Marriage in Japan

Hello

My girlfriend and I will be getting married in Japan next month. She is Japanese and I am from Belgium. I'll be going there as a tourist (no visa required) for two weeks and we'll get married the first week I am there.

I've been gathering all sorts of documents, getting them legalized (apostille) and will translate them to Japanese by an official translator in Belgium.

These are the documents I plan on taking with me to Japan to present to their city hall:

Certificate of my nationality
Document that states I'm not married
Document of my current and previous address

I also contacted the Belgian embassy in Japan and they gave me instructions to send them documents to retrieve a "KOINYOUKEN GUBI SHOMEISHO", which is proof that I can get married I guess. I sent them all the documents and I can go pick up the paper when I arrive in Tokyo.

Anyway, my girlfriend told me I had to bring that KOINYOUKEN GUBI SHOMEISHO document, my birth certificate and my family register too.
Problem is that I don't know how to get my family register. There is no such document here in Belgium as far as I can tell. Is it really necessary though? If I have the document from the embassy, my passport and birth certificate wouldn't that be enough?

We plan to move to Belgium together and live here. She will apply for spouse visa when we've arrived in Belgium.

Does anyone know more about the documents I would need? Any help would be appreciated.

I've been gathering all sorts of documents, getting them legalized (apostille) and will translate them to Japanese by an official translator in Belgium.

These are the documents I plan on taking with me to Japan to present to their city hall:

Certificate of my nationality
Document that states I'm not married
Document of my current and previous address

The Japanese city hall only needs the "Certificate of no Impediment" (koN-in-yoken-gubi-shomeisho 婚姻要件具備証明書) which you will pick up at the Belgian Embassy in Japan.

But you will need to present (or send in ahead of time according to your post) some of those along with the items listed on the following page to the embassy to get the CNI. Also, I'm pretty sure they don't need to be translated.

http://www.diplomatie.be/tokyo/default.asp?id=28&mnu=28

Anyway, my girlfriend told me I had to bring that KOINYOUKEN GUBI SHOMEISHO document, my birth certificate and my family register too.
Problem is that I don't know how to get my family register. There is no such document here in Belgium as far as I can tell. Is it really necessary though? If I have the document from the embassy, my passport and birth certificate wouldn't that be enough?

I believe the family registry only applies to Japanese citizens. You will need a current copy of your passport and birth certificate and the necessary translations, but the translations don't need to be official. Either you and/or your fiance can do them which will save you money on the translator.

We plan to move to Belgium together and live here. She will apply for spouse visa when we've arrived in Belgium.

Be sure to keep the marriage certificate that is issued at city hall. It appears that you will need to have that officially translated and then legalized in Japan. See this page (section 4.2) for more info:

http://diplomatie.belgium.be/en/services/services_abroad/Registry/regi...

There's more info on the spouse visa process on this page (section 2):

http://diplomatie.belgium.be/en/services/travel_to_belgium/visa_for_be...

Thank you very much for the reply.

I was thinking of having the marriage certificate translated and legalizedin Belgium.
I found an official translator (Japanese to Dutch) here that works at a reasonable fee. My girlfriend checked translator prices for my language in Japan and the price was much higher.

Anyway, thank you again. I feel much better now knowing I don't need to keep looking around and visiting my city hall to get that family register.

I'm dutch and got married to a Japanese girl some 10 years ago. As Belgium also uses apostilles to certify documents and you are planning to move to Belgium, make sure that you get a copy of your marriage certificate and your wife's family register and birth certificate and have them certified with an apostille at the Foreign Office in Tokyo while you are in Japan. I had to this too and it took 24 hours for us (dropped it off one mornig, picked it up the nextday.)

After that we had the Japanese embassy in Holland translate the documents into English for a small fee and rubber stamp the tranlations so they were official.

Hey, thank you for the information.

Since we won't be nearby Tokyo at all (except when I arrive, and when we depart), it'll be difficult to get an apostille in Japan. But according to the Belgian government website, I can get the apostille in Brussels too for foreign documents. So I think we'll do it that way.

If you cannot get it in Tokyo, Osaka also has a "foreign affairs office".

We got everything from there since we live on Shikoku.

If you need more information, please send me an e-mail (klausdorth"at"web.de)