Licensed Househusband (aka I got my Spousal visa)

I only realised recently that Tatsu is voiced by Seto Kaiba

You may refer to me as Househusband Toji. The "Immortal Toji" just doesn't have the same ring to it...

So I received my spousal visa today. I will admit that I was a little worried that my application would not be approved, but that was due to me not getting my shit together and scrambling to get all my necessary documents together. 

Until now, my employers sponsored my visa (first Instructor, and then Specialist when I switched jobs), so there wasn't much I needed to do on my end other than check that my details were correct, and pay a small handling fee for my employer to submit the visa application to the Immigration office for me. Applying for a Spousal visa however, I had to do that on my own, and I was not adequately prepared. 

I will go through the documents that I had to submit, though other people's experiences will likely differ from mine. 

• Family register
  I got this from my city hall for a small fee. This is a document that lists the members in the family (just me and my wife in this case)
• Marriage certificate (Japan)
  Obviously for a spousal visa, proof is needed that we are married. We got this city hall when we registered our marriage last year, and just in case we requested for two copies.
• Marriage certificate (home country)*
  *Technically, you have to submit the marriage certificate from your home country too. Thing is with Australia, they don't issue marriage certificates if the marriage was carried out overseas. Furthermore, while they don't register overseas marriage, they do recognize them as long as legal requirements are met (of legal age, not forced to get married etc).
• Certificate of Employment
  I got this from my work. It proves that I work and have income while in Japan.
• Letter of Guarantee
  Needs to be signed by your Japanese spouse, it's proof of affirmation that they will support you of your stay in Japan.
• Photos of proof of relationship.
  We had been dating for over 10 years before getting married, so I picked a couple from over the years. It's visual proof that the relationship/marriage is genuine, and not just so I could get a visa to stay in Japan.

In my scramble to submit my visa application, I did not have the signed letter of guarantee from my wife, assuming that since I was working I wouldn't need it. When I went to immigration, they explained that I did in fact need that guarantee letter, along with the Australian marriage certificate. Fortunately, they gave me an envelope, along with a list of documents that I am missing, and said that I can mail the remainder of my documents instead of having to come in person a second time. In the meantime, they held on to my application and the rest of the documents I submitted. 

I had spoken to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs previously, and knew I couldn't give them an Australian marriage certificate because of the reasons explained above, so when I mailed the guarantee letter, I also included a letter (in Japanese) explaining why I couldn't give them the Australian Marriage certificate.

Despite it being the busiest time of year for foreigners to renew/change their visas, mine only took about 2-3 weeks fortunately. Though my Specialist visa expires in just over a week, the thing about renewing the visa is that they slap a letter in my passport explaining that I'm in the process of having my visa renewed/changed, with an extension of 2 months applied to the Specialist visa if the application process is not finished by the time my current visa expires. 

After two or so weeks, I got a post card in the mail telling me that my visa is ready to be picked up, along with a list of required items I needed to bring. Those being

• The post card they sent me
• My passport
• My current residence card
• The letter explaining about my visa change that was attached in my passport
• Revenue stamp
  You need to get this from the post office beforehand. For my visa it cost me 6000 yen (which is up from 4000 yen now). You have to pay cash for the revenue stamp. The staff were kind enough to put the stamps in a small plastic bag.

With all of that prepared, I headed to the Immigration office to submit all my required items. They had me paste the revenue stamp on the form they presented to me, and asked me to sign it before I had to wait for about 45 minutes or so. There were plenty of people at the Immigration office today, but fortunately, most were there to apply for their visas rather than picking up their new residence cards.

Eventually I got my new residence card, with my old one now having a hole punched through it to indicate that it is now no longer valid.

The thing that actually surprised me the most when I received my spousal visa is that it's valid for 3 years, which is what I requested for in my visa form. From previous experience when my employer submitted my form for a specialist visa, they requested 3 years, but I ended up with only one year initially - I got a 3 year specialist visa when I had to renew it a year later. Because it's been less than a year since we got married, I assumed I was only going to get the 1 year. Not sure the reason why - perhaps because my previous visa was also 3 years? Feel free to correct me if you know the reason.

In terms of employment going forward, I have no restrictions and can work in just about any field now. It also means that when job hunting, I no longer have to worry about whether an employer can sponsor my visa. 

With everything that has been going on lately, it is nice to have a little bit of good news for a change. Also, I'm surprised I have not done a post about visas since I started living and working in Japan.

Getting a Japanese Driver's License

After over an hour's drive to Mito from Chikusei, and a five hour wait between submitting all my documents to getting my photo taken and some final details, I have finally received my Japanese driver's license. The best part of it, is that I don't need to renew my license until 2020. However, with all the patting myself on the back and jerking myself off over such a tremendous feat in the history of gaijin...

You know what? I will just skip to the part of the general process of transferring your home country's license in to a Japanese license, should you ever need to drive in Japan beyond one year.

Before you even go to a Licensing Center, you will need the following documents:

- Your home country's driver's license * (more on this after)
- A translated copy of your driver's license (which has to be done by the Japanese Automobile Federation, or JAF)
- Your passport
- Your residence card
- Your certificate of residency, which shows your current address and your nationality (you can get this from City Hall - it cost 250 yen when I asked for one in Chikusei)
- Passport size photo, though you can do this at the licensing center. The one at the Mito licensing center can do it for 800 yen, though 8 photos, so it's handy if you need extra photos in the future.
- Decent Japanese language proficiency. If you're not that confident in handling this on your own, I would recommend you bring someone with decent proficiency, or if you are lucky, bring a native speaking friend along.
- Also, I would recommend bringing a book, or something to help pass the time (I brought my 3ds), as you will be waiting around for long periods of time

In truth, I tried to apply two weeks ago, and found out that I needed the certificate of residency. From various material I had been reading online, the information regarding the required documents led me to believe that my residence card alone would have been sufficient, but that wasn't the case. It's called a juuminhyou (住民票), literally certificate of residence. As I mentioned above, you will need to go to your city hall and request for one. They will want you to tick a number of boxes which indicate what information you want displayed on this certificate. I was not too sure what specifically the licensing center wanted, so I just checked all the boxes to include all the information just in case. It costs 250 yen, so this won't hurt your wallet at all.

Next, you will need to head to the Driver's Licensing Center in your prefecture. Depending on where you live, this could be a fairly short trip, or it can be a long one. The licensing center for Ibaraki prefecture is located in Mito, and it takes a little over an hour from Chikusei city. Besides bringing money to pay for your license, I would recommend either bringing food and drink along, or have some money to buy some food and drink, as this can take up most of your day. In addition the booth for applying to transfer your home country's license to a Japanese one is only open for a very short time - for the center in Mito, it is only open from 9:00am - 10:00am weekdays, so you may have to take a day off to do this. I was lucky this time around, as due to schedule changes for my schools, I had today off, so I did not have to worry for applying for time off.

Once you arrive at the Licensing center, you will need to head to the booth for transferring international licenses in to Japanese licenses. It should be marked in English as well as Japanese, otherwise, just look for 外国. They will give you some forms to fill out, and they will point out which fields you need to fill in, and you will receive a separate form to check some boxes. In Mito, they also gave a separate English form for this on top of the Japanese one, so you know what the questions mean. Basically it's asking whether you've driven under the influence of alcohol, ever passed out due to medical conditions, and so on. Once you have filled that out, you return to the booth, and they will ask for all your required documents.
With regards to your home country's license, they will want to know when your license was first issued. If your driver's license does not contain that information, you will need to obtain that from your country's department of transport, or equivalent for that, otherwise you will not get any further. I have also read that some people who renewed their license before coming to Japan have also encountered difficulty, as you are required to have stayed at least 3 months in your home country after receiving your driver's license (hence, why they want your passport). I had actually renewed my license a month before arriving in Japan, so I was concerned I would not get approval, though my driver's license had the date of when I first received my license, which was over 10 years ago. Apparently this was fine for me, but I have heard other stories where this is not the case, so it is possible this could vary from prefecture to prefecture. I asked the JAF at the time I had my license translated, though they said I would be fine. In any case, just be aware of this. Oddly enough, they asked me about the nature of the driving lessons I took in Australia, such as how often I had lessons, how often I practiced, and whether I took some form of test. Since it had been over ten years, I couldn't remember the specifics, so I ended up giving general answers, which they seemed to be satisfied with.

If all goes well, you will end up in one of two situations. Japan appears to have some sort of agreement with the following countries:
Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Taiwan, South Korea, or USA (only Maryland or Washington)
If you happen to be from any of these countries, congratulations!  You do not need to take a written or driving test. In fact all you need to do is take a very simple eye test which only takes less than 2 minutes.
If you are not fortunate enough to be from any of the above countries - you will need to take a ten question true/false test before doing a driving test. I don't know much about this section, as I fall under the former category and only had to take the eye test.

After my eye test, they took me to another room to get my photo taken. Since I went there in casual, my photo does make me look a bit scruffy, but compared to other photos for licenses/passports, it is not actually that bad. Anyway, after some more waiting, I finally received my license, and some instructions about instances on if I move or change my name due to marriage. They also gave me a small leaflet explaining in greater detail those things. By the time I was ready to leave, it was already 3:00pm - over my half of my day gone right there, add to that the drive back to Chikusei, and I didn't get home until just before 4:30pm.
I have to admit, compared to the system of getting a license in Australia, Japan's system is a bit of a pain to go through. If not for the fact I live an hour away from the licensing center, I would have gone home in between waiting periods. I don't remember having to spend an entire day at a licensing center in Australia just to get my driver's license, though I suspect things have changed since I first got my license over ten years ago. All in all, it certainly was an interesting experience - and while there plenty of pages online that highlight this process, I felt like adding my two cents on my experiences going though the system in Japan.