Seeking advice regarding accommodation before moving to Japan

**TLDR:** Going to Japan with WHV in May, Looking for 1DK/1LDK apartment (Not sharehouse), JPY 100,000/month max key money and deposit not withstanding, ideally west Tokyo. I know I can find this once I’m there, but I would feel better if I could start looking for it and applying now, have tried doing so but the websites I have used request documentation that needs me to be already in Japan. Any tips/suggestions?

**Storytime:**

Hello all, I will be moving to Japan on a WHV in early May 2022 (My embassy already accepted my application, and I’m retrieving my passport next week), and I am really excited to finally be able to come back to Japan after these last two years of just… waiting for my February 2020 visa to be finally usable again.

Now, this is my third time in Japan on a long-term visa (I was a student twice), and I speak/write the language, so I know what to do and what to expect once I’ll be there, barring the new COVID restrictions, but my biggest frustration right now is that I would really like to rent an apartment in Tokyo (ideally west Tokyo, quite cheap, have a few friends there, and I would be a few stops away from Shinjuku), but it seems difficult to apply to anything that isn’t a sharehouse or an airbnb while I’m still in my home country.

I know that one of my options would be to book something temporary for the first dozen of days after my quarantine (Airbnb/hotel/Sharehouse), and go to a real estate agent (I’ve had good experience with minimini in the past, and a friend of mine who moved on a spouse visa a year and a half ago recommended UR housing). Thing is, in order to start anything, these places need me to have a Zairyu, which I obviously won’t have until I’ve actually landed in the darn country.

Now, if that’s my only option, I’ll live with it…. **But,** after talking to my current employer about me moving, they want to keep me in and plan to offer me a contract to work remotely from Japan as they recently set up a branch there. I’m not looking to be spending my WHV working for a company as that’s not really the whole point, but I figure I’ll make much more doing that for a couple of months than doing shoddy minimum wage baitos and I’ll be able to do a lot more traveling by the end of the visa with the earned money, also seems like a good way of making real estate companies accept my application more easily as I would have an income. (Don’t get me wrong, I’ve saved up over the last two years, but tourism budget in Japan is definitely an infinite black hole and I can have enough to do everything that seems interesting to me).

So, I’m somewhat worried about the time that will be needed between me getting out of quarantine and me moving into a place that I can 1) register as an address to the local municipal office 2) comfortably work from home in.

I’m not worried about having internet, I can get a pocket wi-fi for the first month, it’ll cost me a bit of money but nothing outlandish, what I want to avoid is having to take a leave of absence from my work longer than a month because I could not move in soon enough. I feel like if I could get started on the process right now it would alleviate my concerns a bit, but messaging people on minimini just gives me people saying they either want me to visit physically or they need some kind of documentation I cannot provide right now.

\`In the end, I would also prefer to sign the lease of a place I’ve actually visited, and do it in person, but I’m worried about the length of the whole thing.

Does anyone know of an alternative solution that would either guarantee that I can have everything happen fast once I’m there, or some website that allows future long-term residents to apply for apartments?

Also, I just want to make a clear that although sharehouse will be a cheaper and easier option, besides the fact that I don’t think I’ll be able to reliably work from a sharehouse, I also… feel like I’ve reached a point of my life where I just want to have my own kitchen and toilet, and wi-fi, and not have to worry about Rooney downstairs fucking up the shared microwave with leftovers (overpriced) pizza from domino’s.