[Dhillaire]

Its one thing to finerprint visitors, although i must admit i dont agree with that either, like the way the US does it. But look at the fine print. The US stops doing it when the person in question becomes either a US citizen or permanent resident. In Japan, on the other hand, even if you have lived here for the past 50 years, you still need to be fingerprinted and photographed in order to go home. I live in Japan and it is my home, I have been here for years, and I am not all that happy about having to be screened again. I have been screened many many times for my visa, for my alien registration card, and numerous other bits of rediculus paperwork that simply never helped anyone. This is just another excuse to annoy everyone. If the Ministry was serious about stopping terrorism in Japan, they would take the fingerprints of Japanese too (remember that in the history of Japan there have been many terrorist attacks but all have been commited by Japanese). But of course, the Japanese would revolt like the foreigners did LAST time Japan had a fingerprinting system for alien registration cards which was, due to the rebellion, abolished in 1999.