HOW TO: APPLY FOR A SOCIAL SECURITY CARD FROM JAPAN

You can read about how I applied for my daughter's Japanese passport at the Japanese embassy in Tokyo here!

We received her passport about a month after submission! It was a nice birthday present for her, but I knew I wasn't done yet. My next goal was to also apply for her social security card, but I honestly dragged my feet until the taxes deadline was only a few days away!

I honestly don't know what took me so long, as applying for a social security card was so simple and easy! 

If you'd like to find out what procedures I needed to follow, please keep reading. 

The first step to obtaining your social security card for your infant or child is to first apply for their passport and Consular Report of Birth Abroad certificate. If you haven't done that already, please check out my post here where I explain the process.

After receiving your child's CRBA and passport, you can then officially start the social security application! Start by filling out the social security card application form. You can fill it out digitally or manually using blue/black ink.

After the form is completed, gather the form, your child's passport, their CRBA, and also your passport (the father's wasn't needed).

Once you have those four documents (originals only), you then need to buy two Letterpacks, light  (signature not required) or plus (signature required), at your nearest post office. 

Address one Letterpack envelope to yourself and the other one to your nearest embassy. The address for the Tokyo Embassy is:  

Once you've addressed both envelopes, you want to put the Application Form, your passport, your child's passport, your child's CRBA, and the Letterpack addressed to yourself all into the envelope addressed to the embassy and then mail it off.

Once mailed, the embassy returned my original documents back to me within 7-10 days. After that, the estimated wait is about 3-4 weeks for your child's social security card to arrive from America.

In our case, we waited only two weeks! I honestly didn't expect the card to arrive so fast, but it was waiting for me in my mailbox at exactly 14 days! Please note: Unlike your child's passport, do not sign your child's social security card! Your child will sign it once they turn 18 or when they get their first job.

Now that we got the three most important American documents out of the way and her Japanese passport and MyNumber card out of the way, we can finally relax and not worry about paperwork for a while! It's Japan though, so who am I kidding!

Link: Embassy Social Security Page