Hi,

My wife and I just had our I-130 submission interview in Tokyo. All the advice I received here was really helpful. I thought I would post our experience for others who apply in Tokyo since the consulate website was vague about many issues.

We spent many days/months collecting documents and researching the forms (mostly on this site). I'll just say that all the extra time spent collecting the documents/filling out the forms correctly really paid off. There were other couples also submitting their I-130's with us and it was obvious that some of them were having lots of problems. If you take the time to do things properly, it really makes the submission smoother. However, we had a few last minute problems when I found some mistakes in my I-864. I was reprinting some of the forms just a few hours before the interview (talk about nearly having a heart attack).

First we made our interview appointment online at the Tokyo consulate website. When we applied there was one slot open a few days later, but after that, the next one was about a month later. Since we didn't have all our documentation at the time, we chose the 1 month later slot. I advise anyone making Tokyo interviews to keep an eye on the reservation website to know approximately how long the appointment will take to make.

So, we arrived at the consulate in Tokyo about 1:30 for our 2:00 interview. The consulate opened at 2:00, so we lined up outside. We were third in line. The two couples in front of use were also submitting their I-130s. About 10 minutes before 2, they started processing people through security. When we got into the consulate at 2, there was a clerk with a list waiting at the door asking for I-130 submitters. I saw his list and it seemed there were five people submitting I-130s in the afternoon time slot. The clerk assigned numbers based on the order you walked in, so we were number #3. Then he gave us two folders and a check list. We divided our documents into the two folders according to the checklist, then sat down and waited for our turn. The documents on the check list (if I remember correctly) are

Folder #1
A. I-130
B. Proof of U.S. Citizenship. I took both my passport and my birth certificate.
C. Petitioner's photo ID (I used copy of my passport)
D. petitioner proof of residency (in japan for 6 months)
Copy the visa page of your passport
E. Marriage Certificate.
For your marriage certificate, your spouse's (if Japanese) koseki tohon + English translation is sufficient.
You do not need the juri shomeisho
F. Evidence of legal termination of previous marriages. This was our first marriage, so we did not need this.
G. Birth Certificate of Beneficiary.
They also used the koseki-tohon (+translation) as my wife's birth certificate also. My wife was born in Brazil, so we brought
her Brazilian birth certificate and translation also.

Folder #2.
A. Copy of Beneficiary's passport. My wife has both a Japanese and Brazilian passport, so we submitted both.
B. G-325 petitioner
C. G-325 beneficiary
D. DS-230 Part I
E. DS-230 Part II
F. Proof of Relationship.
Since we had been married less than two years, both my wife and I wrote short statements (half-page) about how we met.
We also included a small album of photos from our dating/wedding/afterwards. In addition, since my wife added me to
here juuminhyou, we submitted the juuminhyou (+ translation). I do not think the juuminhyou is necessary.
G. I-864
We submitted I-864 + copy of 2007 tax return + 2006 transcripts + 2006 transcripts + proof of assets.
Also, I was worried about my assets being sufficient, so I got my Dad to submit an I-864 (+supporting evidence) as a
co-sponsor. However, after checking my assets, the clerk returned my Dad's I-864 and said it was not necessary since
my assets were sufficient. They didn't require a 2007 transcript and accepted just a copy of the return. Which is good,
because the IRS has not posted my 2007 transcripts yet. I don't know if a copy is always ok or if later in the year they
may want a transcript.
H. One passport-size photo (50mm x 50mm) of petitioner
I. One passport-size photo (50mm x 50mm) of beneficiary. (there is a photo booth at the embassy, but I would
recommend taking it beforehand for safety. you never know when the photo booth might be out of order.)

Any foreign language document you have must have an English translation. We brought an extra set of copies of all documents as well.

Once our name was called, we went to the window and the clerk checked all our documents. He especially paid attention to the I-864. In particular, he wanted to evidence of income and evidence of assets. For the income, he said the tax return was sufficient. I had transcripts from the two previous tax years, but he actually said he didn't need them and returned them to me. Since I had very little income listed, he mostly examined my evidence of assets. The clerk said I could have listed my Japanese income, but most people on this site said you could not list foreign income, so I did not. I suppose this is one of those issues each consulate can choose for themselves. I do not know if he was correct on this issue however. I was allowed to list the money in my Japanese bank account as assets. I wrote a short attachment explaining how I converted to dollars and how I was going to transfer the money to the U.S. You can get a statement from your Japanese bank called a zandaka-shomeisho. If you ask, they can print one English (at least at Mizuho). Once he was satisfied with the evidence, he returned those documents. So he only kept the I-864 and my 2007 tax return copy. He also returned my Dad's joint sponsor I864. I think they want to keep the paperwork to a minimum, so whatever the do not need explicitly, they would rather not take.

After the clerk was satisfied, he told us sit down and wait. After waiting about 5-10 minutes, a second clerk called us up. He had me swear that everything was true to the best of my ability. He then gave me a bill and told us to pay at the cashier ($355 I think). We paid in yen. They also accept dollars and credit cards. Someone told me that every once in a while, there credit card machine might be broken, so I think cash is the way to go. It would really suck to have everything and then go on a day the credit card machine is broken. After we paid, we returned to the second clerk and he checked our documents again (only those accepted by the first clerk). He looked through our proof of relationship and just made some general small talk with us. He told us that my wife would need police certificates from everywhere she lived for over 6 months since the age of 19(?) I think, which is Brazil and Japan. He said that everything was in order and he was going to preliminarily approve our I130 subject to FBI background checks, which should take about two weeks. After the checks are done (if clean), he would mail us a final set of instructions for scheduling the final interview and that we should start thinking about how to obtain the police certificates. Finally, he said that usually from that day until the visa was in hand took about 4-6 weeks (2 weeks for th FBI check + a few weeks to obtain police certificates + a few weeks to schedule the final interview). He then said we were free to leave.

As we were walking out, we noticed the other couples before us had been sent to a different area and were waiting, so I really felt all the time spent preparing our documents really helped. As we were about to leave though, I nearly had a heart attack because my wife had not signed the bottom of the DS230 Part II, so we went back. The clerk had already closed the window, but I could see him under the window blind. At the expense of ticking him off and spoke under the blind and asked if I could ask a question. After about a minute, he opened the blind. He said that the DS230 Part II is signed only at the final interview. We thanked him and left.

The Tokyo embassy is definitely top notch and very efficient. The clerks are very kind and are very helpful. All my nervousness was definitely not needed.

Other things that people might have questions about.

1. Since you submit in person in Tokyo, you do not need a cover letter. I assume if you wrote one, they would return it
anyway due to their apparent desire to keep paperwork to the bare minimum.
2. You need to fill out the form G-325, not G-325A. However, they might accept G-325A. You can get the G325 from the
embassy I130 web page. This VisaJourney has the G-325A, so be careful.
3. The beneficiary should go with you (I think) as well as any children there might be.
4. Your spouse will not sign the bottom of the DS-230 at the petition interview.
5. DS230 question about who will accompany to the U.S. : We did not know how to answer this, so we left it blank.
When asked, the clerk said it was really concerning me (the petitioner), but was concerning other relatives who may go.
He said we could leave it blank.
6. My wife had some traffic tickets in the U.S. We asked if this was considered an offense for DS230 Part II Question 23.
We had answered it no, but we included an attached page stating she had a traffic ticket. The first clerk said it probably
was, but the second clerk said that was not the intent of the question unless the traffic ticket was a DUI. Still, he said that
adding the attachment stating she had one was definitely a good idea.
7. We did not translate our own documents, although we have been told by others who went through the process that you could. I think it would not be a problem. For those who would rather use a translator, we used this person
http://www.kenjiarai.com/english/index.html
He is fast and efficient. I think it was about 5000 yen per page.

Anyway, I just wanted to write a detailed description for others applying in Tokyo. I hope this helps others as much as the help I received from everyone here. I will try to post our experiences from the latter half of the process later.

John

Jom,

Congratulations.. Thanks for posting and sharing this as guide for others as well.

-Shape

Hi,

You're welcome. We were so thrilled, but it took me about two days before all the stress wore off.

One other point I thought I would mention. We were concerned about what to wear. We debated it for a while and in the end went with smart casual. I wore a nice pair of kakhi pants, button-down shirt, and casual jacket. My wife wore nice pants and blouse. I almost wore a suit, but decided at the last minute that it was too much. On the other hand, in Japan, you can never go wrong with a suit. At the embassy, I think 3 of the 5 couples were dressed in t-shirts, jeans, and shorts. The other couple was dressed like us. I'm not sure if it made any difference or not (I doubt it did since they are professionals), but I suppose it could have thrown a few extra brownie points our way. All the staff were dressed nicely, so it was probably a nice show of respect for them to at least put on some semi-dress clothes.

John