Getting Married in Japan part 2 - Long ass wait at City Hall (but we're married at last!)

 Following from my previous post about marriage in Japan, we just got back from city hall, and we are officially married now.

Arriving at city hall in the morning, we had to wait around for a ridiculously long time before we were able to speak with someone. We were initially concerned that we wouldn't be able to register our marriage due to missing some document, or some incorrect information. Experiences with anything bureaucratic in Japan have shown that there is no room for mistakes. So imagine our surprise when we were told we had to make a bunch of corrections. Fortunately, we weren't sent away, and they were fine with us making the corrections right there and then, especially with some of my translated documents. Some was due to the technical terms in Japanese, others were lack of consistency of my parents' names in katakana (I didn't realize I spelt them differently until they pointed it out to me.  
We were hoping to keep a copy of the marriage registration form, considering we took the the time to pick out a design. As we would not see those documents again, we opted to go to a nearby convenience store and photocopy them as backups for ourselves. While we were out, we went to the nearby bakery for some lunch to celebrate (early) our marriage. 

After returning to city hall, we did some more waiting, and everything seemed to be processed without problems. The only one obstacle was regarding who was going to be the head of the household (or 世帯主 / setainushi). We hadn't really thought it about too much, and until now, we put my wife as the head of the household, because the apartment, and utilities are under her name. While the staff said that we could change it later on, they gave us something to think about, as apparently depending on who is listed as head of the household, we'd be paying less tax. The staff said it is an unusual situation for the wife to be the head of the family, though I'm guessing the city I am currently in doesn't get a lot of foreigners going to register their marriage. In any case, not long after that we finally got our certificate of marriage. I will admit though, compared to some of the certificates I have seen online of other cities (Osaka's for one), this city's certificate of marriage design is rather... underwhelming. Very bureaucratic in design, nothing fancy at all, which was a bit of a letdown, but we are finally married and that's all that matters at this point. 

As mentioned before, the wedding itself is still a ways off, though we have decided to hire the services of a wedding planner to help when we realized that there are a lot of things that need to be done, and with both of us working full time, it was too difficult for us to do, even if we're aiming for a small wedding. 

Returning to the Community Gym

After nearly 4 years of using Anytime Fitness, I ended my membership just last week. As much as I love using Anytime, and the convenience of usually having a branch somewhere near me whenever I'm off on extended business trips to other parts of the country, the cost per month was getting a bit too much for me. With planning for a simple wedding coming with its own costs, my fiancé and I are cutting back on things. Fortunately, there is a community center gym that is within reasonable distance from where I live - either one train stop away, or a 10 minute bicycle ride. 

I went there today for the obligatory orientation session. Of course, all in Japanese, but most of it was pretty self explanatory - basically, don't do anything stupid on the machines, keep your usage on the running machine down to 30 minutes, unless there is nobody else waiting on you. However, a minor thing that is annoying is that you can't bring water with you inside the room to drink - which is important if you're between sets. Instead, they tell you to go outside the room to drink (and place your bottle on the dedicated table just outside the training room), and if you're in the middle of using a machine/bench/etc, leave something there to indicate that is still being used. In Japan, this is fine because nobody is going to be stealing your stuff -  but compared to other gyms, this is a bit of a hassle. However, I noticed that the training room floor is mostly carpeted, so I can see why they have that rule in place - though perhaps they should not have used carpet at all. Minor gripe aside, the community gym is cheap - 170 yen for 2 hours max. 

Now, I have posted about community gyms in the past, and when comparing this one to others, it's definitely top tier of my favorite community gyms, but I wouldn't say it is the best one. While there are a lot of machines available, and a lot of space dedicated for stretching etc, the machines have certainly seen a lot of use over the years. I would say this gym would number 2, just behind the community gym I used in Ryugasaki. The only catch is that this gym closes at 10pm. For most people this wouldn't be a problem, but I have actually been going to the gym later in the evening these days (partly to get the most out of my remaining time at Anytime Fitness), so it is a tad inconvenient if I get home a little later than usual. 

I will give this gym a try this month to see how it goes. There is another franchise gym that is much closer to where I live, and is about the half the cost of Anytime Fitness. I had a quick look through their website, and there is a lot more on offer compared to the Anytime gym that is also in my area. However, I suspect that there will be a lot more people there because it's cheaper. 

Getting Married in Japan part 1 - Japanese Bureaucracy

Having become engaged last year, my fiancé and I are wading through the wonderful world of Japanese bureaucracy in getting our marriage registered. Being a foreigner, there are a few extra steps on my end that I have to take before getting married to a Japanese national. So I though I would chronicle my experiences so far. 

The ultimate goal is to go to our local city hall to register our mariage. One of the documents I needed was a Certificate of Non Impediment to marriage (CNI) from my country's embassy. The name of this document will vary from country to country, but basically it is a document that states that there is nothing legally preventing me from getting married (of legal age, not being forced to get married etc.). Filling out the application for the CNI is straight forward enough aside from getting someone to witness my signature and sign the document also to prove they witnessed it. Only certain people can be a witness, and being outside my home country, that significantly reduces the pool of eligible people: Either my embassy can be a witness at no extra charge - but I need to make an appointment on a weekday (and take time off from work) to go to the rich part of Tokyo to submit my application; or if I want to submit it via post, I would need to go to a notary office for a fee (about 11,000 yen) for a witness. 

The thing is, I had planned to submit it via mail, but despite my best efforts explaining to the various notary offices I called, they apparently can't witness and sign my document because it is a government document. At best, they apparently could only produce a certificate to say that my form is a genuine original. I spoke to my embassy who suggested finding another notary office to do it, but the notary office I spoke to in Ikebukuro said that the result would be the same no matter which office I went to. Eventually, I did end up going to the embassy and saved myself the frustration of dealing with the notary office. Somebody is not telling the truth, or something has changed regarding the notary office being a witness. 

The next step is to go to the local city hall to submit our marriage registration form. However, my fiancé and I encountered some issues that required us to speak with someone at city hall on what to do. Since the marriage registration form is all in Japanese, with the assumption that a Japanese couple is to get married, we had to confirm how I would be writing my name in the application (either in English, or in Katakana), along with the format of my name due to me having a middle name - usually one would write their family name, followed by a comma and then first name, but we weren't sure if a comma was needed between my first and middle names to (answer: It isn't). In addition, I needed to confirm what other documents were needed on top of the marriage registration form. Besides my CNI, I also needed to bring my passport, as well as my original birth certificate, along with translations for all three of those documents. We were a little worried if city hall was going to be picky about who could translate my documents, but fortunately, the city hall staff told us that anybody can translate - even myself if I wanted. Also, the requirements seem to vary from city to city, as I have read that not all city offices require birth certificates, and others require certificate of residence (住民票/juminhyou)- which my city does not require luckily.

I know it seems rather pedantic to be confirming about things such as writing format or style, but any foreigner who has had to deal with any kind of Japanese bureaucracy will know that there is no room for mistakes when it comes to these sort of things. If you are missing even just one document, no matter how minor of importance it is, they will not process you and send you away. Better to ask stupid questions now and get it correct the first time, rather than having to find out you got it wrong and have to go through it all again later.

As for my original birth certificate, after reading a while ago about how some cities require it, I asked mum to send my birth certificate to me. Funnily enough, according to her, the post office told her that it is apparently illegal to mail birth certificates, much to the post office staff's surprise too. The staff member was all too happy to bend the rules and classify the contents of the envelope as simply "documents" and sent it to me express. Fortunately, the document arrived safetly. While it is apparently illegal for the commonfolk to send birth certificates, my state government has a service to mail birth certificates overseas - for a significant fee (fuck you Australian Government).

So as of right now, minus the translations, I just about have all my documents ready. Besides getting the translations ready, we also need two witnesses for our marriage registration form. Unlike applying for my CNI, anybody can be a witness, and they don't need to witness the signature itself supposedly. We have asked a friend of ours who I used to work with during my ALT days and still keep in touch with, and my future mother-in-law in Kagawa. My fiance will be mailing the form to her shortly to sign, before we go to city hall to register our marriage.

As for the wedding ceremony itself, we decided on some time later this year, but this is not set in stone yet. But whatever date we set, I do understand that will come with its own share of stress too, especially because some members of my family naturally want to attend the wedding.