I like to shit on Japan’s dated digital services, insane bureaucracy, unending paperwork, and how everything must be done in person. While they do deserve their fair share of criticism, I just got my vaccine passport app and it was one of the smoothest experiences I’ve had in this country. NFC reader for your MyNumber card, then take a picture of your passport, select which prefecture you got your vaccine in and boom, here’s your certificate. No “we couldn´t find you because you moved to a different prefecture” like when I was registering for my third dose, no “sorry, your name is not in Japanese so we can’t proceed, you have to call us” bs that so many other places do, no “thank you for registering this, we will get back to you in 7-10 months”, everything just worked. So thank you, デジタル庁 for this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/uvo40i/giving_credit_where_credit_is_due/
13 comments
I’m confused by the NFC reader part. What is that?
This is the app that kept screwing up and failing to read foreign passports. Everyone was complaining about it mistaking O for zero and I for one. And it took the forever to finally fix it.
As for me, my phone didn’t have NFC. My partner’s phone also. My old phone did have NFC but was incompatible with the app. I needed to get a new phone but unfortunately the app was not able to merge the information from shots taken in different cities. It only gives me separate certificates as I moved cities between my first and second shots.
This caused me some trouble when traveling because many times I had to upload a single vaccine certificate.
It’s an app that has a one simple function and currently it is not broken for people who satisfy the requirements, so I guess that is a step forward… 🤔
I understand that there are so many horror stories, but personally when I went to get some real estate documents in order to apply for fire insurance it was surprisingly smooth despite my having zero ability to write kanji. The staff helped me out every step of the way and was incredibly patient too.
Same here. No problem at all, a smooth ride. It read my passport and myNumber card correctly on the first try. Also after the booster shot, I just repeated the process and all three shots are now registered in the app. I didn’t bother to order another paper “vaccination passport”.
Almost looking forward to getting my second booster 🙂
Are these just used for international travel?
Because while I’m glad Japan finally got their system working smoothly, I don’t see why I would bother with even those steps, otherwise. In my part of Tokyo, no business the entire pandemic has asked me my vaccination status and I can’t imagine how any would start.
I actually couldn’t use it at first because it couldn’t find info about my vaccinations – I had gotten my shots in a different prefecture so my 市役所 simply didn’t know I had gotten vaccinated. Not an issue with the app. Once I had cleared that registration with city hall everything went smoothly.
I’m an early adapter of the vaccine pass and had a lot of issues with it first. From switching my middle name and first name to not being able to recognize between L’s and 1’s or 0’s and O’s.
The experience is smooth now, yes, but it wasn’t too begin with.
Nope, it’s a terrible app.
3.6 stars average on iOS app store which seems OK except it’s a bimodal distribution:
– around 60% of users gave it 5 stars (this seems like you, where it just works)
– around 30% gave it 1 star!! Imagine, roughly 1 in 3 users has a catastrophically bad experience with this app.
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No product owner should be satisfied with such ratings.
Can I ask how long does it take for the vaccination record to be updated in the app before your certificate is found when you select specific prefecture and city? I had my 3rd dose more than 2 weeks ago, but when I try to make the certificate through the app, it does not find it.
MyNumber card.
Unfortunately many people including myself refuse to use our MNC.
You lost me at “NFC reader” (shit never works).
While I agree the app works great now (I was really impressed my booster was reflected in the app within 24 hours), in the 4-5 months I’ve had it, I’ve used it a grand total of 0 times.
I’ve found it’s usually the stuff that runs awry of “conventions.” If you come in with a textbook problem that the big bureaucratic apparatus is actually built to handle, not usually a big deal.
Come in with something a little less predicted and it’s a dumpster fire that no one wants to take initiative on. At least that’s my experience.
In other countries typically slightly weirder problems are solved at the first stage. Some person at the desk asks a manager or just “bends the rules a bit” or something. In Japan, rather than having the bureaucracy flex to the problem, they repeated try to jam your problem into a machine that wasn’t really designed for anything outside its expectations.
If you’re traveling the beaten path everything is 便利ですね。If you’re not, brace for teeth sucking, 大変, and your precious day off to be mostly eaten up.