim Japanese nationality if we wished, but Japan's law against dual nationality means we'd have to drop our New Zealand nationality to do so. Seeing as I can't be a Japanese national and go on the JET Programme, I have to formally renounce my Japanese nationality, and be struck off my mother's family registry as her first-born Japanese daughter. On a similar note, I found out that foreign spouses to a Japanese national are not formally listed on the family registry as the husband or wife - rather, as "remarks", which is what I assume I'm going to be once I apply to have my nationality renounced.


Fun thing number two: Japanese people sign all their documents with seals! In the case of seals used for banking they're still hand-made, but they basically act like signatures and your really official ones (for signing wills or deeds or whatever) are kept under lock and key in your house. Businesses also use them to authorise whatever it is businesses need authorising. You can even have a (not very secure) one to sign for mail and packages. I've apparently got one, though I don't think I've ever used it. It might need digging up to sign these super-official "dropping my citizenship" documents if worst comes to worst.