Hi there!

 

I bet you're eagerly anticipating your new life in Kitakyushu, and the Board of Education is also busily making preparations for the new arrivals! As part of this preparation we have to order your personalized seals, or INKAN. In Japan these INKAN are used just as your signature is used in other countries. They are vital for everything here, from opening a bank account to setting up your gas, electricity, and water supply. What the BOE needs from you, in order to have these INKAN ready for you upon your arrival, is an idea of how we should write your name in Japanese.

 

For example, the name “David Beckham”, written in Japanese, looks like this:

When written this way, the name is pronounced something like “Debitto Bekkamu”、which admittedly doesn’t much resemble the original name (which sounds more like DAY-VID-BECK-UM), but that’s about as close as it gets when you change the name into Japanese.

 

Please refer to the chart below. It is a list of the names of all the new Kitakyushu JET ALTs.

 

Column 1 lists the new JET ALT names as written in our files.

Column 2 is an approximation of what we think your name should sound like if pronounced correctly.

Column 3 is what it will more or less end up sounding like in Japanese,

Column 4 is the proper way to represent the Japanese version of your name using the Roman alphabet,

Column 5 is what your Japanese name will actually look like on documents and on your INKAN. (A dot separates first and last names; INKAN are first name only.)

 

We are sending you this message so that you can check for yourself whether or not we have chosen appropriate pronunciations in Column 2. This is just because guessing the pronunciation of some names is easier than it is with others. (For instance, some people would pronounce the name “Cait” like KATE, and some would say it like CAUGHT, depending on where they’re from.) We want you to pay particular attention to Column 2 – we can handle the rest. However, if you already have a Japanese version of your name, or you know Japanese and can suggest a more appropriate Japanese name for yourself, please feel free to let us know. As far as businesses and government are concerned, this will be your name while you reside in Japan, so we want to make an effort to make sure you are content with it.   Regards,   Tomomi Katoh