- There is exactly one hard deadline in your first month: you must register your address at the local city or ward office within 14 days of moving in. Everything else can wait a little; this cannot.
- The order matters more than the paperwork. Residence card, then a registered address, then a phone number, then a bank account. Each step is what makes the next one possible.
- Almost everyone gets stuck in the same place, and it is a loop: you want an address before you get a phone, a phone before you get a bank account, and landlords want all three. The table below shows exactly what depends on what, and how to break the loop.
- Housing is where the largest single sum of money moves. A normal rental commonly costs four to six months' rent before you are handed the keys, so it deserves more planning time than anything else on this list.
- Ward office procedure, bank account requirements and phone contract rules genuinely differ between municipalities and between companies. Confirm at the counter rather than trusting any checklist, including this one.
- Set up a way to send money home early, while your documents are still in one pile and your name is spelled the same way on all of them.
Your first month in Japan is not difficult so much as it is sequential. Almost nothing here is hard on its own — a form, a queue, a signature — but the steps have to happen in a particular order, and nobody hands you that order when you land. People do not usually fail because a procedure defeated them. They fail because they walked into a bank on day three, before they had an address, and were sent away without being told what to do first. This article lays out the whole sequence in the order you will actually walk through it, tells you what each step unlocks, and hands you off to the detailed guides at the points where the detail matters.
One promise about honesty before we start. Municipal offices, banks and mobile carriers in Japan do not all behave the same way. A document that one ward office asks for, the next one will not. A bank branch that opens an account for a new arrival on the spot will, three stations away, ask you to come back in six months. Where this site has done the research — housing, and sending money abroad — the detail below is specific and linked. Where it has not, you will find no invented fee tables or document lists here, because a made-up checklist that sends you to a counter with the wrong papers is worse than no checklist at all.
The only hard clock: 14 days
Japanese law gives you 14 days from the day you move into your address to report it to the municipal office that covers it. This is the residence registration, and it is the single genuinely time-bound item in this article. Everything else on the list has soft timing — inconvenient if late, not unlawful.
Fourteen days runs from the day you start living at the address, not from the day you arrived in Japan and not from the day you signed a lease. If you spend your first three weeks in a hotel and then move into an apartment, the clock starts when you move into the apartment. If you move again later, the same 14-day rule applies to the new address. Missing the deadline is a problem you have to explain, and it delays every step that follows, so treat it as the fixed point that your first month is built around.
Step 1: Get your residence card
The zairyu card (residence card) is the document that proves you are legally resident, and it is the key to everything else in this article. Without it you cannot register your address, and without a registered address the rest of the chain does not move.
How you get it depends on where you land. At the major international airports — Narita, Haneda, Kansai, Chubu and Fukuoka among them — the card is printed and handed to you at immigration, in the same encounter where your passport is stamped. You walk out of the airport already holding it. If you enter through a smaller airport or seaport, you will not be given a card at the border. Your passport is marked to show that the card will be issued later, and it is sent to you or issued after you complete your address registration at the municipal office. This is normal and not a problem, but it does mean your first month starts one step further back, so allow for that.
Whichever route you take, look at the card before you put it away. Check that your name is printed the way you want it to appear everywhere else, because from this point onward every institution in Japan will compare your name against this card, character for character. A middle name that appears on the card but not on your bank application, or a surname order that differs between documents, is one of the most common causes of an application being bounced later. It is far easier to notice this on day one than to discover it when a money transfer is frozen.
Step 2: Register your address at the city or ward office
Once you have somewhere to live, go to the city, ward, town or village office that covers that address and file your move-in notification. Bring your residence card and your passport. This is the step that turns you from a person who is in Japan into a person who lives in Japan, administratively speaking.
Two things come out of it. First, your address is written on the back of your residence card, which is what banks, phone shops and employers actually look at when they ask you to prove where you live. Second, you enter the resident register, which means you can obtain a juminhyo (certificate of residence) — a printed extract of your registration that a surprising number of later procedures ask for.
What to expect at the counter
Beyond the 14-day rule and the two documents above, the honest answer is that the specifics vary. Some municipalities have multilingual staff or a tablet-based interpretation service at the counter; some have neither. Some handle residence registration, health insurance and pension enrolment at adjacent windows in one visit; others will send you to a different floor or a different day. Opening hours, whether appointments are needed, whether certain forms can be filed online, and what supporting documents a particular case requires are all set locally.
So do the sensible thing: look up your specific municipal office before you go, or call and ask what to bring for your situation. If a friend tells you what their ward required, treat it as a hint rather than a rule, because they may not live in your ward. Bring your passport, residence card and, if you have it, your rental contract, and be ready to be told that something extra is needed.
The dependency chain: what unlocks what
This is the part nobody explains, and it is why people stall. Read this table before you plan your week.
| Step | Needs first | Unlocks | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Residence card | Entry to Japan | Everything below | At immigration, or after address registration if you entered via a smaller port |
| Somewhere to live | Residence card; often a phone number and sometimes a bank account for the application | An address to register | Before the 14-day clock can start |
| Address registration | Residence card, an address you actually live at | Address printed on your card; juminhyo; health insurance; My Number | Within 14 days of moving in |
| My Number | Address registration | Bank accounts, money transfers, employment paperwork, tax | Notification arrives some weeks after registration |
| Health insurance and pension | Address registration | Medical treatment at the standard patient share | Same visit if possible |
| Phone number | Residence card; usually an address; often a payment method | Bank applications, rental applications, delivery slots, almost every online form | As early as you can manage |
| Bank account | Residence card with address; usually a Japanese phone number; My Number is typically requested | Salary, rent payments, utilities, funding transfers abroad | After address and phone |
| Home internet | An address and normally a bank account or card | Working from home, cheaper phone data | Installation can take weeks |
| Sending money home | Bank account, My Number, name matching your card exactly | Supporting family, paying debts at home | Set up before you urgently need it |
Look at rows two, six and seven together and you can see the trap. Housing wants a contact number. Phone contracts often want a payment method. Banks often want a phone number and an address. If you wait for each one to be perfect before starting the next, you never start.
The way out is to break the loop at the housing end, because that is the step with the most flexible options. A share house, a monthly rental or a furnished apartment will generally take you before you have a Japanese bank account or phone number, and giving you an address you can register lets everything else fall into sequence. Several of them accept applications from overseas, which means the loop can be broken before you even land. Meanwhile, use a prepaid or data-only SIM as a stopgap so you have a contactable number from day one; you can move to a contract later once the bank account exists.
Step 3: My Number
After your address registration, a My Number (individual number) notification is sent to your registered address. It arrives by post some weeks later, which is one more reason to register early rather than at day thirteen.
My Number matters more than its low-key arrival suggests. Your employer will ask for it. Banks generally ask for it when you open an account. Money transfer services in Japan ask for it as a matter of course — the guide to documents you need to send money abroad from Japan goes through where it is required and why. Keep the notification somewhere you will find it again, and photograph it. People lose this piece of paper and then discover they need it on a deadline.
Step 4: Health insurance and pension
If you are employed and your company enrols you in its social insurance scheme, this is handled for you and you do not need to do anything at the municipal office. If you are not — self-employed, a student, a dependant, between jobs, or working somewhere that does not enrol you — you join kokumin kenko hoken (National Health Insurance) and the national pension at the same municipal office where you registered your address.
The practical point is that this is normally handled in the same building, often on the same visit, so ask about it while you are already there rather than making a second trip. Premiums are calculated from your income and are set by each municipality, so no article can tell you your number; the counter can. What you should not do is skip it because you feel healthy. Without coverage you pay the entire cost of any treatment, and a single unplanned hospital visit can undo a year of what you thought you were saving.
Step 5: Somewhere to live
This is the biggest decision of your first month, the one that consumes the most money, and the one where being a foreign resident makes the most difference to your options. It deserves proper reading rather than a paragraph, so start with the overview of renting in Japan as a foreign resident, which sets out the real barriers and the four realistic routes: an ordinary agency rental, public housing, a share house or furnished apartment, and company housing.
The money
A conventional Japanese rental asks for four to six months' rent before you receive the keys, made up of a deposit, key money, agency commission, guarantee company fee, fire insurance and other line items. For a room at 78,000 yen a month, the worked example in what renting in Japan really costs up front comes to about 395,300 yen. Only some of that is negotiable, and the article is specific about which parts move and which never do. It also covers the costs that no quote includes — renewal fees, management fees and the restoration bill when you move out — which is where a budget that looked fine in month one quietly breaks in month twenty-five.
The guarantor problem
Most landlords require a guarantor, usually a Japanese individual or a guarantee company that screens you. A new arrival has neither a Japanese relative nor a domestic credit history, and this is the single most common reason applications fail. Renting with no guarantor sets out what actually works instead.
If you are turned down
Being refused happens, and it is worth knowing who refused you — the landlord, the agency or the guarantee company — because the answer changes what you do next. Refused an apartment for being foreign covers where the law stands and what your practical next move is.
The paperwork
Rental applications ask for a specific set of documents, and one of them is often a juminhyo, which you cannot obtain until you have registered an address, which you cannot do until you have somewhere to live. Documents you need to rent an apartment in Japan lists what is asked for and works through that deadlock directly.
Options that fit a new arrival
If you need a roof this week rather than in six weeks, the flexible end of the market is where to look. Short-term and monthly rentals in Tokyo compares monthly mansions, share houses, hotels and licensed short-stay accommodation for a one to six month stay. Furnished apartments in Tokyo explains what is actually included, what it saves you against buying a bed and a fridge in your first fortnight, and the point at which furnishing your own place wins. And for a concrete example of what the budget end looks like in practice, there is a detailed review of Xross House, whose share houses and furnished rooms start around 38,000 yen a month.
One caution that applies to all of these: whatever you sign, make sure the operator will let you register that address at the municipal office. Most legitimate housing will, but some very short-stay accommodation is not intended as a residence, and if you cannot register there, the 14-day clock has nowhere to run.
Step 6: Phone number and SIM
Get a Japanese phone number earlier than feels necessary. It is not only for calls. It is the field on the bank application, the contact number on the rental application, the destination for the one-time codes that Japanese online services send instead of email, and the number a delivery driver calls when nobody answers the door.
Requirements differ by carrier and by plan, and the market ranges from the three big networks through their low-cost sub-brands to independent providers, some of which are more used to serving foreign residents than others. What one shop demands, another will not, so it is worth asking two or three rather than accepting the first refusal. Because contract terms and required documents change, and because they differ so widely between companies, this article will not print a list you might rely on at the counter; check with the provider you intend to use. If you want an English-language starting point for comparing SIM options, Hikari SIM is one.
A practical sequencing tip: a prepaid or data-only SIM bought at the airport or online buys you time. It gives you a working phone immediately, and in many cases a number you can put on forms, while you sort out the address and bank account that a full contract usually wants.
Step 7: Bank account
Open a bank account once you have three things in hand: a residence card with your address written on the back, a Japanese phone number, and ideally your My Number notification. Attempting it before the address is registered is the classic wasted afternoon.
What banks will accept genuinely varies. Different institutions apply different internal rules to newly arrived foreign residents, and some branches of the same bank behave differently from others. Some ask how long you have been in Japan; some ask about your employer; some are entirely relaxed. Language support at the counter varies too. Because none of this is standardised, this article does not print a document list or a set of conditions — ask the specific branch you plan to use, and if one turns you away, another may not.
What is worth doing regardless is making the name on your bank account match the name on your residence card exactly, in the same order and with the same spelling. This becomes important the moment you try to move money internationally, since transfer services verify your identity against both.
Step 8: Home internet
Home internet is the step that most often needs a bank account or a Japanese payment card already in place, which is why it sits here rather than earlier. Fixed-line installation in an apartment can involve scheduling an engineer and, in some buildings, the landlord's permission, so it is rarely instant. Lead times depend on the building, the provider and the season — March and April are the busiest months for moving in Japan, and everything queues.
If you need connectivity immediately, a mobile router or a generous data plan on your phone will bridge the gap. Confirm with your building's management what is already wired in before you order anything, because some buildings include a service and ordering a second one is a waste.
Step 9: Sending money home
For a large share of foreign residents this is the reason the bank account mattered in the first place. It is also the step where the cost of getting it wrong is recurring rather than one-off, so it is worth an hour of reading before your first transfer rather than after your fifth.
Start with the overview of how to send money home from Japan, which compares the megabanks, Japan Post Bank, the specialist remittance operators and Wise on the same amount. The central finding is that the advertised fee is only part of what you pay: there is also a margin built into the exchange rate, and for most Japanese banks that margin is not published at all, which means nobody outside the bank can calculate what your transfer actually costs. Wise vs Japanese banks takes that apart layer by layer on a 100,000 yen transfer.
If your instinct is to use the bank you just opened an account with, read what an overseas transfer at Japan Post Bank and the megabanks really costs first. Two things there matter for a new arrival in particular: Japan Post Bank ended its over-the-counter international transfer service in 2025, so advice you find from earlier years may be out of date, and megabank counter transfers start in the thousands of yen before any exchange margin is counted.
Setting up before you need it
Verification takes longer than sending does. Registering with a transfer service while nothing is urgent is much more comfortable than doing it the week rent is due at home. Opening a Wise account in Japan with a residence card covers the residence card and My Number requirements, the exact name matching that trips people up, and how funding works from a Japanese account. The 1,000,000 yen limit in Japan clears up a widespread misunderstanding: that cap applies to the balance you hold, not to the amount you can send.
Your specific corridor
Which provider is cheapest and even which ones work at all depends entirely on the destination country, so read the guide for yours rather than a general comparison. Japan to Vietnam covers costs and the mistakes that delay transfers. Japan to China is the clearest example of why the corridor matters — Wise cannot send Chinese yuan to a personal bank account in China at all, so the popular answer is simply not available. Japan to the Philippines deals with receiving-side caps, including the monthly limit on GCash receipts, which is a constraint on your family's side rather than yours.
Money coming the other way
If someone abroad needs to send money to you — family helping with your deposit, a final salary from your last job, savings you left behind — the answer is not symmetrical with sending. Receiving money from abroad in Japan explains why, and what to give the sender instead.
A realistic first month
Nobody completes this list in a week, and you should not try. A workable shape looks roughly like this. In the first few days: confirm your residence card, get a working phone number even if it is a temporary SIM, and secure somewhere you can legally register as your address. In the first two weeks: register that address, which is the deadline, and enrol in health insurance and pension at the same visit if your situation calls for it. In weeks two to four: open a bank account once the address is on your card, arrange home internet, and watch for the My Number notification. After that, and before the first time it is urgent: set up how you will send money home.
If a step goes wrong, it is usually because a prerequisite was missing rather than because you did anything incorrectly. Go back one row in the table and check what that step needed. And when an office or a branch tells you something that contradicts what you read anywhere — including here — believe the counter. Local practice is the practice that applies to you.
FAQ
What happens if I miss the 14-day deadline for registering my address?
Register as soon as you realise. The obligation does not disappear, and the office will still process you, but you may be asked to explain the delay. The bigger practical cost is knock-on: until you have registered, your card has no address on it, your My Number cannot be sent to you, and bank and phone applications that depend on a registered address will keep stalling.
Can I open a bank account before I have an address?
Practice varies between banks and even between branches, so no article can give you a reliable yes or no. What is consistent is that the address on the back of your residence card is the thing institutions ask to see, so your odds improve considerably once it is there. Register first, then apply.
I need a phone to rent a flat and an address to get a phone. How do I start?
Break the loop on the housing side. A share house, furnished apartment or monthly rental will generally accept you without a Japanese bank account or contract phone, and some accept applications from overseas before you arrive. Pair that with a prepaid or data-only SIM for a contactable number, register the address, and the remaining steps unlock in order.
Do municipal offices provide service in English?
It depends entirely on the municipality. Some have multilingual staff, translated forms or interpretation by tablet or phone; others have very little. Check your own city or ward office's website or call ahead, and bring a Japanese-speaking friend if you can. Do not assume either the best case or the worst.
Why does my name have to match exactly across documents?
Because banks and money transfer services verify you against your residence card. A middle name included on one document and omitted on another, or a different order of given name and surname, is enough for an application to be rejected or a transfer to be held. Pick the form that appears on your residence card and use it everywhere.
What should I sort out first if I only have one free day?
Address registration, assuming you have an address to register. It is the only item with a legal deadline, and it is the gate on My Number, health insurance and, indirectly, your bank account. If you do not yet have somewhere to live, then that day is better spent securing housing you can register.
