Preparing for Japan
A few months ago, I decided to retire early from working after a long career Silicon Valley career in tech. While I like to think that I worked hard to make this happen in my mid 40s while saving buckets of income, it also took a considerable amount of lucky timing to find myself in this situation. Regardless of how we got here, the next step of “what do we do now?” took some discussion, but we landed on our life long dream of living a flexible lifestyle of living abroad and retaining a home base in California. The first step on living abroad is to spend 1-2 years in Japan!
Why Japan?
The food, rich culture and comfort level of living in Japan is extremely high. Japan is full of historical sites, safe for tourism and offers convenient modern living standards. Fortunately the most difficult barrier of language/visas, are a non-issue due to my Japanese wife. This makes the most sense for our first journey abroad. There are many other great reasons to love living in Japan, but exposing our daughter to Japanese culture early would be a great step on her developing a worldly view as well. We also have choices for international schools, and we may also consider local schools since the education levels are generally good and she is young (6) enough to adapt quickly.
Where in Japan?
We wanted to be close to the wife’s family and in a major city for ease of public transportation and travel, so the choice was clearly Osaka. Osaka boasts about 20 million people including the surrounding Kansai metropolitan area, and is the second largest after Tokyo. What’s not to love about endless entertainment, food and places to explore and be in close proximity to Kyoto and Kobe.
Spousal Visa
Moving abroad during the pandemic is a bit more challenging, but luckily the US has readily available vaccines and close ties to Japan. While Japan has been closed off for tourism, spousal visas are relatively easy to get. We made a couple visits to the Japanese consulate in San Francisco, and painlessly obtained 1 year visa. It helps that my wife’s parents are in Japan and can also be a “guarantor” so credit to them as well! Our daughter is a dual citizen, so we obtained a Japanese passport for her too.
Learnings:
- Sadly Costco no longer does passport photos. Walgreens still do them inside an hour.
- Sending documents from Japan took several weeks longer than normal, due to Covid slowing down global snail mail. We needed some physical docs for visa sponsorship.
- Spousal visa is free for US citizens!
- One year seems to be standard, it sounds easy to renew in Japan.
Greencard Holder Reentry Permits
For stays outside of the USA for over a year, requires a reentry permit. The process can take several weeks to months, but you mainly need the biometrics portion to be completed before leaving the country.
Flights
We booked our flights in June going through Honolulu. In fact we reserved separate flights since we had United miles to get to Hawaii, and we wanted to fly to Nagoya which there are no direct flights from San Francisco (SFO). A few days in Hawaii is always a good time. Nagoya is the closest airport to the wife’s parents house, so it was our choice for strict quarantines.
Plan(e)s change:
- Covid restrictions are challenging in Japan, so as of this time, tourism visas are not allowed. This means flights are scarce and get canceled a lot.
- Our original JAL flight was canceled, so we have booked a Honolulu to Osaka (KIX) flight via Hawaiian Airlines.
- Luckily the Japanese government is starting to loosen quarantine rules, so we don’t need to lock ourselves into the in-laws house anymore. Still, rule changes will continue to evolve and could change again.
- Let’s hope further flights are not canceled, but our contingency plans would add a stop in Tokyo.
Update (5/9)
- Next the Hawaiian flight to (KIX) was canceled, so we re-booked for one day earlier. This means our Hawaii hang out is a bit shorter:(
- Japan will now allow a small number of tourists starting in June. Maybe by the end of the year, things will be back to normal in terms of Covid tests/restrictions.