Making life easier for foreigners in Japan
Two pieces of relatively good news for foreigners in Japan:
First, a step towards making foreign residents feel like they actually belong.
The government approved a bill Tuesday to enroll foreign nationals living in Japan for more than three months in the nationwide resident registry system together with Japanese people.
The measure, which the government wants to put into practice in 2012, is in line with the scheduled abolition of the current alien registration system.
More details on this can be found at Mutantfrog.
And the second story (which mostly applies to tourists and those without re-entry permits):
The Justice Ministry has set the goal of reducing the entry-procedure time for foreign nationals to an average 20 minutes at all airports in Japan.
But the percentage of months during which that goal was achieved came to 0 percent at Haneda and Kansai airports in 2008. The rate stood at 17 percent at Narita airport and 25 percent at central Japan airport the same year.
The latest recommendation calls for the Justice Ministry to review the deployment of immigration control officers at airports to shorten the amount of time foreign nationals must wait.
You’ll still have to undergo the pain of being fingerprinted, but hopefully you won’t be left waiting for more than 20 minutes!
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