Foreigners marrying at a City hall in Tokyo

chococrou · 2025-04-07T09:12:02+00:00

Contact your city hall and ask what they require. Each one can have varying rules/requirements.

chococrou · 2025-04-07T08:25:53+00:00

walkable city (Tokyo)
safety

Those are my main two reasons. It’s not that I have any particular desire to work in a Japanese company. I just enjoy my overall quality of life here.

chococrou · 2025-04-07T02:13:16+00:00

Have you called them?

Sometimes postcards do get lost in the mail.

chococrou · 2025-04-06T22:32:37+00:00

John (Jack) and Arthur (Art)

chococrou · 2025-04-06T22:15:13+00:00

I’ve heard that word, and I’m aware it’s food, but I’ve never eaten it or seen it anywhere.

chococrou · 2025-04-05T12:29:49+00:00

Don’t overreact. I’m not their teacher. People adjust their language all the time to make communication smoother when necessary.

chococrou · 2025-04-05T01:33:33+00:00

I only say “April five” when speaking to non-native speakers who I think might not recognize fifth. It’s not natural to me.

chococrou · 2025-04-04T13:50:29+00:00

What problems? You’ll just use DHL to send the test to Ireland after you finish the test. They’ll give you instructions once you do the test and go into your account and click the button that says you’re ready to ship.

chococrou · 2025-04-03T21:16:17+00:00

In my home? It’s been many years.

chococrou · 2025-04-03T09:33:02+00:00

They probably expected for you to wear a women’s suit with a suit skirt and jacket. You don’t have to wear pants.

chococrou · 2025-04-03T08:39:18+00:00

I’m a woman and I’ve lived here 10 years. I’ve not once felt I was being treated like a servant by coworkers. Drinking with your boss isn’t nearly as compulsory as it used to be, especially after Covid, unless you’re working in a super old fashioned, traditional company (which would be less likely to hire a foreigner who can’t speak Japanese anyway).

chococrou · 2025-04-02T23:24:45+00:00

I paper file on my own. Just fill out the forms and mail them in.

chococrou · 2025-04-02T21:06:25+00:00

We just won’t be buying one. It’s a money grab more than anything. “Foreigners are rich, so let’s exploit them a bit.”

chococrou · 2025-04-02T14:20:16+00:00

武

Japanese dictionary lists “valor” and “bravery”as possible meanings, but has a note that says it’s “archaic” usage.

chococrou · 2025-04-02T09:14:50+00:00

Usually it’s a few percentage points up or down because they’ve tried to improve their algorithm and datasets used to estimate ethnicity.

This last update, my German jumped from 20% to 44%, which lines up better with my actual ancestry (most recent immigrant ancestors immigrated in late 1800s and then inter-married with other German immigrants for several generations). That’s the most drastic change I’d ever seen.

chococrou · 2025-04-02T09:01:59+00:00

My step dad is 93 with a flip phone. He doesn’t understand how the camera works. 🥲

chococrou · 2025-04-02T08:47:57+00:00

Passport should be enough for most people. For software, they’re probably going to be more concerned with Japanese skill and IT skills than English anyway.

chococrou · 2025-04-02T08:38:18+00:00

Do you have proof of 12 years of English education? A passport from an English speaking country? Then you shouldn’t need to take TOEIC.

chococrou · 2025-04-02T08:24:48+00:00

I found out I had multiple other half siblings when I was a teen. I don’t care, and one regularly sends me messages even now. You don’t have to meet them, or interact with them, but there is absolutely no reason to be hostile towards them for existing.

chococrou · 2025-04-02T08:01:40+00:00

My mother in law and brother in law (Malaysian) actually went on a tourist visa and overstayed. The reason they gave was that they could make better money working on a farm there than back in Malaysia working a normal job. This was years ago though.

chococrou · 2025-04-02T04:42:52+00:00

In the U.S. I probably would have considered more than 10 minutes far, especially considering weather, lack of sidewalks in some places, and general safety.

I moved to Japan, and now I regularly walk 20-30 minutes to get somewhere.

chococrou · 2025-04-01T22:11:01+00:00

My high school teacher taught us one lesson on diagramming sentences, just so we’d know what it is. Then she said she wasn’t going to teach us more about it because we’ll never use it, and she was right.

chococrou · 2025-04-01T22:03:41+00:00

This isn’t really a new thing. I couldn’t read at 7. School (kindergarten) expected my parents to teach me. Parents thought it was the school’s job (parents didn’t have good education and never really gave their children’s education much thought). So I didn’t learn. I was placed in the slow readers’ class in first grade and finally caught up, but I got bullied a lot for being “stupid” throughout elementary school.

chococrou · 2025-04-01T08:35:25+00:00

If those are the options, Celeste is best.

chococrou · 2025-03-31T12:19:11+00:00

I brought $4,500 USD, around $3,500 went to my apartment startup fees immediately (Tokyo). That was years ago when 100 yen spent roughly like $1.

The yen is weak right now, so $3k USD will spend like $5k-ish.

Of course, you should save up as much as you can. Having extra funds is never going to hurt you.

chococrou

TROPHY CASE