today at 8:31 PM
Stopped 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.
today at 8:50 PM
Once you are living in the country for a while, you can pretty much do anything and people donāt 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 youāll be fine without bothering to do the paperwork, thatās how things work in the last 20-50 years.
today at 9:36 PM
What do you mean? Any major employer in the UK will need more than that for you to work there.
today at 10:03 PM
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 couldnāt get a bank account until he had a UK residence. His apartment lease needed his proof of employment.
He had to use his friendās address for the bank account and then changed it.
today at 10:19 PM
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 āprison guard LARPā attitude that Australian real estate agents have to also exist here in Britain.
today at 9:23 PM
that's... really abd
today at 8:54 PM
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!
today at 9:53 PM
Not anymore.
today at 10:26 PM
Why is the word 'interrogation' (appears at least twice) interleaved with unprintable characters?
today at 9:05 PM
I'm pretty sure this is more data than what's required for security clearance.
today at 9:12 PM
It absolutely is.
today at 9:28 PM
today at 9:52 PM
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ć®ę„ę¬ have been shattered and pushed into other Asian countries. Iāve 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.
today at 8:32 PM
> 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.
today at 9:10 PM
I can recommend keeping a list from now on. It's helped me quite a few times.
today at 9:55 PM
Anything that needs that data I can do without. Besides that, they'd never believe it in the first place.
today at 10:31 PM
Would have to be able to do without many jobs in the USA! (Obviously glad though youāve got your options and theyāre sufficient.)
Also recommend to others keeping a list of all places from the past seven years.
today at 8:41 PM
Australia generally requires at least 10 years for some things.
today at 8:06 PM
why is this HN worthy or related?
today at 8:29 PM
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. [0]
This gratifies intellectual curiosity -- how does one become a citizen in one of the most isolationist countries? What is that like??? Read this to find out.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
today at 10:32 PM
ty. this is genuine repsponse unlike jackasses downvoting without any good explanations.
What's up with all these, "you can't ask that" in HN now?
today at 8:14 PM
1. Nerds like Japan.
2. People with money like acquiring passports.
3. This community has above average representation of both.
today at 10:32 PM
Good reply unlike some who downvotes without good explanations.
today at 10:27 PM
You couldāve stopped at 1.
today at 8:56 PM
If you like acquiring passports, then I'm not sure if you want to go for the Japanese one, since you have to give up your previous citizenship afaik.
today at 9:15 PM
The fact that multiple replies to my post know this fact only serves to prove my point though. :)
today at 8:58 PM
> People with money like acquiring passports.
Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship, so not very attractive for people who want more than one passport.
today at 9:59 PM
Japan is probably not the best choice if your goal is a second or third passport, as others mentioned above. Countries outside East Asia, especially in Europe, tend to be more lenient about granting citizenship through naturalization, and many have friendlier tax systems (i.e., unlike the U.S., they donāt tax citizens who live abroad)
today at 8:15 PM
The study of arcane procedures and immigration of all sorts comes up here very often.
today at 8:15 PM
I upvoted it because I found it interesting. That is all.
today at 8:45 PM
It's interesting. That's it. That's the only criteria.
today at 8:31 PM
I knew Japan made it difficult. I clicked, I read the whole thing. Now I know Japan makes it (nearly) impossible.
I'm a typical HN reader (I think) and I found it interesting. ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
today at 9:34 PM
today at 8:21 PM
It's not but to be fair HN is full of similar exaggerated instances "I migrated my backend to COBOL because it was faster" (it's really not btw)
today at 8:09 PM
I agree, itās so off topic.
today at 8:45 PM
What topic?
today at 9:39 PM
AI of course!
today at 8:14 PM
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.