We are a resident family with 3 year visa, which are in our Australian passports. We’ve popped out of Japan on holiday, come back, wave the Zairyu and passport with visa and all is good – easy! I’ve just noticed that my kids passports expire in May next year.. shouldn’t be a problem, I’ll just look up how to get new passports and move the visas across – it’ll be a fun process, but there will be a process.
The problem is that we are planning to go back to Australia in December and this is where I’m going to come unstuck. Australia says that a) you can apply from 6 months before expiry, and b) should allow 6 – 8 weeks for renewal.. and c) airlines don’t allow you to board with less than 6 months before expiry.
So, apart from the ‘don’t go back to Australia to see family for Christmas’ option, can anyone give me some pointers for a solution? I was thinking of something like, can I get dispensation to be able to fly back in with 5 months remaining, especially as we’re resident here?
Thanks
5 comments
as I understand 6 months for going abroad. But you flying home. So… Should be fine?
Japan does not require that you have 6 months of validity on your passport to enter, and none of the typical transit countries from Australia have that requirement for passengers in transit.
Did you check with the embassy?
First quick thing, you mention the visas in your passports several times, but those actually expired / became irrelevant the moment you entered Japan and picked up your Zairyu cards. The Zairyu card is the only travel document you need to prove your residence here – consequently there is no process to move the visas to new passports and you don’t need to stress about whether you’re entering with a passport containing a visa or not (I haven’t had a Japanese visa in my passport in over a decade).
Anyway, regarding the whole “six months remaining in your passport” thing – this is generally only a thing for tourist visas (and afaik Japan doesn’t even enforce it for those – you’re fine as long as your passport won’t expire during your tourist visa duration) and does not apply to countries where you have status of residence / citizenship. I had to do an emergency trip home quite a while ago on a passport with only a couple of months left before expiry, and it was no problem at all – the guy at immigration on the way into my country just pointed it out and reminded me to renew soon, while on the way back to Japan, the lady on the check-in counter frowned at the expiry thing a bit but was absolutely fine with it once I showed her my Zairyu card.
Maybe Australia has some especially weird / strict rules about this, but it doesn’t sound like it – and at least from the perspective of getting back to Japan after your trip you should be totally fine.
There’s nothing you have to move over to another passport. Just get new passports and make sure your Zairyu cards are valid.
If Australia is the same as the United States, since you are citizens, you can return anytime your passport is valid, one day left is fine. As long as you have time on your passport to come back to Japan, since you are residents that’s fine as well.
All of this X months left on passport stuff is for tourists pretty much every country I believe