English Diary: 入国スタンプのこと 20220517 #2-95

Hello everyone. Welcome back to my channel. My name is Mai and this is Nomadonomado English Diary for the 17th of May 2022.

As I had a hangover, I did nothing special yesterday. I had a nap in the afternoon, which was needed but it was a little difficult to sleep at night. I was awake until 1 am but after that, I managed to sleep.

I read an interesting article online that my husband sent the link to. It was about the stamp at the immigration.

When you travel abroad, they used to give you stamps on your passports. As far as I know, Japan and most the Asian countries gave or give still now both entry stamps and departure stamps while other countries such as the US or Canada give only entry stamps.

However, taking electronic records is getting more popular increasingly, and more and more countries stopped stamping passports, and so did Japan too.

I realised that Japanese immigration had stopped stamping a few years ago, but for us, Japanese citizens who live out of Japan, it is better to have an entry stamp, so that we can claim the refund of sales tax under some conditions.

Therefore, I always ask the officer to give me a stamp when I entry Japan. It is easy because they put the obvious sign, saying “please ask the officer if you want to have an entry stamp”, but you cannot take it for granted in other countries.

I didn’t have any idea that we could ask the stamps in other countries at the departure from Canada or the US, but the article suggests that we could ask them for the stamps.

To be honest with you, it sounds like a bit hassle to ask departure stamps in Canada or the US, but it was good to know that they would if we ask. Because I have to provide my travel record to the Canadian government when I update my permanent residential card, it would be handy if I have all of stamps when border crossing.

Alright, that’s all for today. Thank you for listening as usual. I will be very happy to receive any comments, feedback and questions. Also, I posted today’s diary in English on my website, nomadonomado.com which may help you if you are learning English.

Thank you again and I will be back to you soon. Until then, goodbye.