I Became a Citizen of Japan(www.derekwessman.com)
81 pointsby luu4 hours ago5 comments
  • sonar_unan hour ago
    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.

    • charlieyu134 minutes ago
      Once you are living in the country for a while, you can pretty much do anything and people don’t 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 you’ll be fine without bothering to do the paperwork, that’s how things work in the last 20-50 years.
    • klipt30 minutes ago
      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!
  • precommunicator19 minutes ago
    I'm pretty sure this is more data than what's required for security clearance.
  • gcanyonan hour ago
    > 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.

    • Qazpqaz14 minutes ago
      I can recommend keeping a list from now on. It's helped me quite a few times.
    • NolF43 minutes ago
      Australia generally requires at least 10 years for some things.
  • yipinwongan hour ago
    why is this HN worthy or related?
    • pinkmuffinerean hour ago
      > 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

    • devinan hour ago
      1. Nerds like Japan.

      2. People with money like acquiring passports.

      3. This community has above average representation of both.

      • zaik28 minutes ago
        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.
        • devin9 minutes ago
          The fact that multiple replies to my post know this fact only serves to prove my point though. :)
      • klipt26 minutes ago
        > People with money like acquiring passports.

        Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship, so not very attractive for people who want more than one passport.

    • underdeserveran hour ago
      The study of arcane procedures and immigration of all sorts comes up here very often.
    • romanhnan hour ago
      I upvoted it because I found it interesting. That is all.
    • santoshalper39 minutes ago
      It's interesting. That's it. That's the only criteria.
    • gcanyonan hour ago
      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. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • neyaan hour ago
      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)
    • ganelonhban hour ago
      I agree, it’s so off topic.
  • contingenciesan hour ago
    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.