Spouse Visa Run

Hey guys,

Has anyone here ever done a "spouse visa run"?

As in, your Japanese spouse in Japan, applies to the Japanese immigration office to get a certificate. They then gives this certificate to you. They could mail it to you if you are already in your home country, or they could give it to you before you leave Japan, assuming you were already here on a travel or student visa or something.

Then, with certificate in hand, you go to a Japanese Consulate in your home country. They process this, and you will get a Spousal Visa that you can use to go back to Japan and join your spouse.

Has anyone ever done this before?

I'm curious about how smoothly it should work.

- Harvey

Been there done that, went pretty smooth, my wife got the certificate within 3weeks, send it over to me, and I got it the stamp after 1 hour on the embassy. Then went to the Immigration in Japan with it, and finished.

Dutch Baka, what month did your wife submit the forms to get the certificate?
I wonder if certain months are more crowded, thus slower than others.

So you go to the Embassy, get the stamp, and then come back to visa... but you enter with a tourist visa, and go to Immigration office -after- you have entered Japan to switch it to a spouse visa?

Or by Immigration, do you mean the immigration at the airport?

Also, I heard you can get 1, 2, or 3 year spouse visas. Which one did you get? Is it any harder to get the 3?

This certificate means that your wife can sponsor you (in Japan even your brother in law, or father in law can sponsor you), and that the Japanese immigration allows you to get a get a spouse visa. To get this spouse visa you have to take the certificate to your Japanese embassy, they will put a put a nice paper in your passport and that is your spouse visa.

With this you can enter the country, but within 90days you have to get your gaijincard... please don't make the same mistakes as I did, show your visa at the airport (I showed my passport and this guys didn't checked my visa so he gave me a 90 days instead of 1 year, and when I applied for a Gaijincard they couldn't give me a proper one, because of the immigration mistake... I needed to send my passport to immigration because of this, bla bla).

I know that some people get a 3 year visa the first time, some only a 1 year visa, so I am not sure about this.

My wife did it in March, and they say it will maximum take 3 months, some will get it within a week, some in 2 months, some in 2.5 month. I think it more depends on how busy the immigration office is.

Let your wife call the immigration office to ask what she has to bring, and you should call to your nearby embassy for official information.

Thanks for the info Dutch Baka!

One more thing I have to check, is how long the certificate is valid after it is issued. I heard from the nice ojisan at Immigration, that my wife could apply for the certificate, and if she gets it before I leave Japan, I could just bring it with me and go straight to the Japan Consulate with it in my home country.

So maybe I could have her apply for it now... even though I'm not leaving until June.

Good info, thanks a ton!

90 Days. If you don't enter in before that expires :S Well, I wouldn't let that happen if I were me.

90 days, got it.

Hey I heard from someone in another forum that after they got their spouse visa and moved to Japan, someone actually visited their home to make sure they were living together. Have you ever heard of that?

Harvey said:

90 days, got it.

Hey I heard from someone in another forum that after they got their spouse visa and moved to Japan, someone actually visited their home to make sure they were living together. Have you ever heard of that?

Click to expand...

Yeah I have heard about that as well, they sometimes check that. I think when you are not Chinese, filipino, or korean you should not have any problem getting a spouse visa... (It's sad, but it's the way it is sometimes)