Just arrived
Whether you landed at Fukuoka last night or you are moving down from Tokyo next month, the first few weeks here are mostly paperwork — and almost none of it is in English. This is the order it goes in, what it costs you to get it wrong, and what we will do alongside you.
Week one and two
Steps two, three and four all happen at the same counter on the same visit. Nobody tells you that, and most people make the trip three times.
The 在留カード is handed to you at the airport if you land at one of the big ones — Fukuoka, Kansai, Narita, Haneda — and at the city hall if you came in anywhere else. Carrying it is not advice, it is the law. A police officer may ask, and “it is at home” is the wrong answer.
Day oneAt the city hall for wherever you sleep: Oita City, Beppu, Nakatsu, Hita, Usa. Take the residence card and your passport. They write your address on the back of the card while you wait, and nothing else on this page can happen until they have. Fourteen days is a deadline, not a suggestion.
The one with a deadlineIf an employer is not enrolling you, you join 国民健康保険 at the same office. It turns a hospital bill into 30% of itself. It is also backdated to the day you registered your address — so joining three months late means paying those three months anyway, for cover you never had.
Do not put this off国民年金, unless a company scheme covers you. Students and low earners can apply for an exemption or a postponement right at the counter — but you have to ask. Nobody offers it.
Ask about the exemptionTwo or three weeks after you register, to the address you gave. You will need it for a job, a bank account and a phone contract, so watch the postbox and do not throw away the envelope it comes in.
Weeks 3–4In that order. Most phone shops want a Japanese bank account or card, and the bank wants to see the address already printed on the back of your residence card. Japan Post Bank is the one most of us opened first.
In that orderAlready in Japan
Three differences. The first one has to happen before you get on the train, and people forget it every single month.
転出届 at the office you are leaving behind. They hand you a 転出証明書 — your certificate of moving out. Oita cannot register you without it, and going back for it is a long and expensive train.
転入届 with that certificate, your residence card and your My Number card. Same counter, same visit as moving your insurance across.
Health insurance, pension, the bank, the phone contract and the address on the back of the residence card all have to be told separately. The post office will forward your mail for a year if you ask — do ask.
After the paperwork
Sorted into burnable, non-burnable, plastics and cans, in bags your own city sells, put out on fixed mornings. Oita City and Beppu do it differently from each other. The city hall hands out the calendar in English — ask for it while you are there registering.
Volunteer-run classes meet across the prefecture in the evenings and at weekends for little or no money. They are not advertised in English and they do not come up in a search. Ask us which one is nearest you and when it actually meets.
Typhoons every summer, earthquakes with no season at all. Your city hall will tell you the nearest shelter and show you the hazard map for your own street. Do it now, not at eleven at night in the rain.
A January room in Oita is colder indoors than you would ever expect from a place famous for hot springs. Budget for heating before you budget for anything else, and ask before you use a kerosene heater in a room with the windows shut.
What we do
Not a leaflet of good intentions. Every one of these is something members asked for and got, this year.
Asked every week
No. Write to us and you get an answer either way. Membership is ¥3,000 a year and gets you free entry to most events, the jobs and rooms first, and a vote at the general meeting — it is not the price of asking a question.
It is the normal starting point, and roughly where every one of us began. The city hall counters have translation tablets, and for the harder visits one of us comes with you and speaks for you.
Please do — it is the single most useful message you can send us. Tell us roughly when you land and which city you are coming to, and we will tell you what rent really costs there, what the commute is actually like, and often put you in touch with somebody already living on that street.
Yes, and members will tell you where — the shops that carry the spices and the daal, and the kitchens run by people from home. The good ones are rarely the ones a search engine finds.
Tell us early rather than late. We cannot give legal advice, but we have sat with enough of these to know which office you need, which free consultation to book, and who should come with you. The worst thing you can do with a problem like that is wait.
Tell us you are coming
One message is enough. Which city, roughly when, and what brings you here — we will take it from there.
