Mother in law ashes

Hi All,

My wife (japanese citizen) and I will be moving to Japan soon and my wife will be traveling with her mother's urn. As per airline conditions she would not have any problem to travel with them as long as the urn is NOT metal and the ashes are sealed in a plastic bag/container inside the urn (which they are).
We would like to know if there are any special forms/permits/documentation that we would require to intern the urn? we are not sure if there are any customs or sanitary/health department regulations that we need to fulfill before traveling? has anybody had anybody had the experience of traveling to Japan with an urn with ashes cremated in a foreign country?

This is a very sensitive topic for my wife as her mother was very dear to her, she was her rock, her friend and confident and she would rather not go anywhere (permanently) if she is not allowed to take the urn with her. Once in Japan she will wait for the passing of her father (also Japanese) to bury them together.

Thanks

Your wife might want to contact the embassy/consulate of Japan in (wherever you are living now) to check what kind of documents she might need later for burying the ashes. (Or if her family in Japan has a connection with a certain temple with a burial site, she could ask them too.)

Transporting the ashes in an aircraft is fine, but if your mother-in-law passed away overseas and cremated overseas, in order to bury/inter her ashes in Japan, your wife would probably need to be able to provide the death certificate, cremation certificate, and ashes certificate (to show that that urn has nothing but the ashes in it).

Just as the family of a Japanese who passed away in Japan would be asked to provide the death certificate, and burial certificate, she is very likely to need these papers for burying the ashes later. Best wishes.

I brought my mother (or ½ of her anyways) ashes back to Tama bochi in Tokyo to be buried several years ago in her/our family's crypt from the USA. I carried her in my carry on bag. I had her in an "openable" container and the actual ashes were in a sealed plastic bag. The container was metal and TSA examined it. I had a death certificate which they also examined.

Upon arrival at Tokyo Haneda, I made no special declarations and was not asked. However, because I did not know, just in case, I had copies of the e-mail correspondence I had with my cousin who was arranging the ceremony for my mother in case Japan Customs was concerned.

All in all, no real issues.

Hope this helps.

Stan


p.s. the other ½ of my mother's ashes are buried here in USA alongside my father! She wanted to be in both places at the same time LoL

HI @AK, @USC4Ever,

Thank you both for your input.

We do have all the proper documentation for her as she was cremated in a third country and my wife brought the urn with her when returning to our actual country of residence however all documents (Death certificate, cremation certificate, Ministry of Health approval to transport and so on) are all in Spanish and we have not been able to find a spanish-japanese translator who would not charge a kidney and a lung for three pages. Ive done specialized medical english-spanish translations in the past and never charged for what Im being asked for with these documents (aprox USD $460)

We are still pending to ask the local Japanese embassy to see if they would know of someone who can do translations for a honest fee however we would like to keep our options open just in case.

Thanks

For the translation, couldn�ft you translate Spanish to English (you say you have translation experience) and then your wife English to Japanese (assuming she is fluid in both)? Or are you expecting that the document needs to be a sworn translation.

@LikeBike

I can do the Spanish-English translation in a hearbeat as long as a certification is not required as Im not a certified translator in our actual country of residence (and I quit doing translations some 15 years ago so my home country license has most probably expired and void).
Unfortunately my wife does not speak, read or write a word of Japanese since her father never bothered to teach her and her siblings the language (on of those daugther-father gruges despite her having asked him to teach her when she was a child and later on as a teenager). For some unknown reason he prevented her daughters from coming into contact to anything related to the japanese language. The guy even barred them from going on an interchange program to Japan several times as his brother was a member of the Japanese diplomatic mission in our country and knew the correct people to have her go on such programs.

Just to add to the informative responses, in Japan, there is no such thing as a license for translators. So, I doubt that certificates would be required. In other words, you can't really "certify" most if not all Japanese-language translators.

I'd also assume that English-to-Japanese translators might cost less than Spanish-to-Japanese, because they are not as rare. Perhaps that brother of your wife's father or his family and friends could help you find someone willing to translate for the cause rather than the money. Maybe someone like a student would do, depending on the contents.

By the way, translators tend to be financially underrated, especially in Europe. I personally can understand that they would try to charge you as much.