- This process took 3 days of going to a bank and trying to open an account. I didn't have the proper documents the first two times so I had to ask my company for the documents and wait.
-
Major points of nuisance:
-
Either 6 months since arriving in Japan or proof of employment is
required to open a bank account
-
For proof of employment, the following is required
- Employee full name (must match the value on the 在留 card)
- Company name
-
Company seal (印鑑)
- My company provided the form without the official seal as a copy with the official seal would take some time. It didn't pass the bank's scrutiny so we had to get the copy with the seal made
- Employee start date
- Company phone number
-
For proof of employment, the following is required
-
A seal (印鑑)
-
For banks, it seems they don't care too much what is written on
the inkan. I created an inkan with my Chinese name (not on any
official documents such as passport/在留 card) as well as one
with my English name in cursive. Upon asking the bank employee,
they said to use the version with my Chinese name.
- Side Note: For fun, I asked if a smiley face on one's inkan was okay. They said it'd be okay as part of the seal. However, if it was the only thing on the seal, it would be probably not okay
- I made some at Don Quixote's automatic inkan making machines for ~2000 jpy. This appeared to be the fastest way to make an inkan. It took about 20 minutes per inkan.
-
For banks, it seems they don't care too much what is written on
the inkan. I created an inkan with my Chinese name (not on any
official documents such as passport/在留 card) as well as one
with my English name in cursive. Upon asking the bank employee,
they said to use the version with my Chinese name.
-
Either 6 months since arriving in Japan or proof of employment is
required to open a bank account
-
I had to get a one of these in order to sign an apartment rental contract.
Unfortunately, it seems like the rules for what is allowed/required
differs by city/ward you live in. While Shibuya's
website
has a chart explaining the basics of what is allowed/not on the seal
(alphabet letters or kana are okay), my ward (Shinagawa) did not have that
information. So, I went to the ward office and asked. The rules are
apparently like this:
- Either alphabet or kana is okay
-
Any part of your name is okay, but it must be an entire block (i.e.
only "Libo" or only "Zeng" is okay, but "L Zeng" or "L Z" are not)
- I believe you can do like "ジョン Smith" (John in kana) with mixed kana/alphabet parts, but I'm not 100% my memory is accurate here
- Any font is okay as long as the ward worker can read it
- I had to do this when signing my apartment contract. My hand started to hurt after writing my name + kana pronunciation + date + current address for the 10th time or so. I really hope this can be improved by the next time I sign a contract...
-
I was talking to an apartment rental agent trying to get a new place,
and we had the following conversation:
- Agent: By the way, what country are you from? (I had already indicated I was non-Japanese)
- Me: America, but why does it matter?
- Agent: To be frank, some landlords don't rent to Vietnamese because they make smelly food
-
When trying to link my JR East points account (JRE point) and my JR
booking site account (ekinet), my name didn't match and the linking
website wouldn't work. This was due to some interesting instructions
when signing up.
-
The JRE point site signup required name in Kanji and then name in
Kana/Romaji.
Naturally, the Kanji line did not accept any alphabetical characters such as my name. So I input the kana pronunciation of my name. And in the field that said Romaji, I put in my English name.
- Ekinet had a more "standard" format of just requiring name + kana prounciation. So, I put in my English name + kana pronunciation.
- However, these didn't match up properly because the JRE point site Kanji line was matched to my English name in Ekinet and the English name in the JRE point site was matched to the Kana pronunciation in Ekinet. The JRE point site not allowing Romaji for the main name led me to this problem.
- Luckily, Ekinet just let you change your name on the website (the wait time for the call center is probably an hour or something...) so I could easily convert to all kana in ekinet. I had to call the JRE point call center to get them to change my name to all kana. For someone who has minimal Japanese skills, requiring a phone call is quite high of a barrier. However, I suppose the entire signup process is all in Japanese so a person with minimal Japanese skills might not sign up in the first place.
-
The JRE point site signup required name in Kanji and then name in
Kana/Romaji.
-
(Update 2023-05-06) Middle Name
- I got a phone call from the place I'm renting from. They claimed I hadn't paid my rent for 2 months (March/April). I was very surprised as I had definitely paid so I went to double check. After some investigation and some phone calls later, the reason was found to be that the names didn't match exactly. I had used my full name (with middle name) in my rent application, but the rent payment was only with my first + last name. Whatever automated system they used couldn't figure it out and caused them to think I hadn't paid rent.
- I don't have family in Japan so I had to use someone I know as an emergency contact. But in an event of an emergency, all they would do is call my family in America. Forcing a middleman is rather pointless. The same issue might honestly be a thing in America, but I suppose this is only a thing you notice when you are alone by yourself in a foreign country.
- I had known that foreign credit cards are not useable in certain cases (like JR related things don't let you use foreign visas except at the ticket office or vending machines), but it was surprising to me that some services don't allow payment by local debit cards. One example is Tokyo Gas, which did allow using a foreign credit card, but not a local debit card for some odd reason. I don't remember this being an issue in America ever.