What happens when you first move to Japan?

Things you may want to know about moving to Japan. Disclaimer: this is not gospel, it's my personal experience. Do with it what you will.

I moved to Japan a year ago. One year ago felt like a fever dream - but i do remember i was stressed beyond belief trying to piece together everything i needed to do administratively (project management - not my strong suit).

And i had assistance. My company generously provided a move-in service - someone to take me around on day 1 to help me get set up. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think this was an industry that made actual money until i experienced it. You’re just going to register your residency and get a sim card! How hard could it be? Turns out, it’s hard enough that people (myself included, all said and done) would willingly pay money for someone else to do all that thinking for me.

(For the curious, the company is called Relo Japan. The service was smooth and I don’t have any complaints. No, i don’t know how much it costs - shoutout my company.)

If you’re about to move to Japan, or you’re thinking about relocating to Japan, or you’re just curious about what the process is like, here’s my thoughts on what you should do.

Address, Residence Card, SIM Card, then bank account. In that order

This sounds extremely obvious in retrospect, but there’s a specific order to what you need to do upon arriving in Japan.

1. You need an address to register for a residence card
2. You need a residence card to be eligible for a SIM card
3. You need a SIM card to apply for a bank account

It took me about 6 hours to complete these 3 steps (with assistance!), so i’d say it pays to plan this out properly beforehand.

Address

I assume this would already be determined when you arrive in Japan, because you need to fill in your address at immigration, but your address also determines which ward office you need to register at to receive your residence card. An apartment in Shibuya means you register at the Shibuya ward office, an apartment in Roppongi means you register at the Minato ward office, etc. No address, no residence card. The address can be temporary housing, like a hotel, dorm, or serviced apartment. Where or what type it is isn’t as important as the fact that you have one.

Things to note:

• Write your address down, in Japanese, somewhere. Almost every form you fill up along the way will ask for your address in Japanese, best to have a reference on hand

Residence Card

When I registered my residency at the ward office, I brought my passport with my visa details, and a letter of employment from my company. I also had to fill in several forms with my full name, date of birth, and address. I don't remember these forms at all. The experience abstracts to something like buying a big ticket item, like a car - I put my name on a bunch of forms where someone tells me to, without reading the fine print, hoping I didn't accidentally sign my life away, eager to get it over with so I can receive my prize.

Forms will be shuffled, mountains of paperwork will be filed, you’ll wonder a dozen times why this isn’t digital, and at the end of it, maybe an hour or so later, you’ll be issued your residence card.

You’ll also receive a 住民票(jyuuminhyou), which is a residence certificate. They give you two original copies. You’ll need to submit the original copy (not a photocopied one) when applying for everything. You’ll have to go back to the ward office during working hours to obtain new ones if you need more. It’ll cost you JPY300 per copy. In isolation this isn’t the worst thing in the world, but in the context of look-at-all-this-information-i'm-receiving-the-first-day-of-moving-to-a-new-country this broke my brain a little bit.

Things to note:

• Your address is printed on the back of your residence card. If you move apartments, you’ll have to go to the ward office to change the address on your residence card. If your new apartment is in a new ward, you’ll have to go to the new ward’s office instead to do this. They will also issue you a new residence certificate.

Sim Card

With a residence card, your identity in Japan is verified and you’re now eligible to apply for a sim card. There are a lot of providers, but i opted for Y! mobile because it had what i thought was the cheapest and most cost effective plan (About JPY2000 per month for 40gb of data).

While I normally try to optimise most financial decisions I make, the process for this one was going to Bic Camera, getting overwhelmed with all the options, semi-giving up, looking for the lowest price displayed, then selecting that.

It ultimately worked out well because Y! mobile is owned by Softbank - and signing up for an internet plan with Softbank (which we did) yields roughly a 20% discount on the total package every month.

Anyhow, signing up for a sim card was like a rinse and repeat of getting my residence card. Except this was a rinse and repeat and repeat. The process took more than 2 hours, and the whole time i sat there alternating between being tired, being frustrated, and doing napkin math and thinking, there’s no way this transaction is big enough to make up for the time the sales rep is spending on me.

The sales rep was extremely helpful though, and one silver lining - and also why i’d still recommend getting a sim card and internet plan at Bic Camera, if they’re running similar promotions - is that they give you points. A lot of points. That you can use to buy household items. The savings are significant. The points paid for my fridge and TV. I’m not even sure if they’ve recouped the cost of these items from my plan yet.

Things to note:

• There’s often an all-you-can-talk mobile plan add-on, that grants free outgoing minutes up to a limit of 10 minutes (or whatever arbitrary limit the mobile service provider imposes) per call. After 10 minutes, they charge subsequent minutes at prevailing rates. I have a company line so i didn’t opt for this plan, but I mention this because phone calls are still the predominant way of communicating. Any time you want to make a reservation or booking for something, anything, you have to do it via phone call. Even places with an online booking portal may still direct you to call, such as when trying to make a restaurant booking on the same day. Paying for the few minutes each time adds up quickly.

Bank Account

I didn't really have much choice when it came to selecting a bank account - Relo Japan recommended I open a bank account with SMBC Prestia and made the appointment for me before I even landed in Japan.

SMBC Prestia, not to be confused with SMBC bank, of which it is a subsidiary, operates as an independent arm that was established when SMBC Trust Bank (itself an acquisition) bought over Citibank's operations in Japan in 2015.

To register for a bank account, I had to submit an original copy of my employment certificate from my employer, stating my start date, position, and annual salary, which I guess falls under regular KYC processes, and sign a bunch of forms.

The employment certificate was a point of frustration to me - to obtain an original physical copy of my employment certificate, my employer had to mail it to me. They can only mail it to me if i have a registered address. My address is not confirmed until i’ve checked in to my accommodation. Mailing it to me upon confirmation will take 1-2 days. Therefore, if i had followed this timeline, it’d be day 3 or 4 before i could open a bank account - not ideal because it would overlap with my apartment search (why the rush to finding an apartment? See the next section).

I worked around this by mailing the certificate to my office the week before, and picking it up upon arrival in Japan. All in all this seems minor, but it’s just another step that made the process that much more frustrating.

Anyhow, while Relo Japan selected this bank for me without providing any other options, I fully support their recommendation, for 2 reasons.

1. SMBC Prestia positions itself as a foreigner friendly bank - the staff speak English, the online web portal is in English, and there's an English customer service hotline. Even if you can speak Japanese, I'd imagine it'd be a challenge if you had to call your bank (because everything is done by phone - see section above) to dispute a suspicious charge in your non-native language. All in all the account set-up process was relatively smooth. I attribute it to the whole registration process being in English.
2. I don't have to pay ATM fees when I withdraw money. As a customer referred by Relo Japan, all my ATM transaction fees are waived, meaning I can withdraw any amount of money, at any time, from any ATM without worry. (why is this a thing? Post on ATM fees to come.)

Things to note:

• I declined Prestia’s credit card because i thought i could apply for one with better benefits elsewhere. This was a terrible decision. Every credit card provider (even Rakuten card, which an ex-Rakuten colleague described loosely as “a card even unemployed people can get”, rejected me). Your mileage may vary, but my guess is that the lack of any credit history severely affected my chances. You might be better off taking what you can get (Prestia’s credit card, in this case), building 6 months of credit history, then trying again with other cards
• More of a musing than anything - i got a supplementary card for my partner, who was unemployed at the time. The bank explained that no she can’t open her own bank account without an employment certificate, yes i will be notified of every single transaction she makes on the card, and yes i can lock the card any time i want. I suppose its normal practice for a financial institution, but hearing it put into words felt jarring to me. Not a knock on Prestia, since i’m sure it’s like that everywhere, but it felt like my bank was telling me my partner was a 2nd class citizen to my 2nd class citizen status.

Start looking for permanent housing as soon as you can

This also sounds like obvious advice, but the reason for this is that lead time from finding an apartment to actually moving in is roughly 3 weeks to a month.

I was fortunate enough to have corporate housing for my first month, but after that I was on my own. Factoring in that lead time, I realistically only had a week to find and secure an apartment. The alternative was paying to extend my corporate housing or finding other temporary accommodation that could house me and the belongings I'd shipped over. Both options were, mildly put, not cheap.

If you can, work with a housing agent to filter down your options beforehand, so you can immediately start viewings from day 2. Personally, i viewed 15 units over 3 days, giving me 2 days thereafter to make a decision. (More on this process here - post to come.)

Be a tourist

This isn’t what you think - it’s not some “you’re here, take in the sights and sounds!” kind of conclusion.

Tasks aside, in my first month, i drank 4 cups of coffee a day, queued 1.5 hours for ramen for no good reason, ate a bowl of noodles bigger than my face, felt sick from eating a bowl of noodles bigger than my face, walked 5 floors in Donki, drank way too much because alcohol is cheaper than Singapore where i’m from, marveled when a toilet seat lifted automatically when i walked in, went to concerts and museums, and banged out a list of greatest hits of Japanese cuisine. I thoroughly enjoyed myself through all of it.

I can do all these things still (and i do, sometimes), but the sense of serendipity changes over time as the unfamiliar slowly becomes familiar. As a tourist you lose some rationality and sense of time. As a resident your life is defined by some form of structure.

There’s an ephemeral window (at least for me) just before you start thinking about commitments like bills or expenses, that feels like a rite of passage. It’s when you wake up on the weekend and the thought of staying home doesn’t even cross your mind. It’s when you exhaust yourself walking 6 hours a day, wake up sore the next day, but do it again anyway (nowadays, i don’t walk 6 hours a day. But when i do, i’ve acclimatised and don’t get sore).

It’s when everything you eat tastes like the best version of that thing you’ve ever eaten.

And then that window passes, you start staying home on some Saturdays, you pay your first electricity bill, you stop marveling at the types of onigiri in the convenience store. Structure sets in. You live here now.

I think some types of experiences can only truly be had or felt as a tourist so it’s important to savour that window.

That’s it - i don’t know if i’m writing into the void (i hope not?) but this covers my experience moving to Japan. For posterity.