Moving Within Tokyo: Ward Rules, Bulky Waste and the Two-Week Clock

This article contains advertising links.

Most guidance about moving in Japan is written for the country as a whole, which is fair enough, but it leaves out the parts that only bite in Tokyo. Those parts are not small. They are the reason a move that looked simple turns into a wardrobe you cannot legally throw away, a ward office queue on the last day of March, and a truck with nowhere to stop.

This article is about those Tokyo-specific parts. The general legal framework, the fourteen-day deadlines, and the residence card rules are set out in the main checklist for moving within Japan, and they apply here without modification. What follows is what changes when the move happens inside the metropolis.

Moving inside Tokyo almost always means changing municipality

This is the point that catches people who think of Tokyo as one city, which is a reasonable thing to think and which is not how the paperwork sees it.

Shinjuku Ward's own page defines who must file a moving-out notification as a person moving to a municipality outside Shinjuku Ward, or moving abroad. Another special ward is outside Shinjuku Ward. Koto Ward makes the same thing explicit in the title of its page, which describes the moving-in notification as the one for people arriving from a ward, city, town or village other than Koto. So a move from Shinjuku to Koto is a moving-out plus a moving-in, with a moving-out certificate in between, unless you use the My Number Card procedure.

Only a move that stays inside the same ward is the simpler moving-within notification. Shinjuku's page restricts that form to people who moved house inside Shinjuku Ward, with the same fourteen-day deadline. The three forms, and which one applies to you, are set out in the article on the moving-out and moving-in notifications.

There is one more Tokyo-flavoured restriction worth knowing before you sign anything short-term. Shinjuku Ward states that registering a residence at a hotel, a weekly mansion, private lodging or a company office is in principle not possible. If your plan for the gap between two leases is a month in a serviced apartment, your residence registration cannot follow you there.

Your ward is not the next ward

It would be convenient if the 23 wards ran one counter system. They do not, and the differences are exactly the ones that determine whether you can go without taking a day off work.

Three wards, three different answers to the question "when can I go". Shinjuku's late evening is Tuesday, Koto's is Wednesday. Koto's evening counter exists but will not do the thing you most likely want it for. Minato has no single building to turn up at.

Shinjuku also publishes its own congestion window, which is more specific than the national picture: the ward names 16 March to 20 April as its busy period, singles out 31 March as exceptionally busy, warns that on that day the procedure may not be completed the same day, and suggests avoiding Mondays and afternoons.

The residence card is handled in the same visit

This part is national law rather than Tokyo practice, but it is worth restating here because it removes a trip that many people plan for unnecessarily. The Immigration Services Agency states that a mid-to-long-term resident reports a change of residence within fourteen days of moving, at the municipal office, by presenting the residence card, and that there is no fee. Filing the residence registration at the ward office is treated as having made that report. You do not go to an immigration office for an address change. The detail is in the article on changing your address on a residence card.

What is Tokyo-specific is what the ward asks you to bring. Shinjuku's moving-in page lists the moving-out certificate, identification, the residence card or special permanent resident certificate for foreign residents, and the My Number Card. Its moving-within page additionally asks foreign residents for an original document proving the relationship to the head of household, and states that a document in a foreign language must be accompanied by a Japanese translation that identifies the translator. Koto's page notes that a document proving the relationship to the head of household, or a passport, may be required.

That translation requirement is the one that turns a twenty-minute errand into a second visit. If you are registering as a household with a partner or family member, find out what your ward wants before you queue.

Bulky waste: the Tokyo deadline nobody mentions

Sodai gomi, the oversized household waste category, is where Tokyo moves actually go wrong. Not because the system is complicated, but because it is slow and you find out how slow far too late.

How it works

The pattern is consistent across the wards that publish it: you book a collection with your ward's bulky waste centre, you buy adhesive processing tickets, you write the reference on them and stick them to the items, and you put the items out on the date you were given. Every ward runs its own centre with its own phone number, and most take online bookings around the clock. Shinjuku, Minato, Itabashi, Nerima, Suginami and Ota all describe this three-step shape.

The tickets are sold at ordinary shops. Shinjuku lists ward facilities, convenience stores including Seven-Eleven, FamilyMart, Lawson, Ministop, Poplar and Yamazaki Daily Store, plus pharmacies, supermarkets, liquor shops, hardware shops and tobacconists displaying the licensed-vendor sign. Nerima prices its tickets at 200 yen for the A ticket and 300 yen for the B ticket; Suginami quotes 200 to 300 yen per ticket. The number of tickets depends on the item, and the ward tells you how many when you book.

Here is the number that matters. Minato Ward states that the process takes about two weeks and asks people to apply with time to spare. Ota Ward says the same thing on the page it addresses to people who are moving. Itabashi does not publish a figure but warns that applications are especially numerous at the year end, on Mondays after long weekends, and from March to May. Nerima likewise warns that bookings concentrate at year end and during the moving season.

What counts as bulky depends on your ward

The threshold sounds standard and is not written the same way twice. Shinjuku's guidance describes items with a side of roughly more than 30 centimetres, while the ward's own booking site words it as roughly 30 centimetres or more. Minato says the longest side is 30 centimetres or more. Itabashi says the longest side is roughly 30 centimetres or more, and adds that heavy items such as bowling balls and dumbbells count even below 30 centimetres. Nerima says roughly more than 30 centimetres cubed, for durable goods. Suginami sets both a lower bound of roughly 30 centimetres and an upper bound of 220 centimetres.

For most objects the distinction never matters. For the ones sitting exactly on the line, and for anything unusually long, it decides whether you book a collection or put the thing out with the ordinary rubbish.

Four appliances the ward will not take at all

Air conditioners, televisions, refrigerators and freezers, and washing machines and clothes dryers are covered by the Home Appliance Recycling Law. The Ministry of the Environment lists exactly these four categories, with televisions covering cathode-ray, liquid crystal, organic EL and plasma types, and states that the consumer bears both the recycling fee and the collection and transport fee. Adachi Ward puts it bluntly: the ward does not collect these. Shinjuku's and Ota's online booking sites refuse them too.

There are two routes. The cheaper one is to pay the recycling fee at a post office, obtain the recycling ticket, and carry the item yourself to a designated collection point, which avoids the transport charge entirely. Adachi Ward names its own designated site and its hours. The other route is to ask the retailer you bought it from, or to call the Home Appliance Recycling Reception Centre on 0570-087200, and pay a collection and transport fee on top.

The recycling fees themselves are set by manufacturer, and the published ranges, tax included, look like this.

These are the recycling fees only. Whatever a shop or a mover charges to carry the item away sits on top of them.

Computers are a third route again

Bunkyo Ward explains that personal computers are outside the Home Appliance Recycling Law and are collected by their manufacturers under the resource effective utilisation legislation instead. A machine carrying the PC Recycle Mark, which applies to units sold from October 2003, has the recycling charge already included in its purchase price and is collected free. Self-built machines, personally imported machines and machines whose manufacturer no longer exists go to the PC 3R Promotion Association, which Suginami lists on 03-5282-7685.

Peripherals are the trap inside the trap. Bunkyo states that printers, scanners and other peripherals of 30 centimetres or more should be put out as bulky waste, which means they are back on the two-week clock.

Utilities: the numbers that are actually Tokyo's

General articles give you national averages. Tokyo's suppliers publish their own figures, and they differ from each other in ways that decide your moving-day schedule. The full treatment of utilities is in the article on utilities when you move; these are the metropolitan specifics.

Water. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Bureau of Waterworks tells English-speaking customers to contact the customer service centre or apply online about three or four days before moving. If your move stays inside the 23 wards, or inside the 26 cities and towns of the Tama area, the stop and the start are handled as a single procedure. The bureau runs an English online application covering starting, stopping, and combined stop-and-start, which makes water one of the few procedures in this whole article you can complete in English without speaking to anyone. You need your customer number, which appears on your bills, and the online route is not available if you do not have one.

Gas. Tokyo Gas states in English that attendance is required when starting gas service. The Japanese pages put the work at 20 to 40 minutes and confirm that a representative may attend in your place. Visit slots are 9:00 to 12:00, 13:00 to 15:00, 15:00 to 17:00 and 17:00 to 19:00 on weekdays and Saturdays, with no evening slot on Sundays and public holidays. Tokyo Gas publishes pages in English, simplified Chinese and Korean.

Electricity. TEPCO Energy Partner accepts web applications from the same day up to 31 days ahead depending on what you are applying for, and states that attendance is in principle not required, with the qualification that it can be needed where power-on work is involved. Its English page states that a third-party call service is available in English, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.

So the shape of a Tokyo moving day is: water and electricity arranged remotely, and one appointment, for gas, that ties a human being to the property for part of the day. Book the gas slot before you book anything else that day.

Timing: what March does to Tokyo

The national figure is well established. The transport ministry publishes that the number of moves in March is about twice that of an ordinary month, drawn from the trucking association's interviews with six major operators, and points to the last weekend and the final week of March as the peak. The trucking association names March, April, September and October as concentrated months, with March to April the heaviest.

Tokyo's own population statistics show the same shape from the other direction. The Statistics Bureau reported that in March and April 2023 Tokyo recorded 161,207 arrivals against 113,077 departures, a net inflow of 48,130 people in two months, and describes March to April as the period when net in-migration to Tokyo expands markedly compared with other months. The internal migration report covers Japanese and foreign nationals alike.

What that does to you is stack: removal capacity is scarce, ward counters are congested, and bulky waste bookings are queued, all in the same six weeks. If the date is fixed by a school year or a job start, you cannot fix the month, but you can front-load everything that is not the truck. The bulky waste booking, the moving-out notification and the utility applications can all be done before the busy fortnight arrives.

The truck, the street and the building

Two Tokyo constraints get repeated confidently online and deserve a more careful answer.

Road use permits. The Metropolitan Police Department explains the permit system: it covers construction or work carried out on a road among other categories, applications go to the traffic regulation section of the police station with jurisdiction over the location, the counter is open on weekdays from 8:30 to 16:30, the fee for construction or work is 2,700 yen, and issuing a permit usually takes several days. The National Police Agency asks applicants to consult well in advance. What the police pages do not do is name removals, or say who would apply. We are not going to fill that gap for you with a guess. Ask the moving company how it intends to park at both addresses, and ask early enough that a several-day permit process would still be possible.

Building rules. The national model management rules for condominiums provide that use of the property is governed by separate use regulations set by each building. That is the whole of the official position: protective sheeting for lifts, permitted delivery hours and any deposit are set by your building, not by any national or metropolitan rule. Ask the management company in writing, and ask before you confirm the date, because some buildings restrict the hours during which a move can happen at all.

About the company linked in this article

Being straightforward about this is more useful than a stack of adjectives, so here is what the operator publishes about itself and what it does not.

Hakobu Co., Ltd. is based in Nishi-Shinjuku with branches in Adachi, Arakawa and Yokohama, was founded in February 2012, and publishes its general freight transport licence, Kanto District Transport Bureau number 873, alongside an antique dealer licence and industrial waste collection and transport permits for four prefectures. Its site describes the business as centred on moves within Tokyo's 23 wards, and its coverage page lists the 23 wards, 26 cities in the Tama area, and numerous municipalities in Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama.

Estimates can be requested by web, by phone or by an in-home visit, and the company states that for moves with few belongings an estimate by phone or email is possible while an in-home visit is recommended where there is a lot to move. There is also a video-call estimate service. The web entry point asks only for an email address and then sends you a link to the estimate page, and that form is hosted on a third-party estimating system rather than on the company's own domain.

Three things it does not publish, which you should therefore not assume. It does not publish prices for moves within Tokyo, so any figure you see quoted elsewhere is not from the company. It does not publish any statement about service in English or other languages, so if language support matters to you, establish that before you book rather than after. And while it publishes the standard moving transport terms in full, the text on its site is an earlier version of those terms, whose cancellation ceilings are 10 per cent the day before and 20 per cent on the day. Those are ceilings rather than fixed charges either way, but confirm in writing which schedule applies to your booking. The general rules on cancellation charges are covered in the article on choosing a moving company.

FAQ