Niigata Regional Immigration Bureau

In and out in 10 minutes!

I’d become pretty disenchanted with immigration offices after one too many experiences at the Tachikawa office in Tokyo, where each trip ended up in at least 2 hours of waiting...and that was on a good day. Enter the Niigata Immigration Office. They’re just adjacent to Niigata Airport and they might just be the tiniest immigration center in the country - but what they lack in size they make up for in efficiency. We got there around 11am to lodge some paperwork for a change in my status, and I almost fell out of my chair when they told me after 10 minutes that we were all done, they’d processed what I needed, and I didn’t have to come back in several weeks to collect anything because they did it on the spot. Yes. These folks at the Niigata office are the real MVP’s when it comes to getting stuff done, and alleviating my fear of all things Japan immigration office related. A resounding five stars.