You might have heard recently about Tama-chan, a cute sea lion frequenting Yokohama rivers. He became so popular that the city threw him an unprecedented fish: an honorary Certificate of Residency ("juminhyo").
This was, uh, fishy indeed to some of the other mammals living in Japan -- i.e. foreigners -- who cannot get a residency certificate. A quirk of Japanese laws (and unique among the developed countries): only citizens ("kokumin") can officially be registered as residents ("jumin"), even though foreigners pay resident tax as well.
To draw attention to this unequal treatment, a group of people (including this author), decided to honor Tama-chan's unprecedented status with a public celebration. On Feb. 22, we planned to dress up as seals, assemble on a Yokohama river bank, and ask: "Can we have a juminhyo too?"