Immigration and "home town"

[imaginatorium]

I am (at last!) applying for permanent residence, and I'm looking at the form, where it asks for: 本国における居住地 / "Home town/city". Since I have lived on the edge of the Kanto Plain for the last 30+ years, and have no immediate family in England (where I come from), there is no reasonable truthful answer other than "None". But I wonder if anyone has experience of this; of being complained at for not supplying something, however meaningless?

[adamu]

That field is on all the application forms, not just PR. My guess is that they had something like honseki in mind when they came up with the fields, which doesn't really apply to the UK. If you were born in the UK, you could just put the same answer as your birth town. That's what I did, at least. It didn't occur to me to leave it blank/put None.

With the PR application, it's fine to ask them questions. I made two trips to immigration with a list of questions before I submitted my application. You could ask them about it if you want to know exactly what you should put.

[zeroshiki]

Seeing as you've lived in Japan for the last 30 years and consider it your home, any reason you don't want to naturalize as opposed to PR? The steps are similar and If you have no plans on ever going back to the UK, it seems the most logical step. Again, apologies if you have strong reasons to keep your nationality. I was just curious.

[Gulliver]

Yeah those immigration forms cracked me up. They look like they haven’t been changed since the 1930s.

As for the hometown question, I initially put not applicable in the space but they rejected it. I tried to explain that we don’t have “Hometowns” in my country because we are free to travel wherever we want and asked, “so what would you like me to put?” This just resulted in a blank stare and a zombie like repeat of “put your hometown.” So I just put the town I lived longest in my home country and that seemed to work OK for who knows what reason.

[GaijinMonkey]

I have always understood 'home town' to be where you were born. I left my 'home town before I started school. Put it on my PR application an never had any trouble.

[adamu]

I have always understood 'home town' to be where you were born.

There is a separate field for place of birth though.

[RetireJapan]

They just want you to write *something* in there, and don't really care what it is.

[imaginatorium]

Thanks for the responses - the fact is, it's not really a big deal, and I might just ask them when I go to submit the forms. (I am going to collect my next 3-year extension at the same time, since it's a half-day trip to Utsunomiya, and I will need to copy details of my new status into the form anyway.)

What gaijinmonkey says... Hmm, yes, I can see the idea of "where you grew up", but the Japanese is pretty explicit: "Place of residence in your home country".

And about naturalisation: never really thought about it. My kids are 1: spouse *and* child of Japanese citizen, 2: permanent resident, 3: Japanese national. Number 2 the other day was applying for a new UK passport, and going on about it being easier than a Japanese passport, because he doesn't have to make a (tedious train) trip to Mito. I just don't see any practical disadvantage in UK citizenship (no tax difference, and I am collecting a UK state pension etc), and if I became a Japanese citizen, would I have to say 日本人です, which seems somehow less helpful than イギリス人です. And I might feel obliged to learn enough about the 自民党 to understand why I should vote against them.

[RetireJapan]

if I became a Japanese citizen, would I have to say 日本人です, which seems somehow less helpful than イギリス人です.

I'm kind of looking forward to this

[adamu]

I am going to collect my next 3-year extension at the same time

The field also exists on the extension of period of stay form, what did you put then? Probably good to be consistent.

if I became a Japanese citizen, would I have to say 日本人です, which seems somehow less helpful than イギリス人です.

I'm kind of looking forward to this

I imagine it will get old quickly and you can add "born in the UK, naturalized Japanese" to the list along with responses to how good your Japanese and chopstick usage is