So it took me a year, but I finally found the photo my student drew with my “kanji” haha!
I blocked out my name and the student’s name.
I blocked out my name and the student’s name.
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I know we’re talking about your name in kanji here, but I wonder if it’s a bit silly to block out your name but leave the kanji version, because I can make a fair guess at what your name is from that. 
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はじめまして、尼古拉斯・基治ともうします。よろしく！
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I agree, first name seems pretty obvious, but last name a bit tougher. I do have an idea, but won’t leave my guess.
Aye, indeed. 
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I was given the kanji 華紗林 by my kimono teacher. If I ever had to adopt a Japanese name is probably just go with けい in hiragana. I already have a Japanese last name. Though my maiden name kanji was 平具.
I had it easy (I think). My name translates as kani (蟹) but the lady working at the shop doing my hanko said because of my profession she would suggest I use rakkan and thus it looks like this:
Odd. I’ve actually done that with English, since most (white) people can’t pronounce my Indian name. I simply translated it to English and asked people to call me Sky lmao.
Sounds a bit exotic but it worked I suppose. You could do that with Japanese too, right?
When I first came to Japan as an intern, a few of us joined the company’s aikido club, and most of the club went drinking after practice every week. One day the whole group spent a good hour while drinking to figure out the best kanji combination for our names so that we could have it embroidered onto the aikido uniform. Was a lot of fun. The last syllable of my name in Japanese pronunciation is ‘bu’, and everyone was jealous that I could use 武 in my name.
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Fair enough, but maybe that was the point. XD And the purpose of this was not my English name, but my Japanese “name”. 
Anyways, thanks for not shouting out your guesses at my real name! haha
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While it is in some ways silly, because they are literally just kanji that fit with the sound of your name, it’s actually really fun to talk with native japanese friends and ask them to help you come up with one. They will get really creative and try to find kanji that fit with your name. One of my friends came up with The Horse who Never Sleeps for me, which made some of my other friends laugh when I told them. I’ve got a list somewhere with a bunch of different Kanji that spell out my name, and that all have ridiculous or awesome meanings, and all thought up by various native friends.
Going into a shop is pretty lame, because the person doesn’t know you and probably just has stock kanji for every common foreign name. But when friends write it for you its funny and meaningful and they will try to choose based on your personality.
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