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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Last two times through Kansai the queues have been pretty bad; there is an express lane for re-entries, but there’s no special gaijin desk; we have to take turns with the rest, meaning we can get stuck behind people with the wrong forms, etc.
On Saturday off Air France there was two gaijin desks and four or so Japanese. Given that it’s not a Japanese carrier, the foreigner percentage was quite high, and of course since no fingerprints are needed for the Japanese, there was no queue for them, but the one for us was beginning to build up.
Shouldn’t they have nationality information for the airlines, but even if not they should have some statistics on the average nationality distribution for each flight and assign people to desks accordingly.
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I don’t understand the fuss about getting through customs and immigration when entering the country. The times I’ve come into KIX, it’s been smooth and not very crowded at all. I’ve always come in evenings between around 5 and 8pm, so I don’t know if that makes a significant difference as opposed to maybe arriving in the morning. I don’t mind the fingerprinting, either.
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No one has major complaints about the speed at the airports. If anything American airports need the speed boosting, and a lesson in decent manners.
Seems like both are like PR stunts for Japan…possibly to increase tourism or a goodwill act to host the Olympic games?
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My experience at narita the last few years has always been good, except for once in 2007 when our flight arrived at the same time as a delayed flight from China. Then I had to wait maybe 25mins. For the rest, it’s usually around 5-10 minutes waiting time at Narita. I have to fly in to Narita because JAL won’t fly directly to KIX from my country.
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I’ve never had an excessive wait at Narita.
The flights from London Heathrow are usually pretty full and about 20-25% are foreigners rather than Japanese returning. The immigration desks which start off processing Japanese, open for foreigners as soon as the Japanese are all through.
It usually takes me longer to find where to hire a mobile phone than to get through immigration.
I don’t have a resident visa yet so I don’t know how that will affect things.
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Don’t even talk about trying to get *into* the UK. The worst ever. But I have always been able to use a re-entry line at the airports – Chubu and Kansai and Narita. When I arrived a few years back sans re-entry (ie starting off a visa) at Kansai it was at least 15 minutes, and the other gates were not opened for us.
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Why do they have to make foreigners comfortable? They don’t do it in other countries, so why should Japan?
I never understood this part – the visitors are the one who should be learning how to assimilate, to learn the ways of the cultures they’re visiting!
I’ve never understood this bit.
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If they want to improve the situation at the airports, then they should stop taking fingerprints from everyone.
Next week will be the first time for me that I have to have my fingerprints taken when I enter Japan. I don’t like it at all. It’s bad enough as it is but the worst part about the system is that those fingerprints won’t be deleted after a certain time.
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