Having a baby on Okinawa

***UPDATED 20-MAY-17. SEE BOTTOM OF POST***

So….we have been blessed with a brand new, fresh from the factory, baby girl! Luckily, the baby and mom are doing well, and that is all I could ask. However, this has happened about 5 months from leaving Oki to….well we have no idea as of this writing, but it should be Stateside somewhere. This is important to know as this will frame this whole post.

Well me being me, I am feeling a little stressed because 5 months doesn’t seem like a lot of time to get this new kid a Consular Report of Birth (CRBA), a tourist passport, AND a social security number, without coming down to the wire (which I hate!).  Obviously, I am being a little dramatic, as there are others popping out babies a month out from PCSing and they are getting all that done doing with little issues. The main thing is to know what needs to be done and where to get it done. Luckily, there are processes to get a lot of this done in a logical manner and I will detail those processes next. However, all this is framed to my personal scenario, which is the baby is healthy and was born at the Foster hospital, going Stateside after Okinawa, and I am active duty USAF. If your situation is even a little bit different from mine, then your process will have more or less steps to it to PCS out of Oki. Let’s begin!

1.  Most important step is go to Foster’s Birth Registration Brief! I have the packet they will give further down this post with their DSN number on the front so you can make that appointment. But the whole point of this brief is to go to it BEFORE the baby is even born, so you will have time to collect what you need for the Consular Report of Birth and Passport. In my specific situation, I had the following documents already, and used them with no issue.

a.  Passports: My American Tourist Passport (Can be any type though) and my wife’s Korean passport were good to go and current.

b.  Our marriage certificate: They will harp on this A LOT. Luckily, I have a certified copy anyways and was good to go. If you don’t have a certified copy, then you will have to get one from whatever State you got married in. Which I suspect will take TIME and that is why you should order it while you are still preggo so you will have it by the time the baby is born.

c.  My wife’s dependent ID was used as a secondary ID during this process as well. I imagine every military spouse will have this anyways, but make sure it is good to go beforehand. My wife’s actually expired a month and half later after the baby was born, so I am glad I noticed that anyways.

d.  A printed DS-2029 is required too. You can find it online, just make sure it is the right version. They have instructions on how to fill it out in the birth registration packet, so see below.

e.  A printed DS-11 will be needed to get the baby a tourist passport as well. Just remember you have to do the online version, so when you print it up the form will have a 2D bar code on the side. Oh, and get passport photos done too. I got mine made at the Photo store in the Kadena BX and it was about $10 and on a walk-in basis.  Finally, they have instructions on how to fill out the DS-11 in the birth registration packet too, so see below.

f.  Make sure to bring everything they give you when they discharge you from the hospital, the birth registration lady will need info out of it.

g.  The last thing is money orders. I got mine at the Post Office on Kadena and I recommend you get them BEFORE the baby pops out so it will be one less thing to worry about. Details are in the packet below.

And that is it for the CRBA and Passport process, well for me that is. I do want to note I did attend the birth registration class before the baby was born. Also, the day the baby was born, I went down stairs of the Foster hospital to Room 111 (near the main entrance, through the doors on the right) and had my pre-screening appointment made with the birth registration office (about 2 weeks later). 

Furthermore, the day I went to the pre-screening appointment, and had everything I needed, they had me meet the Consular Officer later that day as well. I don’t think that is the norm, but it worked out, and just know your wife and baby have to be there to take an oath.

Again, your mileage may vary, but I think my personal situation is as simple as it can get. Just understand all this is for getting the CRBA and Passport, nothing else, but there are still a lot of other steps for the military side of things as well. Oh, and this office will help you get your baby a Social Security number once your CRBA and passport come in. Since I haven’t got this stuff yet as of this writing, I will update this post with that process as well.

A final note on all this is that we intend to get a Korean Passport as well for our baby, but I haven’t go down that road just yet. The main issue I think is the Korean Embassy accepting the CRBA for a Korean passport, which is an unknown right now. The only thing I did so far was get the passport photos in the Korean passport size (same as Japanese passport size) for future use. I will update this post once I get this all figured out.

Next, the other military stuff!

2.  So once your wife pushes out a healthy baby and eventually gets discharged from the Foster hospital, you will be giving a discharge packet. There are many things in this packet, a lot of it medical related of course, but I am not going to focus on all that stuff and I am just focus on the paperwork needed to PCS Oki successfully.

a.  You will get a Certificate of Birth (signed by the doc) and you will use this to get your baby in DEERS. This should be your first step once you get settled at home. You will get this done at the MPF or whatever it is called now. You will need your military ID and the certificate and it doesn’t take long.

b.  Next you will need to see the Tricare office at the Kadena Clinic to enroll the baby in Tricare and start the Command Sponsorship process. The directions to do this are below as well and covers a lot of different scenario, however I fell into Step 1 (the easy one). So, basically you will need a MFR made, which you can find on the FSS SharePoint under the DEROS Management section. Make/print that MFR before going to Tricare, because they will route it for signatures. Luckily, since I came here Command Sponsored, I could just sign it, and get it routed. There are personnel that manage this process exclusively, so you will have to go on the days they are there. Which at the time of this writing was M-W-F @ 0800-1100 hours. Once you get it back (a few days later), you will have to get the final signature from DEROS Management office at the MPF.

c.  The DEROS Management office is going to want a copy of your orders bringing you to Kadena, that letter from Tricare, and the DEERS Form (DD Form 1172) before they will sign that Command Sponsorship letter. Once they sign it though, you are NOT done! They will keep the original and you will get 3 copies of everything, but you are done with DEROS Management at least.

d.  Since you are in the MPF building already at this point, you will take a copy of that Command Sponsorship letter AND the medical form with the baby feet on it to the Finance Section, so you can start getting extra COLA. You would think all these systems are connected, but they are not, so you will fill out a form there as well. Now you will be getting more money, backdated to when the baby was born. Cha Ching!

e. The final stop is back to the Tricare Office so you can now officially enroll your baby into Tricare. They will take a copy of that completed Command Sponsorship letter and have you fill out the Tricare enrollment form on the spot. Once that is done you are finished with the military side of things! Yay!

Some final notes on all this. The DEROS Management office was pretty adamant that I didn’t lose this signed Command Sponsorship letter, because I will need again when I out-process or something. Well, I have a copy still and I scanned it to my personal files, just in case as well. 

Oh and apparently you can do all the CRBA and Passport and/or SSN yourself at the Naha Consulate if you like, as the birth registration office does this as a courtesy basically for those babies born on Foster. But I am lazy and having them track all this stuff is right up my alley.

I will update this post once I get the Social Security number and the Korean Passport things figured. All the informational packets I have (with my chicken scratch included) are below for reference. 

Enjoy!

Birth_Registration_Packet_Page_0

Birth_Registration_Packet_Page_1

Birth_Registration_Packet_Page_2

Birth_Registration_Packet_Page_3

Birth_Registration_Packet_Page_4

Birth_Registration_Packet_Page_5

Birth_Registration_Packet_Page_6

Birth_Registration_Packet_Page_7

Birth_Registration_Packet_Page_8

Birth_Registration_Packet_Page_9

Command_Sponsorship_Instructions

Command_Sponsorship_Instructions_Memo

***UPDATED 25-APR-17***

Ok. Guess what I got yesterday!? A nice shiny passport and CRBA! In all it took about 1.5 months to get to me, but your mileage can vary. The CRBA is really fancy looking too. Fancy enough to frame and hang up on the wall in my opinion. But anyways, the main thing to know is that you now can apply for your kid’s social security number with everything you just got. The birth registration office will give you a hand-out (I have it below) that will explain what you have to do. They don’t do anything with all that at this point, it is all on you now. However, it is straight forward and you just have to mail everything to the embassy up at Tokyo for processing. The passports/ID copies are just plain old black and white copier type, nothing fancy. Oh, and fill out the SS-5 and don’t forget to sign it too. Then just bring those all copies to the notary and they will take care of the rest. After that I mailed all those papers to the DPO address which is basically the same as APO. But I used priority mail, just so I can get a tracking number in case things go awry.  Easy pesy. I will update again once we get the SSN card and wrap this post up. Later!

Social Security Number Application For Newborns

FINAL UPDATE ***20-MAY-17***

So I finally got my kid's SSN in the mail last week!  Since I threw away my receipt with the priority mail tracking number on it, I am going to guess and say it took about 3 weeks-ish from start to finish. As, in the day I mailed the package to the Tokyo embassy, and to actually getting the SSN in my mailbox onbase. The date on the SSN card is May 8th, so I think they made the number within a week of getting the application, so that is pretty fast in my opinion. But this finally closes the loop on this whole process with the birth certificate, passport, and SSN. Overall this whole thing took about 2.5 months from when the day the baby was born to getting the SSN in mail. I attribute this to having all the documentation I needed up front and having a simple situation overall. The End!

Unlock your AU iPhone 6 / Plus

So....it has been awhile since I did an update....well that is because I am in Qatar now! But that is a different story for another time....but yes, since I was going to be in Qatar for a bit, I thought how nice it would be to use my brand new-ish iPhone 6 from AU here. Ok i thought, let me get some prepaid service out here! I ended up going with Ooredoo prepaid service and got a SIM card that would fit in my phone. I loaded up the SIM card and then shortly the phone asked me to activate the phone...no biggy I thought...I put in my password...waiting...waiting...ERROR!!!! You get a message looking like the image above. For those that have been living in Japan for some time, know that just about every Japanese phone, from like...ever....is locked to the cell provider you bought it from. It dosen't matter if your contract is up or you straight bought the phone with cash from AU like I did, it will most likely be locked. This is crazy I thought! I paid freaking hard cash upfront for this phone (not cheap) and I CANT USE IT WITH A DIFFERENT COMPANY!? WTF!? SOoooo...rant done....so what happened? I had an unlocked iPhone 5 (T-mobile) with me anyways, because I knew these facts way before I left for Qatar, and I always prepare for this type of stuff anyways. So my iPhone 6 stayed pampered in my room on the wifi only, not ideal, but whatever, I couldn't do anything about it. So eventually I started getting hand cramps using the small iphone 5 screen (I have big hands, jeez!) and I started looking at trying to get my iPhone 6 unlocked somehow. No dice at first, since I have asked AU to do it before, and they told me it is not their company's "policy" to do such things. meh! I then start looking into the shady online "unlocking" web sites that promise they can unlock any iPhone...ANY mind you....except Japanese carriers....aaaragggghh! An guess what, they won't know for sure, until they try, and that is after you pay them first of course...hence shady. Well to be serious for a minute, there are A LOT of scam unlocking sites out there, so you have to be careful who you give your money to. I wiill help you with this though, save you the hassle, and tell you what I did to get my AU iPhone 6 unlocked...

1.  After searching numerous fourms on this topic, I found a very short post about someone using a particular site to successfully to unlock their Japanese iPhone, and it seemed legit. It didn't read like some fake post hyping a scam company, so with great thought on the matter, I gave them a try. The site is here...

www.theofficialunlocks.com

The best part is that they accept Bitcoin for payment! You have to ask them first to do it (via Skype) and that I why I went with them too. Since I mine all my BTC, I didn't feel like I would be too pissed if they scammed me, it is free bitcoin for me anyways! =)

2.  You can navigate the site to find AU/Softbank unlocking services for about $135 at the time of this writing. I actually paid 0.63 BTC for my serivice at the time I ordered.

3.  Ok now here comes the hard part...I ordered the service around April 16, 2015...and I didn't get my phone unlocked until June 4, 2015! There was a apparently a reason for this and I will try to explain shortly, but I want to mention this timeline for one reason really. The best way to communicate with this biz is via Skype, and they are decent at getting back to you on there. However, their english isn't the best, which started throwing warning flags up all over the place with me when the unlock didn't work after weeks of back and forth with them. I thought I got scammed and they were just stringing me along until they shut shop, and counted their bounty from other idiots like me. But rest assured that was not the case, whew! But it was a rather tedious wait, to say the least.

4. At this point though, I am happy to say that my phone is indeed unlocked, I can use my Ooredoo SIM card in my phone after I activated it with no issues....I even get 4G service out here on my iPhone 6, unlike my iPhone 5, which only works with the 3G signal out here. They were even nice enough to chat with me on Skype as I did all the SIM swapping, just to make sure everything worked for me.

5. Some final notes on all this...as far as the crazy long wait I experienced, I was told that the Apple GSX server was down for weeks (perfect timing, right?) and that keep their "supplier" from getting in there to unlock my iPhone 6. Speaking of "supplier", all these unlocking services seem to have inside men working at all these cell companies, or at least have access to the Apple GSX server to make your IMEI "unlocked". The whole process obivous sounds suspect, but the process used is just the same as unlocking done by the cell carrier, no hacking needed =).

In summary....it can be done! =) And if you didn't know, your AU iPhones 6 / Plus is a beast for world travel. The iPhone 6 model AU uses is MG482J/A, which happens to have just about every frequency you can possible need to connect to what ever cell provider you end up using. Score! 

P.S. For those that are really in the know....yes starting May 1st, 2015, most (all?) Japanese cell providers, like AU, will unlock their customers phones under certain conditions. The key thing to know, is the date, and that any phones sold after that time fall under these new policies. Trust me, I emailed AU from Qatar (very quick on the response mind you, in english too!) on May 1st, and they basically told me they will not unlock my iPhone 6 since I bought it before May 1st. Oh well, my iPhone is unlocked now anyways. But I would still try asking them, you might save yourself some money doing it through them, as opposed of doing it through the biz I used. Here is a link to news article talking about this new policy by the Japanese government.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/12/16/reference/unlocking-carriers-sim-hold-cellphones-will-competition-heat/#.VXHZdlLXenN



***UPDATE***  3-FEB-16

The kind people at www.theofficialunlocks.com have said to mention this blog and that "Djbert" sent you when you sign up, and they will throw some Bitcoin my way! Score for me! So thanks in advance to those that don't mind hooking me up =) 

International Driving Permit/License - Okinawa

International Driving Permit 

 So I needed an international driving permit (IDP) for my trip to South Korea pronto. I am normally on top of getting everything I need to travel way ahead of time, but this slipped mine mind completely! Normally you would have to mail your IDP application back to the States, and then wait for it to get back, but I didn’t have that much time. It would take a month going that route, mailing back and forth, and I figured there had to be a way to get one here on the island. Well come to find out, there is! You got to take a trip down by the ASHIBINAA Outlet Mall area, more specially, just down the street past the mall. No joke, the place you have to go is right there, way easy to find, right behind the Nissan dealership. Anywho, if you still have time to mail the IDP application back to the states, you can order an IDP from  two places ONLY. The AATA and AAA are the only authorized IDP issuers in the States, so don’t fall for the scams that are floating out there. Here the links…

AATA

AAA

Alright, here is the address to the place and a picture of what the building looks like…

Address:  3-22 Toyosaki, Tomigusuku-shi, Okinawa-ken

Google Map Link:  http://goo.gl/maps/XQY6b

3-22 Toyosaki, Tomigusuku-shi, Okinawa-ken

Here is info off the internet about what to bring to the place. My Japanese friend printed it up and translated the key parts for me. I do want to note that you can do this at some office near Gate 5, but it takes weeks to get back, and I don’t know exactly where it is. I think they basically take all your paperwork and then send it to the main IDP office anyways. Better off driving there yourself….

IDP Information

IDP Information

The main things to note…

1. SOFA license has to be good for over a year.

2. Bring Passport. I don’t know why they need it, but they want to see it.

3. Picture. I used the photo booth right there in the front of the Kadena BX. I would get pictures as close to the size you need for the IDP. Don’t stress too much about it though, you can get pictures done there at the IDP office.

4. Yen

5. Mind the hours, they are closed during lunch.

Well, I was smart and went after their lunch hour and there was barely anyone there. I was in and out in less than 20 minutes, but your mileage may vary. I even got there super fast from Kadena, took the express way all the way down, and no traffic! Friday, was a good day… =) Anyways, They make it right there while you wait. When you go into the building, you should see a sign like the one pictured below …

Near the Front Door of IDP Office

If not, they speak English in there, so you should be fine asking someone. I had to go to counter 10 when I went. And you will find the English language application form there. Here is what you do. Grab the form first, fill it out at the fill out station, then go to the middle counters to pay the fee, and THEN you can take everything to them to start your IDP. Overall, it was way simple and easy to do. I was nice enough to grab the English language application for ya’ll viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

IDP Application English 

U.S. Consulate General Naha, Okinawa Japan

I was in the legal office on Kadena AB the other day and they had hand-outs for a lot of government offices around the island. Offices for marriage certs and birth certs, stuff of that nature. I grabbed the Consulate map, because I figure that would be the most popular one of the bunch. So here it is and bam! I just saved you a trip to the legal office!

U.S. Consulate General Naha, Okinawa Japan