Just One Form

After a sleepless night comforting a crying baby suffering from yet another stuffy nose, and a weather forecast predicting the temperature would rise high enough for snow, we decided to pop down to Tokyo to the ward office of our legal residence to fill out the single form we were told was necessary to change my maiden name to my married name on our family register.

We have gotten many copies of our family register over the years for various purposes. We have read them too. I suppose we have noticed that my family name was still my maiden name, but didn't think anything about it. I used this family register countless times to renew my spouse visa and no one (meaning IMMIGRATION!!!) said anything about it. When we went to register Jun on our family register, the ward office noted that the name on our application to register Jun and the name on the family register were different. Oh. And it would only take one form to update me. So we decided that we would like to have all members of our family with the same last name in case of a legal issue in the future. Fast forward to Tuesday.

Ryu took two huge notebooks with all our legal documents with us so that we could fill out that one form. We showed them all the legal evidence that I AM my husband's wife. Including my passport with my name change noted on page 21, I believe. ARGH! However, as the ward office man so kindly pointed out, the REASON for my name change was not stated on the passport's note.

We were asked to go to the US Embassy to get some kind of form from them saying that I changed my last name because of marriage. And, IF they don't have that form, please bring a note stating that they don't! Ryu asked if perhaps THEY could call the embassy and ask about this form. Oh, no, but we will give you their number.

We had no other plans for the day, and the subway that goes to the embassy was close by, so, we carried a now sleeping baby across town further and after a wait, ended up at the embassy. Where we shocked them all by our silly request. They were like, your name is changed! Can't they see the passport change? There is no form to state why you changed your name. Who knows why you changed your name!? AND, they offered to call the man at the ward office for us. We were told to then take all the documents we had shown earlier to the ward office again and they would change my name.

So we did. And they did. And now we are all Cities on a River. YEAH!