Consulate General of Japan

To those who need to renew the passport, make sure you bring
–Green Card
–Current Passport
–Check Honseki
–One photo (the US size acceptable)
After 7 days, you have to pick up PHYSICALLY at this office with $ 145 CASH.

This rating is for their visa service.
Bottom line is that I saw rarely anyone can get their visa application accepted in the first time. Most of time, applicants have to make multiple visits due to the the staff’s unbearable nitpicking on your application documents. Yes, The staff are always calm and polite, but that doesn’t help if you cannot get things done.
From my bloody lessons, BRING AS MUCH documents AS YOU CAN think of. DO NOT practice your common sense, because apparently they don’t have it, and their robot-​like rigidness will astonish you.
tl;dr
Here is a brief story of mine. My spouse and I hold China passports, and that’s why we need a tourist visa to stop by Japan for a few days on our way to China. If we had ever thought that applying visa in SF would become such a huge hassle, we would definitely revise our travel plan. We visited the consulate three times, and we worked in the South bay so every visit cost us more than half a day’s time during a work day.
Trial 1:
She: You did not have a confirmed booking for your flight, this is just an itinerary from the airline’s website. You need to come back next day.
me: But your websites said a flight itinerary OR flight reservation. And your DC embassy webpage suggests «Do NOT purchase your flight tickets before your Visa gets approved», I was trying to pull out that webpage screenshot from my phone.
She: Website is not accurate, the rule we have here is to have confirmed booking for both flight and hotel.
Trial 2:
She: You are missing some documents sir, sorry I cannot accept your application.
me: But, I’ve submitted the paid, confirmed bookings as you told me last time.
She: But you are missing the employment verification letter.
me: I was never told that I need to prepare this, and it is not listed on your website. Plus I’ve shown you my bank account statement, which have more than 30k USD, and that is not enough for a 3-​Day stay in your country?!
She: We can ask for additional documents than the ones listed on website. And we need your employment verification letter signed by your company HR, bank statement is not enough.
me: But you can see the semi-​monthly direct deposit made into my acct, isn’t that a proof of my employment?
She: No, the policy is that you need to bring your EVL. And additionally, you only provide your own bank acct, does your wife has her own acct? She should provide her acct statement.
me: What?! We are married, and why does she have to submit a second statement? (I pulled out the marriage certificate that I prepared in advance)
She: (checking…). En, this would be OK but it is a scanned copy, do you have an official copy?
me: (Damn!)
Trial3:
He: Sir, you need to fix a few things before we can process.
me: like what?
He: first you have only one copy for some of your documents like flights, hotels and bank statement. We need one copy for each of you.
me: but we are applying together sir, as a couple. And the bookings have both our names listed. We applied visa for a few other countries as well, and we never had a problem because of this.
He: We have our own policy. And applying together does not make any difference, because we process the application. We need two copies for everything, one for each of you. individually. But the good thing is that you can make a copy nearby in Walgreen or Fedex store, so you don’t have to travel to SF on another day.
me: (process Individually? What does that even mean?! Are they gonna send our applications to two different visa officer in Tokyo?. erhh. realizing that arguing with him is not going to help, I moved on) OK, I will do that. Is there anything else that I am missing? I really don’t want to repeat this again.
He: The other thing is that your tickets are not round-​trip between US and Japan. What you gave me is US to Japan and Japan to China, what about your flight back to US? Are you planning to return to US afterwards?
me: I do have flights booked from China to US afterwards. But why is that a concern for you as Japan consulate?
He: What if you cannot return to the US?
me: (WTF!!) We have green cards and we just showed you the official ones a minute ago~
He: … We still need your flight back to the US.
I walked out almost destroyed, but my wife apparently was much more tolerant that I was. Thank god, we eventually got our documents through after hours of struggle.

The staff are friendly and polite, the one who interviewed me let me submit additional document via email to him to save me another trip since my departure date is really close.
The security girl works at front door is really helpful and tries her best to answer some of the visa applicants’ questions.
But it did take some time waiting in line, avoid Mondays and Fridays which are the busiest days ^_​* according to staff.

Take note every other government agency in the world, this is how it’s done. Friendly staff, fast turn around on everything, barely any wait, and smiles (yes, free smiles).
My first experience here was applying for a spouse visa. My jaw dropped when I was charged about $ 35 dollars and I got it in about a week and a half. Applying for my wife’s visa to come in to America cost an arm and a leg, and took about 3 – 6 months, depending on if someone makes a clerical error or not.
Recently I got a Japanese passport in a week’s time with no fuss. The lady at the counter was super nice, and all smiles. Can’t say the same about going to the USPS (where they hate everything and everyone) and applying for a US passport.
Thanks for being awesome!

New address is 275 Battery St, San Francisco, CA 94 111. It is no longer on Bush street or in that area. Parking garage in corridor attached to the building where the Consulate is. Parking is currently 6 dollars every 30 minutes. If you spend 1 minute above every 30 minute period, you are charged another 6 dollars no matter what.
Consulate staff very courteous in handling issues regarding passports, citizenship, and other issues. Japanese cultural information located around the room. Make sure to bring every single piece of information needed to handle business as they are pretty strict in this manner.

Information is incorrect as I had difficulty finding the Consulate General of Japan. The correct address is 275 Battery St, San Francisco, CA 94 111. You will be required to sign in before taking the elevator. Prior to entering, you will be greeted by a security guard with a walkthrough metal detector.
Update: Unilocal updated the information per my suggestions. All information is accurate as of 12.28.14. Thanks Unilocal