- Electricity and water can be arranged online, from a phone, without anyone being at the property. Gas cannot. Turning the gas on requires a visit with someone present, and that single asymmetry is what actually shapes your moving day.
- Someone else can stand in for you at the gas visit. Both major city gas suppliers state that a representative such as the landlord or building manager is acceptable, and one puts the job at about 20 minutes.
- The lead times are not national. Tokyo's water utility asks for three to four days' notice; Osaka's asks for five days in principle. City gas suppliers recommend about a week. Electricity can be same-day in one region and needs the day before in another.
- Post redirection runs for one year from the date of the notification, not from the date you asked it to start. The residence card is listed among the accepted identity documents for the counter, postbox and online routes.
- Telling your bank about a new address is a contractual duty under the account terms, not a statutory duty on you under anti-money-laundering law. That distinction is widely got wrong, and the practical consequences are still real.
- Internet is the one utility that can leave you offline for weeks, because it may need building work. A no-installation option is the usual bridge.
Here is the sentence that should be at the top of every article about moving house in Japan and almost never is. Electricity and water can be started with a web form, with nobody at the property. Gas cannot. A person has to be there, in the flat, at an appointed time, before there is hot water.
Everything awkward about a Japanese moving day follows from that. It is why people arrive at a new flat, unpack, and discover they cannot shower. It is why the gas appointment, not the removal lorry, is the thing to book first. And it is why the workaround, sending someone in your place, is worth knowing about before you need it.
This article goes through electricity, gas, water, post, banking, phones and internet, with the lead times and the attendance rules that are actually published, and it is explicit about where those rules differ by region and supplier rather than pretending there is a national answer.
The one thing that needs you at home
| Utility | Can it be done online? | Does someone need to be there? |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity, starting and stopping | Yes | In principle no, though it can be required depending on the equipment |
| Water, starting and stopping | Yes | Not stated in the material we can cite. Ask your local utility |
| City gas, starting | The booking, yes | Yes. Attendance is required, and a representative is accepted |
| City gas, stopping | Yes | Usually not, but there are stated exceptions |
| Internet, fixed line | The order, yes | Often yes, if installation work is needed |
Gas: the appointment that governs your moving day
Why somebody has to be there
Tokyo Gas explains it directly: when the gas is turned on, the technician checks the condition of the gas appliances, including inspecting the flues of bath boilers and water heaters and checking that the appliances are suited to the type of gas being supplied, and gives an explanation about using gas safely. Because of that, attendance is required.
Osaka Gas gives the same requirement with the same reasoning: an inspection for gas leaks and an explanation for safe use mean that attendance on the day of the work is required.
Neither of these is a formality that a friendly technician might waive. It is a safety inspection with a person to be talked through the results.
How long it takes, and who can stand in for you
Tokyo Gas puts the work at about 20 minutes, with another of its pages giving a range of 20 to 40 minutes. Its English-language pages tell the same story: gas requires attendance, electricity does not. Osaka Gas's English page for starting service asks you to be home or to have someone at your home for you at the time of the worker's visit, which it says will only take 15 to 20 minutes.
Both suppliers accept a representative. Tokyo Gas names landlords and building managers among those who can attend. Osaka Gas says that where it is unavoidable, attendance by a representative such as the landlord or the building manager is acceptable.
If you cannot take time off on moving day, ask your landlord or your managing agent, in advance, whether they will attend the gas appointment. This is a normal request in Japan and it is far easier to arrange a week ahead than on the morning itself. Confirm with the gas supplier that the person you have arranged is acceptable when you book.
Lead times, and how they differ
Tokyo Gas recommends applying about one week in advance for both starting and stopping service, and accepts bookings from two months ahead. Its English-language page says the same thing in English: requests to start or stop service should be made at least approximately one week in advance. Web applications are taken around the clock; the telephone line runs from 9:00 to 19:00 Monday to Saturday and 9:00 to 17:00 on Sundays and public holidays. At the fastest, an application made by 7:30 in the morning can get a visit the same afternoon, though that depends on the building and the time of year.
Osaka Gas works differently. An internet application made by the day before can be given a visit from 13:00 the following day and up to eight weeks ahead. By telephone, an application received by noon can get work done the same day, while applications after noon get a visit the next day or later.
For stopping service, Tokyo Gas says attendance is basically not needed, but asks for it where the building has an auto-lock entrance or where you are using a leased gas alarm. Osaka Gas says attendance may be required. Read your own supplier's page rather than assuming the easy case.
If your building runs on cylinder gas
Not every home is on city gas. Liquefied petroleum gas is supplied by a very large number of independent businesses, 16,381 of them as at the end of December 2022 according to the energy agency, and its pricing is not regulated in the way city gas is.
Two things about that market are worth knowing before you sign a lease rather than after. In rental buildings there has been a business practice under which the gas supplier provides equipment to the owner at no charge, such as water heaters, air conditioners or wireless networking equipment, and recovers the cost through the gas charges. The energy agency's own description notes that consumers often only learn what they are paying for gas after they have moved in. In detached houses there is a parallel issue with piping supplied on loan, where refusal to pay on switching supplier has led to a significant number of disputes reaching litigation.
Rules were tightened in 2024. The changes restrict excessive sales practices, require a three-part tariff structure that prohibits putting equipment costs into the gas charge, and require that prospective tenants be given information about the gas charges before they sign a rental contract. The first and third took effect around the summer of 2024, and the tariff change applies from the 2025 financial year for new contracts.
Whether a cylinder gas connection needs someone present when it is turned on is not something with a single national answer we can point to, and it varies between suppliers. Ask yours.
Electricity: the utility that asks least of you
In the Tokyo area, the retailer's web applications are accepted in principle from the same day up to 31 days ahead. Attendance to start or stop service is in principle not required, although it says it can become necessary depending on the state of the equipment. When you stop service, you can use the electricity throughout the final day; the supply stops at midnight at the end of the stop date.
In the Kansai area the window is different: applications for both starting and stopping are asked for from 30 days before the start date up to the day before. Attendance for starting electricity is generally not needed, though it can be requested depending on the plan and the state of the supply equipment, and stopping generally does not need attendance except where the meter has to be read. Note that the same company's gas service is the opposite: it states that attendance is always requested when gas service starts.
You will read that attendance is unnecessary because modern meters are read remotely. The published wording does not say that. It says attendance is in principle unnecessary but may be required depending on the equipment, which is a different statement and leaves the possibility open. Treat the appointment as unlikely rather than impossible.
On language, the Tokyo-area retailer publishes English support pages and English-language telephone support on 0120-995-113, pressing 7 after the guidance, or 0120-995-001, pressing 8, from 9:00 to 17:00 Monday to Saturday. Whether its web application form itself is available in English is not something we could confirm. In the Kansai area the retailer states that it supports 18 languages including English through three-way calling, without publishing the list of languages.
Since the retail market was fully liberalised, your supplier may be any of a large number of companies, so the specific windows above belong to the two retailers named and are not national rules.
Water: short notice, and the shortest lead time of the three
Tokyo's waterworks bureau asks for procedures to be carried out three to four days in advance. Its customer centre is on 0570-091-1100, with 03-5326-1101 for the 23 wards and 042-548-5110 for the 26 municipalities of the Tama area, open 8:30 to 20:00 except Sundays and public holidays. Applications to start, to stop, or to do both at once can be made online.
For English speakers this is the standout: Tokyo's waterworks publishes English-language online application pages for starting and for stopping water service, and for doing both together, covering the 23 wards of Tokyo and the 26 municipalities in the Tama area, and states that online applications are accepted 24 hours a day. If you have been assuming that every utility conversation in Japan has to happen in Japanese, this one does not.
Osaka's waterworks asks for both starting and stopping to be arranged five days in advance as a rule. Applications go through its customer site, through the city's administrative online system, by telephone on 06-6458-1132, or by fax. Reception runs 8:00 to 20:00 on weekdays and 9:00 to 17:00 on Saturdays, with 9:00 to 17:00 also on 29 and 30 December and on Sundays and public holidays during March and April. Meter removal work when you stop service is done on weekdays between 9:00 and 17:00. No foreign-language support is stated.
Three to four days in one city and five days in another is the clearest illustration in this article of why a national number does not exist. Look up your own municipality.
Post: one year, from the day you file
Redirection of post is arranged at a post office counter, by dropping a completed form into a postbox, or online through the postal service's change-of-address service on its website or through its app.
The detail that costs people mail is the duration. The redirection period runs for one year from the date of the notification, not from the date you asked the redirection to begin. File it two months before you move and you have effectively bought ten months of coverage. You can renew for a further year by going through the process again.
On identity documents, the residence card and the special permanent resident certificate are among those officially listed as acceptable for the counter and postbox routes. For the online route you need an identity-verified account with the postal service, and where your account is not verified you complete online identity verification on a smartphone. The documents accepted for that are a driving licence, a My Number card, a driving history certificate, or a residence card, any one of them. Where the check uses a facial photograph, the review is described as taking from the same day up to about three days.
We are being careful with the wording here for a reason: there is no official statement saying that foreign residents can use the service, and equally none saying they cannot. What is published is the list of accepted documents, and the residence card is on it. That is a fact you can act on without needing a promise.
Two limits worth knowing. Items marked as not to be forwarded are returned to the sender rather than redirected. And the small-parcel service branded with the courier partnership is covered by the redirection service.
Bank and mobile: where the obligation actually comes from
Banks
A great many English-language articles state that you are legally required under anti-money-laundering law to tell your bank when you move. That is not right, and it is worth correcting because it leads people to look for a rule that does not exist and to miss the one that does.
The legislation on preventing the transfer of criminal proceeds places verification duties on the financial institution. The duty it places on you as a customer is narrower: not to misrepresent the matters covered by that verification. Your obligation to notify a change of address comes from your contract with the bank, that is, the deposit account terms.
The model ordinary deposit terms published by the bankers' association ask the customer to notify the branch in writing without delay where the passbook or seal is lost, or where the seal, the name, the address or other registered matters change, and provide that the bank is not liable for loss arising before that notification unless the bank was at fault. That is a model. Each bank writes its own terms, so the article numbers and the exact wording will differ from the model at your bank.
The consequences of not doing it are published by some banks and not by others. Japan Post Bank states that where a customer has not notified it after renewing a residence card and the period of stay registered with the bank has passed, withdrawals and transfers become impossible, and it asks customers to update their period of stay information and address promptly through its app or at a counter, noting that transactions may be temporarily restricted otherwise. One major city bank publishes that where the expiry date of the period of stay registered with it is exceeded and no action is taken in time, it will restrict transactions in accordance with its deposit terms. Other banks publish nothing on the point at all. Do not assume your bank behaves like the one you read about.
Mobile phones
Here too the honest version is not the tidy one. Of the three large carriers, one publishes a clear consequence: NTT Docomo states that if it does not receive notification of a change of address, its notices will not reach you and it may suspend your use of the mobile phone service. Its procedures run through its online account around the clock, through 151 from 9:00 to 20:00, and at its shops, while its low-cost brands are handled online only.
SoftBank's published wording goes as far as saying that important notices may not reach you. KDDI asks customers to notify a change of address without publishing a consequence. So the accurate statement is that one carrier warns about suspension, not that all three do.
Internet: the one that can leave you offline for weeks
Every other utility on this list is a booking. A fixed internet line can be a construction project, needing the building owner's agreement and an engineer's visit, and that is what turns a three-day gap into a three-week one. The dependencies, and why a phone number and a bank account sit ahead of an internet contract in the queue, are set out in our guide to setting up internet and phone in Japan.
The usual bridge is a no-installation router that arrives by post and works out of the box. It is also, for some readers, not a bridge but the answer, particularly if the stay is measured in months rather than years or if the building will not permit a fixed line. The trade-offs are compared in our article on no-installation WiFi in Japan.
Cover the gap between moving in and getting a line installed
A no-installation router ships to your new address and needs no engineer visit, which makes it the usual answer for the weeks between moving day and a fixed line. Among the options we compare, BIGLOBE WiMAX +5G is the one that publishes automatic payment from a bank account alongside card payment, with no minimum contract term and no cancellation fee. Confirm the current device terms and pricing on the official page before ordering.
A working order for the utilities
- Book the gas appointment for the new place first, and arrange who will be there. Everything else fits around it.
- Arrange the stop dates at the old place: gas, electricity, water. Remember that electricity in the Tokyo area runs until midnight on the stop date.
- Arrange the start dates at the new place, respecting each utility's own lead time rather than a single number.
- File the post redirection early, because the year runs from the filing date.
- Order internet as early as you can, and arrange a no-installation option if there is a gap.
- After you have registered your new address, update the bank, the mobile carrier, and anything else that posts you something.
Step six depends on step one of the administrative side of the move, which is the municipal registration and the recording of the new address on your card. That sequence is in the main checklist for moving within Japan, and the card procedure itself in the article on changing the address on your residence card. If you have not yet booked the removal, the terms to check before you commit to a date are in the article on choosing a moving company.
FAQ
Why does gas need someone at home when electricity and water do not?
Because the visit is a safety inspection with an explanation attached, not just a switch being flipped. The suppliers describe checking the condition and suitability of gas appliances, inspecting flues on bath boilers and water heaters, checking for leaks, and explaining safe use. That needs a person to inspect for and a person to talk to.
Can my landlord attend the gas appointment instead of me?
Both major city gas suppliers accept a representative and name landlords and building managers as examples. Arrange it in advance and confirm with the supplier when you book. One supplier describes the work as taking about 20 minutes, and another says 15 to 20 minutes, so it is not a long imposition.
How far in advance should I arrange everything?
There is no single number, which is the point. City gas suppliers recommend about a week. Tokyo's water utility asks for three to four days, Osaka's for five days in principle. In the Tokyo area electricity can be arranged from the same day up to 31 days ahead, while in the Kansai area the request is from 30 days before up to the day before. Check the specific suppliers for your address.
Can I do any of this in English?
Some of it. Tokyo's waterworks publishes English online application pages for starting and stopping service, accepted 24 hours a day, for the 23 wards and the 26 Tama municipalities. Tokyo Gas has pages in English, Simplified Chinese and Korean. The Tokyo-area electricity retailer has English support pages and English telephone lines, and the Kansai retailer states it covers 18 languages including English through three-way calling. Do not assume a whole procedure is available in your language just because one page is.
When does my post redirection expire?
One year from the date you filed it, not one year from the date the redirection started. If you file well ahead of the move, you are shortening your own coverage. You can renew for another year by repeating the procedure. Items marked as not to be forwarded go back to the sender instead.
Am I legally obliged to tell my bank my new address?
The duty comes from your account terms, which are a contract, rather than from a statutory duty on you under the criminal proceeds legislation. That legislation places verification duties on the bank, and the duty it puts on customers is not to misrepresent the matters being verified. The practical consequences are still real: at least one bank publishes that withdrawals and transfers become impossible where the period of stay it holds has passed without an update, and another says it will restrict transactions under its deposit terms.
Will my mobile line be cut off if I do not update my address?
One carrier, NTT Docomo, publishes that it may suspend use of the service where it has not been notified of an address change, because its notices do not reach you. The other two large carriers do not publish that consequence: one says important notices may not reach you, and the other simply asks you to notify a change. Update it anyway, but do not repeat the claim that all three will suspend you.
If the new building will not allow a fixed line
Not every flat can take a fixed connection, and not every stay is long enough to justify one. A router with no installation, no minimum contract term and no cancellation fee is the lower-risk choice when your dates are uncertain. Check availability at your new address and the current terms on the official page.
