My contract is up so I'm leaving Japan soon and had plans to sell my (White Plate) car to another ALT who is arriving ~2 weeks after I leave. I gathered all the paperwork needed (Mostly based off of This JET Reddit Post as well as several ALT links I found online through searching). I have the Power of Attorney form, Transfer of Ownership form, Shaken, Proof of Insurance, Proof of paid Tax, and my inkan shomeisho.
My JTE said they would be the Power of Attorney over the car until the new ALT arrives 2 weeks behind me to register the car in their name. However my JTE talked to their dealership friend who told them the inkan shomeisho is not valid after we (the seller) move out of the city and it's highly illegal to perform a ownership transfer if the original seller has already moved and if it's caught then there are massive fines involved….. So they said we should go through a dealership to transfer ownership of the car to the new ALT and not do it ourselves because of this.
This is the first I've ever heard of the inkan shomeisho expiring because of moving (I know it expires 3 months after it's issued) and all of the other JET and ALT posts/blogs I've read haven't said anything about others running into this issue. I thought the point of having a Power of Attorney for the car was BECAUSE the seller wasn't going to be available in person to do it???
Does anyone have some insight into this? Has anyone been "caught" by their inkan shomeisho after already moving? If you transferred ownership of your car to someone else after you were gone, did you do anything different than what's listed in the Reddit link above? What is the estimated cost of going through a dealership for transferring ownership to a new ALT?
Any help or pointers about what I should do would be greatly appreciated as I'm trying to get this taken care of in the next week!!
by Iamtheclaw2