About a year and a half ago, my mother passed away. My father died earlier, so this made it necessary, sadly, to sell the family home of about 70 years. Finally last week someone made an offer and it was accepted. Because I am co-executor of the family trust, the home sale required my notarized signature. Last week, Lee and I had a bit of an adventure because of that "little" need.
Both my brother and the
lady at the title company suggested two things with regard to getting these
papers signed: First, that we have a
Japanese notary public sign and stamp the documents. Second, that we just mail them back to the US--no
need to pay a lot of extra money to get it there in a few days. My brother had even been assured by some attorney friends of his that there were notaries in Japan.
Lee and I still weren’t sure if there was such a thing as a
Japanese notary. The Japanese don’t work
that way. What they do, when documents
need to show proof of authorization, is have the individual use their hanko,
(pronounced hawn-ko), which is a little round stamp that each person or family
has registered with the government. It
is used to certify that something is official.
Lee got one for fun, but it isn’t registered and of course, I don’t have
one.
We also felt quite sure that banks
don’t provide that service. And if
they did, there would likely be translations services to pay for and then it wouldn't be readable
and acceptable in the US. Therefore, we
felt strongly that we needed to go to the US Embassy and have an official US notary public sign the documents
legally.
The trouble was that there are embassy buildings in Osaka and Tokyo, both of which are out of our mission. Permission to leave the mission boundaries was quickly granted by President Baird.
Last Monday morning we left home at 7 a.m., got gas (Gas in Japan
right now is about $6.90/gallon) and headed out to
Osaka, Japan. I was feeling positive and
excited to go. I wanted to see what
Osaka was like (the third largest city in Japan at 2.7 million) and to see
Kyoto, especially the Kinkakuji Koen, with its golden temple and pavilion. Lee had been there several times when he was
a missionary here in the 60’s and he was excited, too. And it was September 10th, his 65th
birthday.
Now I need to talk about driving in Japan. I know I’ve written about it and talked about
it before. But I have more to say: First, the roads are insanely narrow and
people drive insanely fast. In addition
to that, while it may seem difficult to believe, they don’t have addresses on
homes or buildings, and they don’t have road signs on most roads.
So we
really appreciate our navi, but it certainly isn’t perfect. Sometimes, it’s just dead wrong and we end up
quite a ways from where we asked it to take us.
Sometimes it tells us to turn too soon, or too late, and sometimes just
right. We usually never know for sure
until about 20 seconds after our turn. Some roads are just 10-20 meters apart,
so we have lots of choices and often guess wrong. I could say more, but that’s the
basics.
So to give a general impression of how I feel after a long
day of driving: Think white knuckles,
headache, upset stomach, clenched teeth, and exhaustion. Oh, and extreme relief when we get home. I am certain that whenever we get into the
car for a long drive, Heavenly Father assigns us an angel. And by now, the angels are saying, “Oh no,
not them. They are so hard to protect.” But so far, they have done it wonderfully, in
spite of close calls and mistakes, and I want to thank them with all my heart
when (if) we get to heaven. I tried driving
last week. I drove around our
neighborhood a couple of times. It is
nerve wracking and there are so many different things to remember. It scares me worse to drive than to have Lee
drive, and I’m sure his driving is the best option. Still, I worry.
So we drove off towards Osaka and Navi told us it would be
about two and a half hours. We did well
and enjoyed the drive, going through (literally through—Japan is king of
tunnels) the mountains around Ise Bay and on down to Osaka. We followed Navi faithfully. We drove
right to where she directed us, looked around, and we had a small park on one
side of us, and some homes and small businesses on the other. Not the US Embassy. We walked a block or two, and finally Lee
asked a man. He said it was too far to
walk, to take the train. We walked back
to the car and asked another guy nearby to help Lee put the address in
again. (You should try kanji.) This time it took us to the
Embassy, which was a few miles away.
At the US Embassy there are stern looking guards all
around the building.
We went
to the entrance, had to leave our water bottles, turn off our cell phones, and
show our passports. We were admitted
inside, where we turned over all electronic items and got a little plastic
number in exchange, then put Lee’s backpack and my purse through the x-ray
machine, and walked through one ourselves, like at the airport. We had to show the paper we printed off that
proved we had an appointment and what our business was. We were told to go to the 4th
floor, where we gave a lady behind a glass window the papers needing notarized and my passport, paid $150 ($50 for each signature we needed) waited for
about 15 minutes, and then were called up.
She passed the papers back to me under the glass (like getting tickets
at a theatre) and I signed them. She stamped them with both an ink stamp and a press stamp That was it. We thanked her and left.
Lee wanted to get copies of the actual notarized papers,
just to be safe, before we left. We
asked if there was a place to get them copied, and they told us we could go to
a convenience store just down the street a little. There we copied each paper, but the impression stamp didn't show up, so we tried color copy on one sheet to see if it caught the shadow, but it didn’t work. So
we took our papers and left.
Parking was $3.60 and we reprogrammed Navi for the FedEx office in Kyoto, and
left. Kyoto is about 30-40 minutes from
Osaka, back toward Nagoya. It was after
lunch time and we were getting hungry, but decided getting the papers sent off
to Utah was a greater priority. We made
a wrong turn because Navi didn’t tell us in time, so it took us a while to get
to the FedEx building, but we finally made it.
We parked and started getting the papers organized to take in. But, surprise, we were missing one. I immediately realized we had left it on the
print machine at the convenience store next to the embassy. (I could have screamed, but I didn’t.)
So back to the US Embassy, and this time, Navi got us there
right. We knew right where to park (and
this time it only cost us $2.) We went into the convenience store, looked on the
printer and it wasn’t there. So we went
over to the clerks and asked. They
looked through their papers from behind their counter, and no luck. Then the lady went over to the machine and
looked all around it. My heart was
sinking, because the embassy was now closed.
We had already talked about the possibility of having to drive down
again the next day, another day missing work, and having to pay for almost everything again. And then, here
she came back with our paper. She had
found it, probably under the printer. I almost cried, I was so relieved. Oh how I thanked Heavenly Father!
We were so grateful.
So back in the car, back to Kyoto (that only added an hour
and a half to our trip) and back to the FedEx, taking another wrong turn and
needing to go further than necessary because of Navi. We took the "cheap" choice of getting the
papers to Utah (other than regular mail which would have gotten the papers
there in 8-10 days and after the closing deadline) so we paid $60. They told us
that to overnight it was “very expensive.”
I felt very relieved to have that done.
We then drove to the other side of Kyoto to go to the beautiful park with the golden pavilion. We had a nice relaxing walk there and Lee took pictures. It was a walk down memory lane for Lee, since he visited this park several times on his first mission.
)
Later we learned a bit more about Japanese notaries:
This is a question by another American who needed real estate documents
notarized. He was asking for help.
QUESTION: Does anyone know of how to have documents
notarized in Japan.
I need to sign some documents
that require a stamp from a Notary Public to be returned to the USA.
I have found out the translation for notary public is 公証役場
and that they may be able to provide the services I need.
The cost is quite steep though at 15,000 yen to 17,000
yen ($187.50 to $220) per document.
And I have 3 or more documents.
All they need to do is witness me and my wife sign the document (real estate
contract).
They do not need to know the
contents necessarily.
In the US its only $2!!!
Thank you in advance.
The notary system in Japan is different, although all of
the "koushou-nin" are recognized as notary publics. I use the US
consulate whenever possible, but have visited Japanese notaries as well. Aside
from the high cost (there are only 545 notaries public here, mostly an
old-boys-club impossible to break into).
There is a procedure whereby you can avoid going
to the U.S. embassy or consulate.
(1) Get your signature notarized by a
local notary. Some notaries will notarize in English. [We would have had
to find an English speaking notary, since we needed the notary readable in the
US.
(2) Then get the notary's stamp
certified by the local Houmukyoku (Legal Affairs Bureau). [It is another
stop and paperwork]
(3) Then have the Houmukyoku
certification again certified by means of an ''apostille'' from the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. You have to apply by mail, which would take more time than we had.
Lee and I were accustomed to free or nearly free notary public services, so spending over $300 to get their signatures seemed steep--until we read what could have happened if we had gone "Japanese." We are grateful for the services of the US Embassy.
Beauty shop names: Prince Flap, Good Sense and Fine Technique, and Vanity Be Mine.
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