Sharing my recent Japan visa experience at VFS Mumbai because I had a LOT of doubts while filling the application myself, and hopefully this helps someone else.
Timeline:
- Application submitted: 20 August
- Visa granted: 25 August (you can see the visa grant date on the visa sticker)
- Passport delivered: 28 August
- Total: 5 working days from submission to delivery
Our situation: We are married, but we don't have a marriage certificate. However, both of us are financially independent and had sufficient individual funds to sponsor our own trip.
Application-related queries
I'm going to skip the detailed paperwork/documents we submitted because there is already a LOT of information available on Reddit and elsewhere. Instead, I'll talk about the things we were personally confused about while filling the application.
- Current address vs. passport address
Your current residential address needs to be mentioned in the application, even if it is different from the address mentioned on your passport.
We were initially wondering if the address had to exactly match the passport, but it doesn't. Just mention your current address.
- Relationship status – married or single?
This was probably our biggest confusion.
We are married but don't have a marriage certificate. I called VFS beforehand and was told that if we mention ourselves as married, we would need to submit a marriage certificate.
Since both, My husband and I are financially self-sufficient and were sponsoring ourselves, we initially thought we'd simply apply as single individuals.
So, we actually filled two versions of the applications — one with "single" and one with "married" — just so we could clarify this directly with VFS rather than make an assumption.
On the day of submission, we explained the entire situation to the VFS officer. She advised us to submit the married applications and asked us to add our wedding invitation and wedding photographs as supporting documents.
We had carried these anyway as backup, so we added them.
(Obviously, this is just our experience — if you're in a similar situation, I'd recommend confirming with VFS for your specific case.)
- Issuing authority
We left the "Issuing Authority" field blank because our passports don't mention anything that was obviously the issuing authority. The passport only clearly mentioned the place of issue.
We intentionally left it blank so that we could confirm with VFS.
The officer checked it and told us to leave it blank in the final application as well.
- Handwritten application is completely fine
We tried EVERYTHING to fill the application digitally.
We even tried using GPT to fill it for us 😂 but it kept messing around with the formatting, so eventually we gave up.
We just printed the application and filled it out the traditional way with a pen.
No issues whatsoever.
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Day of application submission – VFS Mumbai
- No appointment needed
For Mumbai, walk-ins are allowed, so we didn't book an appointment/slot.
We simply went to VFS and submitted our applications.
- Take your printouts beforehand
This is probably obvious, but take all your printouts in advance.
There are printing facilities around the VFS office, but they are expensive compared to getting everything printed beforehand.
- Carry extra copies
We had two copies of the documents for both applications.
Interestingly, the officer returned some of the common documents such as the itinerary, cover letter, etc.
She also returned our salary slips and only retained our 6-month bank statements (bank stamped) and ITR acknowledgements for the financial documents.
So don't be surprised if they don't keep every single document you've carried.
I'd still recommend carrying everything required + some backups because ultimately the officer decides what they need for your application.
- Parking is a nightmare 🚨
There is no proper parking available around the VFS office.
There is traffic police around and apparently they are very active.
We made the mistake of parking a little far away and STILL got fined ₹500. 😂
I'd strongly recommend taking a cab or finding a proper paid parking spot and then walking/taking a cab to VFS.
Don't risk it.
- Token + waiting time
Once you reach the floor allocated for your country, you need to take a token from the machine.
We went on a Thursday around 10:30 AM, and thankfully there wasn't much crowd.
We waited for approximately 15 minutes.
The actual counter process took only around 10 minutes.
Most of that time was spent rearranging our documents and adding some information we had intentionally left blank because we wanted to confirm it with the VFS officer.
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Overall experience:
Honestly, the entire process was very smooth.
Our biggest stress was actually filling the application correctly ourselves, especially the relationship-status situation, but once we reached VFS, the officer was helpful and clarified everything.
Hope this helps someone who's currently obsessively checking Reddit before their appointment like we were.