A couple of days ago, I went to the Ward Office to get Mayuki properly registered in Japan. She now has her Japanese birth certificate, and is, or will soon be, registered on Yuriko’s family record, which proves that she is Japanese. (I don’t get properly registered there; I’m just a footnote.)
The next step was applying for child benefit, at the next window along, which is 10,000 yen per month until the age of three, and then 5,000 yen per month until the age of 12, with an income limit. I’m not particularly close to the income limit, so we’ll be getting it. It’s paid three times per year, and, conveniently, one of the standard payment dates is in October. For some reason, payment starts from the month after you apply, so ours will start from October. The child benefit window is the same as the foreigner registration window. I have no idea why.
Then I had to apply for the one-off payment for the birth, which was another different window, because this comes from the health insurance. It’s 350,000 yen, which doesn’t actually cover the cost of the birth, but does cover about half of it, all told, and so it not to be sneezed at. That should appear in my bank account next month as well.
Finally, at the same window, I had to apply for Mayuki’s free medical treatment certificate. On the national system, we have to pay 30% of the costs. However, Kawasaki City will pay that 30% for all children in their first year, and up to the age of 12 if the family has under a certain income level. I got that certificate while I was there, which is useful.
However, because this isn’t a national certificate, it only works at hospitals in Kanagawa Prefecture. If Mayuki gets ill somewhere else (her grandparents’ in Nagoya, for example), we have to pay and then claim back from Kawasaki. It seems like a little unification of the system would save money.
Indeed, that struck me as being generally the case. I had to do four separate applications at three separate windows, but in the overwhelming majority of cases people with a new baby will do all of them. It would surely be a lot easier for everyone if there were just one application procedure. This sort of vertical division is a widely-recognised problem with Japanese bureaucracy, so I don’t imagine it will be getting fixed any time soon.
The next step is to register the birth at the British Embassy, for which I apparently need my passport and my birth certificate. I have a strong feeling that I didn’t get the copy I needed when we got married back, so I may have to order another one from the UK. I have one more box to check before I do that, though.
Fortunately, there is no legal obligation to register the birth; Mayuki is a UK citizen automatically. To get any of the benefits, though, she has to be registered, and it’s likely to be easiest for us to do that now. Especially as she might well need a British passport in the near future. Still, it means that there is no tearing rush to get it done.
Anyway, she’s properly registered here, and we’ll be getting the benefits we’re entitled to, so that’s good.
She’s also got better at crying over the last couple of days. I suppose she has to grow into it before she can grow out of it, so it’s a good thing, really.
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