Getting Permanent Residency in Japan Tired of trekking down to the immigration office to renew your visa every year or three? If you’re in Japan to stay and want your legal status to reflect that, you have two options: obtaining permanent residency or naturalizing as a Japanese citizen. Weekender tells you how. Permanent Residency A permanent residency (PR) visa lets ...

The Weekender’s Guide to Tokyo’s Hottest Beauty Salons As we head into our favorite season of the year full of cherry blossoms and ideal weather, we rounded up a list of our top beauty spots in Tokyo to recover from those extra cold days of winter this year. From hair salons to beauty shops, here are our top picks: Nail Salon PINKY Web: ...

Japanese Lucky Charms: A Guide to Omamori Have you ever walked up to an omamori (お守り) booth at a shrine bustling with visitors, only to be overwhelmed while others make their purchases knowingly without batting an eye? You’re not alone—this guide was created after having spent months hovering around omamori booths, frantically scrolling through dictionaries and online guides that would tell me which amulets I should consider, and which ...

The Lessons of 3/11: Being Prepared for Japan’s Next Great Quake For the past three years, March has been the time of year where television, print, and online news focus on the disaster from 2011. Let’s shift the attention then. Today, I write not about life in Tohoku but about how the disaster can be a learning opportunity for you—whether you were in Japan on March ...

Adoption in Japan: The Children Left Behind By Matthew Hernon Every year in Japan more than 80,000 people are welcomed in to new homes—it’s a country second only to America in terms of its adoption rate—yet when it comes to child adoption it’s lagging well behind the rest of the developed world. The vast majority of adoptees here are adults—particularly males in ...