woohoo… the last months were interesting – with the big day already having passed some time ago (23rd of December). And somehow I doubt anyone by now telling me: it’s so easy to marry. Also; I think it would be hard to believe you don’t know what you are getting yourself into after discussing the details on every level of German and Japanese bureaucracy.
Ok, the keyword is actually “international”. Japan… Germany… can’t be too hard. And actually it isn’t. But it takes a while to get all the info together, so in case you plan on marrying these days, here is a quick summary of what you need to do:
- 戸籍謄本 (kosekitouhon), copy of the Japanese family register
- 未婚証明書 (mikonshoumei), a document stating you are still unmarried
- apostilles of the Japanese Family register and the unmarried thing from the Japanese Foreign Ministry – this is actually optional and the person who decides is your local beaurocrat, piss him off and off you go getting a few more documents, get it right in the beginning at there are critical time limits for getting an apostille in Japan!
- translations of the register, the unmarried thing & the apostilles (approved and confirmed by e.g. the German embassy)
- the German “Ehefähigkeitszeugnis”, stating the German partner is not married either (for this you need all or most the Japanese documents from above and they may not be older than 6 months…)
- appointment in the community center with the (optional) German “Aufgebot”, this includes the physical presence of your to-be-wife (I write this as in Japan apparently this can be done without her presence…)
- an interpreter (the expensive kind) if the Japanese partner does not speak German – in our case we agreed on a good friend of mine who is highly skilled in Japanese; this required some convincing of said bureaucrat…)
- a saint of a bureaucrat behind the desk (which ours was… not…)
- finally, to register everything in Japan as well, you have three months to get the German documents translated into Japanese and then run to a Japanese embassy or a kuyakusho to register… if you start the process in Japan, there is no such deadline for Germany – this was actually the easiest part
And then you are set. In Germany it takes approximately 2-3 months to get everything depending on the season. There are cases with the broom having doubtful relationships to the beaurocrat… those guys succeed in 1-2 weeks… We were not so lucky. The funny part was that the bureaucrat may actually decide to need more or less documentation as there are – for once – no regulations/laws in Germany about this (e.g. apostille).
Oh… and one extra spot for last names…
- I am really curious on how we are going to solve the issue of Masumi’s new last name being too long for the allotted space in her Japanese passport. The journey continues…
And yes. It’s worth it.