Should I Change My Name?

[Butterball]

In a typical case when foreigner is a hsuband, and Japanese is a wife, the wife would usually already have husband's surname in katakana, so husband would only have to "katakanize" his name.
Otherwise it could be a tough decision for one of the partners (our case, ha-ha).

Not really important to the issue at hand, but in fact Japanese husband / foreign wife is 2-3x more common than the opposite.

[Teflon]

Whenever I have name problems and feel defeated I confess that I sometimes fantasize about changing my name to Taro Yamada (山田 太郎) since it seems to be the Japanese equivalent of John Smith. In terms of form fields, it's quite possibly the safest name possible since the sample name is always given as 山田 太郎. I could just copy the kanji directly from the sample name and paste it directly into the form fields saving lots of time. Same goes for the really annoying furigana section.

The name Taro Yamada is like the master key that opens all doors in Japan.

[captainspoke]

Whenever I have name problems and feel defeated I confess that I sometimes fantasize about changing my name to Taro Yamada (山田 太郎) since it seems to be the Japanese equivalent of John Smith. In terms of form fields, it's quite possibly the safest name possible since the sample name is always given as 山田 太郎. I could just copy the kanji directly from the sample name and paste it directly into the form fields saving lots of time. Same goes for the really annoying furigana section.

The name Taro Yamada is like the master key that opens all doors in Japan.

But maybe it'd be rejected (by rakuten!) since the system (or even a human) wouldn't believe it's legit?!?