Kevin Wayne Williams <kww.nihongo@verizon.nut> wrote:

> Louise Bremner wrote:
> > Kevin Wayne Williams <kww.nihongo@verizon.nut> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>Louise Bremner wrote:
> >>
> >>>Declan Murphy <declan_murphy@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>I thought the "certain gentleman" was referring to actual flights?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Yeah, well, that could get confusing. I go by number of visas obtained
> >>>(not applied for, note).
> >>
> >>So the first few years of my life didn't count as being there at all?
> > 
> > 
> > Weren't you written into your mother's passport and hence included into
> > her visa, as soon as she registered you at your embassy? Or is the
> > registration of alien infants a relatively recent requirement? 
> 
> I'm not sure how recent it is, but I'm sure that I wasn't. 

Hmmmmm.... That seems so casual nowadays.

> The Americans were still a quasi-occupying force at the time, so they were
> given significant deference by the Japanese government. US military
> personnel didn't require passports at all.

UK military personnel neither. Which leads to some bizarre situations
where people who have been in Britain's armed forces for all of their
adult lives retire and apply for a passport, then find they have to
prove they are British citizens first. The simplest way to do that is,
apparently, to prove that your paternal grandfather was born in
Britain--but in military families that is often not the case. 

I met a Briton here in Japan who had difficulty registering his children
at the British Embassy because he was born when his family was stationed
in Germany, his father was born in (I think) Hong Kong, and his
grandfather maybe in India. Neither his father nor his grandfather had
ever needed to prove they were British, nor had they needed a passport.
When he himself had applied for a passport, the rules weren't so strict.

> 
> When I moved to the Antilles, there was all kinds of trouble with my 
> birth certificate. The Antilleans wanted an apostilled copy of my birth
> certificate. 

Oooooo.... New word--"apostilled"! 

> What I have is a Foreign Service FS-240, "Report of Live 
> Birth Abroad."  There are only three copies of my FS-240: one at the 
> Tokyo Consulate, one at the State Department, and one in my hands. It is
> illegal to copy it, and the State Department will *not* apostille it.
> They say that you can only apostille a copy, and all three that exist
> are originals. In the 1980s the State Department came up with a new form
> that they would apostille. In order for me to emigrate, the State 
> Department made me a new birth certificate using the later form, and 
> then apostilled it as genuine. They weren't very good at it ... the 
> first one was missing a signature and had my name spelled incorrectly.

*wince*

________________________________________________________________________
                   Louise Bremner (log at gol dot com)
   If you want a reply by e-mail, don't write to my Yahoo address!