Hello all!
I’m intending to move to Tokyo this fall. I’ve already lived in Osaka for around 9 months in 2019, so I’m pretty familiar with the general vibe surrounding LGBTQ life in Japan.
Before, when I lived in Osaka, I participated in an exchange program that was very good and aware of trans students’ situations. This will be my first time moving back without the safety net of a program with inclusion training, and I was wondering if anyone had advice on navigating trans identity in language school!
My biggest concern right now is that my birth certificate gender does not match the gender of the rest of my official identification documents. I haven’t had to submit this in the past, but this time I do.
Has anyone had trouble with that kind of discrepancy getting flagged?
I would love advice from other trans folks navigating the bureaucracy of ID documents, visas, and other official procedures (legally and medically).
Anything helps!
3 comments
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talk with your local embassy, they would be able to help you. That is the best I can say.
The paperwork may bite you in the butt, it may not. Call the embassy.
> My biggest concern right now is that my birth certificate gender does not match the gender of the rest of my official identification documents. I haven’t had to submit this in the past, but this time I do.
They’ll go by whatever is in your passport. That’s your primary legal identification document as far as Japan is concerned – they’ll source your legal name and gender from that.
If there’s a discrepancy with what’s on your birth certificate, they may ask you to explain, but it ought to be a minor bureaucratic wrinkle – any country which has a legal procedure for changing gender (which includes Japan) will have a system for handling birth cert information being different from the current information.