When I first came to Japan, most things like banks, govt forms and so on didn't really accommodate middle names. And so I got in the habit for most daily life things in Japan of not using my middle name in Japanese. Which was cool. Life was easy. /1

My middle name btw is "James". But it's like a spare tyre on a car I never drive. I barely think about it. However, 2 years ago, my bank said they needed me to add a katakanized middle name to match my passport. I hadn't even thought of how to write James in Katakana until then/2

A google result comes back with high results for ジェイムス, ジェイムズ, ジェームス, ジェームズ. No totally standard way I could find on a smartphone search. And I was being told to suddenly register one of these when I was there for something totally different. /3

So I thought "screw it", picked one, and they updated my account info. The first result of this was it promptly broke all my bank auto payments and I needed to re-register for each one. /4

But a new problem arose in January when the Lad wanted to sell his BeyBlades on Mercari. To collect the payment, I needed to request transfer to my bank account and the name on my bank account needed to match my account name, which needed to be verified with proof of ID /5

I used my passport, drivers license, gaijin card - but all these used Romanized ID and they wouldn't let me register my account with a Katakana ID that matched my bank account. So I needed a katakana proof of ID. After much digging, I found one! My Insurance Card /6

The problem? I registered my middle name on my insurance card ID with a different katakana to my bank. So I was continuing to fail at collecting the mercari payment and getting docked 200 yen every time... /7

I called my health insurance company and they said changing my katakana would be super hard. So I went to the bank and changed my katakana middle name last Friday. And as a result, today after 3 months I FINALLY got confirmation I collected Mercari payment /8

Of course to do that I now have broken all my auto payments again and need to re-register those again. And my full name with middle name in Katakana won't fit on the card or in most forms... So the battle continues. Ugh. But today was a good day /end

That is not the gif I meant to attach... :)