Stuff that you can & cannot settle before your flight over (for long term visas and uni students)

In the run up to your physical move over to Japan.

 

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**Stuff you can settle before your flight**:

 

1) Settle your tie-up reason for going over (university, workplace). This will allow the other party to apply for your visa pre-approval on your behalf from the Ministry of Justice. Processing will usually take a whole month, and if you’re going for university, the university should send this document to you.

 

2) Enrol in a Japanese language course. Despite it being a global player, Japan can be as bad as Italy or China when it comes to general-population English literacy. Which is to say, their eloquence in their own language can be at a level where literature-level nuance is normal (just like… y’know, in English speaking countries).

The language has a phonetic writing system, which is blessing enough. Unlike English, though, there are no Latin word roots with which you can use to guess the meanings of things. Long story short, that means the same sounds get used *a lot* and it is easy to mistake on word for another. Kanji and context usually are the keys to guessing the meanings of words on-the-go, and actually learning how to use the language will help a lot.

 

3) A VOIP phone number (i.e. from Skype, which you can pay for on a yearly subscription for a 050 Japanese number with PayPal or non-Japanese credit card). If you go with this route and use this number while in Japan you won’t have to go through the hassle of changing your phone number on admin forms (property management contract/personal contact details *etc.*).

 

4) A place to stay. There are some English-speaking property agents around, and it’s possible for them to send the contract documents over if there’s enough time. You may/may not need a guarantor to rent a place in Japan, and even if you don’t have family that can be that for you, there are guarantor companies that will (GTN, for example).
However, as /u/chason puts it,
>One thing to note is that there are a few apartment sites that don’t require a guarantor. One that I used before moving was [Tokyo City Apartments](http://www.tokyocityapartments.net/)

Other English-speaking property agents are: Sakura House, Leopalace (but this has been said to be expensive), Tokyo Sharehouse.

 

5) Once you get your visa pre-approval (called a Certificate of Eligibility), apply for your visa at your nearest Japanese Embassy and return to get your stickered passport for your trip over.

 

6) Your flight ticket (or boat ticket, if you’re coming in from Taiwan that way, but I’m not going to try and PK all that published information you probably have access to in 繁体) and packing.

 

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**Stuff you cannot settle before your flight over**:

1) Phone network contracts and bank accounts: As far as I have tried to do this for myself, you really do have to be in Japan with your residence card to sign up for either one. Probably has to do with trying to crack down on anti-social forces in Japan, from what the news in 2013 and Citibank’s departure from Japanese retail banking says, but other people probably know better than I do.

 

2) Obtaining your residence card. This is your personal identification document card thing that you get as an ok’d foreigner staying in Japan. Issued at four airports and city civic centres otherwise, you’d have to “exchange” your CoE while holding your visa sticker for it. You’ll be asked when and which port of entry you’ll be touching down in when applying for your visa pre-approval, so if you’re landing at one of the four identified airports you’ll get your card through immigration. You could always make an early flight in and leave before your “big moving flight”, but please note that the timeline for getting your CoE can be tight and tied to your school’s/university’s/employer’s schedule.

 

Okie dokey, that’s all for now.