Am I safe to (re)enter Japan?

5 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **Am I safe to (re)enter Japan?**

   I would like to preface this by saying I was a stupid young guy for doing what I did..

   So more than 10 years ago, during my last days there before my flight back to my home country, I managed to get a speeding ticket while driving. If I remember right it was a 10000 yen fine or something like that. Like I said, I was young and stupid, so I left the country without paying.. will I be in any trouble if I go back to Japan? I would like to note that I lived there for a few years as a student so I had a Japanese driving license which had a shortened katakana version of my name.

   I mean, I don’t mind if all i had to do was pay back that fine when I arrive there but that seems unlikely lol

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2. As far as I know, they don’t cross reference anything like that. No one is on the lookout for delinquent speeders at the airport. If you feel really bad and want to pay, you might be able to go to the police station that issued the citation and see if they can even find it.

3. At the airport, no.

4. You’ll be safe to reenter the country, get your apartment, and all that jazz.

   Where you’ll possibly have problems is getting a new license. Given that it happened 10 years ago it’s possible that it won’t show up on any records searches. You might be able to get a license with zero problems. But it’s also entirely possible it *does* show up on your records, in which case you’ll need to go about paying the fines and dealing with any possible penalties for deliquent payment.

5. Software decays over time. That record is long gone.