Translation Notes to My Life

These are meant to be informative little notes regarding living conditions, customs, and other stuff about Japan and life therein. The only order to these notes are in relation to experiences I've had recently since those are fresh in my mind when writing the notes. If you wish to comment, you can send a private message to Contact Sensei, or make a public comment to me on Twitter or my Facebook fan page (both viewable from my Homepage).

Second Week of August, 2009

Consular Report of Birth

When a U.S. citizen has a child overseas, both parents must bring the child (the child must be physically present) to the American embassy or a consulate in order to turn in the paperwork necessary to make sure the child is acknowledged as the child of one or both U.S. citizen parents and as a U.S. citizen his/herself. It is possible for only one parent to bring the child, but that requires extra paperwork. The paperwork includes an official form reporting the birth, a passport application, a Social Security number application, original documents of the couple's marriage certificate and the child's town-hall-issued birth report, translations into English of any paperwork that isn't originally in English, and passport photos of the child. Assuming one has filled out all of the paperwork correctly, the time within the consulate (in my case) is minimal. We were in and out within about 40 minutes (including the security check before entering the consulate). The passport, SSN and such are sent by mail afterwards.

U.S. Consulate in Naogya

A very small set of offices in a Nagoya high-rise building. The public areas only include a room for security checks and a conference room. There are probably other offices beyond another door, but, not being public, this translator did not see beyond that door. The consulate seems to have minimal staffing, mostly referring people to the Osaka consulate if one lives in the area and needs American citizen services. Representatives of the Osaka consulate come to Nagoya once a month, and American citizens in the Nagoya and surrounding area can make arrangements for services during that one day (by appointment only).

Hotel Search Engines and Hotel Sites

There are several good search engines to find accommodations in Japan. Rakuten Travel and Kintetsu International's Japan Hotels Online sites both have English-language sites and list a wide variety of hotels at very competitive prices. But don't stop there. One may be able to save hundreds and sometimes thousands of yen by finding a hotel you like then checking the hotel's own website (most have English-language reservation pages). If you have the ability, look for discount plans, sometimes called "courses," on the hotel's Japanese-language reservation site for even more savings. But the hotel's site isn't a guarantee of the best prices. A recent booking had us saving some four thousand yen off the hotel's own Internet special by booking through one of the hotel search engines.

With luck, these notes will be updated weekly, or at least when I have more notes!