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I have a Vietnamese passport and currently reside in Singapore. I'm planning a trip to Japan on the 28th of October and currently applying for a tourist visa through the Japan e-Visa system.

However the e-Visa system cannot read my passport. It always gives this error "An error occurred in the upload process".

The problem seems to be with my passport's machine-readable zone (MRZ) section. Usually MRZ sections should start with:

P<VNM<SURNAME

But in my case it starts with:

P>VNM<SURNAME (note the wrong arrow on the second character!).

I came to that conclusion after trying out many things (including uploading my wife's passport, reading the ICAO passport specificiations lol, and using Photoshop to "modify" the passport and test uploading it again). Funny thing is, I have been using this passport to travel to many countries and have been wondering why I could never use automated clearance gates!

So I called the e-Visa hotline; they advised that I try to apply in person at the Japan embassy in Singapore. I checked the embassy's appointment system and there is no slot either for this month or next month (my flight is end of next month). Called the embassy and they said that they will only release more slots at the end of this month and I should keep checking the system.

It seems I'm down to 2 options now:

  1. Wait and check every day for new slots at the embassy. If I'm lucky, I'll get a slot at the beginning of next month. I'll also need to count on my luck to be able to get the visa in 2-3 weeks; otherwise I will need to cancel my flight tickets.

  2. Photoshop the damn arrow on my passport and proceed to upload it through the e-Visa system. Neither the e-Visa staff or the embassy staff could advise me on whether this is allowed. The risk is that when I enter Japan, immigration will flag it out because it doesn't entirely match my passport image. I feel the chance of this happening is very low because in my experience so far, all immigration officers would try to scan my passport, then shrug and give up and key in the details manually.

What do you think is my best option?

Ryan Phung
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4 Answers4

34

I'm apparently in the minority here, but I think changing any aspect of the data in a passport is an extremely bad idea.

As @user 2357112 correctly points out, a deliberate alternation of a passport to change the information in the passport is indeed a crime. Doing this could get you in trouble with either or both the country that issued the passport or the country whose immigration officer discovered the change.

I confess to being risk-averse. I wouldn't make this change, and would accept that I was now stuck getting a new passport, and perhaps having to cancel my flight tickets.

Your risk tolerance may be higher than mine. Report back and let us know how you fare.

DavidRecallsMonica
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As far as I can tell from a cursory read of the MRZ specs, the > character is not allowed at all, meaning that your passport is defective.

In my personal experience of visa services at the Japanese embassy at Singapore (N=1, during COVID), they are very "by the book" and you will not even be allowed inside without an appointment.

So, because the defect in your passport is clearly immaterial and the alternative is not feasible, in your shoes I would Photoshop the passport to fix the error and apply for the e-Visa.

I would also reach out to the Vietnamese embassy to complain and get the passport replaced, but this will likely take some time, so I'd probably do this after the trip -- otherwise you run the risk of the current passport being invalidated and not having a visa ready in time in the new one.

lambshaanxy
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Thanks for all your useful advice.

Just an update on how it went. I am pretty risk averse as well, so I decided to book a flight back to my country to get the passport replaced. There are services that can help me get my passport replaced in 3-4 days.

Timeline of events — might be a useful reference for others in my shoes:

  • September 26th: received new passport.

  • September 27th: submitted eVisa application.

  • October 10th: eVisa status changed to “examining documents”.

  • October 13th (Friday): eVisa status changed to “preparing for issuance”. Made payment.

  • October 16th: eVisa issued.

That’s it! Japan here we go!!!!

Ryan Phung
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I would second the Photoshop option (it popped on my mind right off the bat), but mostly because I have extensive experience with Japanese immigration at NRT and HND. While Japanese people in general, and civil servants in particular, can be anally retentive when it comes to procedure, they are often at a loss with things non-Japanese.

Once, an older officer mistook my temporary French passport for an official one - true, the French temporary passport is green instead of reddish brown, has only 16 pages, was in my case issued by the Consulate in HK. But it also has TEMPORARY written on it...

My full name, way too long, doesn't encode fully. When they compare the readout to the ID page, they're not identical. Almost every time I see them lip-synching my name letter by letter until they reach the end of the shorter version. They shrug, and move on.

If your passport is biometric they'll get your data from the chip anyway.