Who is lucky enough to have access to the working holiday visa in Japan? Well i am fortunately. And if you are too, this post will help you answer some of the things you are asking yourself.
Application and Arrival
After I applied for the Working Holiday Visa, it took the embassy in Berlin less than one week to process it. After you pick up your passport you can see on your visa that you have now exactly one year to enter the country, so if you applied in January and your flight to Japan is in February, it‘s no problem to still postpone your flight to a later date, you can even take a flight the following year since the one year working holiday visa only starts from the day you enter the country.
So there i was on my way to Tokyo. With very limited Japanese skills and a backpack. When you arrive at the airport, the immigration officer will print your residence card in front of your eyes and you are entering the country already with your legal form of identification. Remember that you have to carry the residence card with you at all times, if the police checks you on the streets and you don‘t have it with you you, they can fine you with up to 200.000 Yen (around 1.800$).
Where to stay
It would be wise to arrange a room for the first few weeks or even months before you get there. You could also stay the first few days in a hostel and look from there but then you rely on what is available immediately and its much lees comfy, plus the hostels aren't the cheapest anyway. In Japan you don‘t really have to worry about fake websites or fake landlords ripping you off. I've never heard of anything bad that happened in that matter, besides, the Japanese are probably the most honest people on the planet.
The options to stay are quite limited, since as a working holiday visitor you probably won‘t stay in the same place more than a few months and you are not keen to get any furniture etc.
If you have a huge budget, airbnb is the easiest to go with. For all others, here it comes:
Share houses
This is my favorite kind of accommodation, it‘s basically a flat-share ranging from 2 flatmates up to 80. Yes you heard right, 80, i saw a share house with 80 people living there, they had 5 floors, a giant kitchen, a music room with a piano, roof terrace etc. I didn't choose to stay there but went with one where i had 40 flatmates, which was a more ok number for me. The people living there were 50% foreigners and 50% Japanese, so it was a good mix. If you choose to stay in a place like that, the benefit is not only a reasonable price for the rent (ranging 350$- 700$), but you make immediately connection to locals and other travelers you can have a good time with. Some useful websites therefore are:
Apartments
If you are not traveling alone but with your partner, it would be maybe better to get an apartment to have more privacy. You have to know that apartments are much smaller than what we westerners are used to. Apartments as small as 20 m² in total are pretty normal, especially in Tokyo. From my experience you can get a furnished apartment that is not too shabby starting from 1 000$ per month, you will have to have real luck to find a cheaper one. The website with the most reasonable prices i came across is
Modern Living Tokyo
I was staying with them for a few months when my girlfriend came joining me in Tokyo.
Private accommodations
For the very savy ones out there, i came across some English cafe‘s that offered accommodation for a few hours »work« a day. And by »work« i mean just sitting on a coffee-table and talking with people. If you wonder what an English cafe is which you probably do. It‘s a cafe where the Japanese have to pay an hourly fee (of usually 1.000 Yen) to be in and talk in English to the people working there (you, if you work there). Yes this is real, and yes, people in Japan pay for that. It‘s a crazy world.
You can probably find some other kind of work/accomodation arrangements at www.workaway.info I‘ve seen all kind of offers, from teaching english in a school to making the neighbourhood more artistic.
Bank Account and Changing Money
Since you are coming with a working holiday visa you are keen to work right? right? So you should get a bank account that your employer can pay your salary to. With your residence card your can go to any bank to open an account, but if your Japanese skills are near zero like mine were, the only bank where the forms they give you are in English is the Shinsei Bank. Opening an account there is pretty easy, it takes just around 30 minutes and you already get your cash card on location. But before you go there you have to have 2 things completed.
- You have to have a Japanese address printed on your residence card
- You gotta have a Japanese phone number
The solutions for those 2 tasks are a bit further down the blog post.
I tried all possible methods and you can save a lot of money choosing the right exchange method. By far the best one is to bring cash and change it in Tokyo, but not just at any Money exchange, most have pretty bad rate, the one with the best rates is located here. They are called M Changer and have the best rates in the whole city. In comparison with withdrawing money with my Visa Card i will get for every 1000€ i change, 30€ more from the M Changer. The exchange rates of your bank at home is usually not very good.
For the ones who do not trust in FIAT money: Once you have your residence card and a bank account, you can open an account at bitFlyer, change your cryptos to yen and withdraw them to your bank account. Even though Japan being at the forefront of the crypto-revolution, its not widespread yet and its too much of a hassle relying only on coin-payments on the streets.
Register at Ward Office
Once you have a more permanent accommodation you should go to your local ward office (that's how they call their city halls here) to register you at your current address. You will have to do so each time you move, within 14 days. I‘m not sure if anyone would ever care if you actually do this, but you have to do it at least the first time to get an address on your residence card. Without one you will not be able to open a bank account or even get a job.
You don‘t need to make an appointment, you just show up and draw a number, everything will be settled within 15 minutes. And no worries to orientate there, everybody is very helpful there, especially if you look like a clueless foreigner.
What about Sim Cards
The last thing to get you settled is getting a SIM card. This may sound easy, but it is quite the opposite in Japan. For some reason it is really hard to get a normal SIM Card. There are 2 type of SIM cards, one is data only and the other one is one with a contract where people can actually call and text you. A data SIM card is pretty easy to get, just buy one from an electronic store. Since you kinda live here now and you want your employers being able to call you, you gotta get a proper SIM card, right? Anyway you will also need a Japanese number to sign up for your bank account - they will check it.
Tourists can not get a SIM card with call option but you can with your residence card. I still decided not to get one because the rates of the contract are way too high in my opinion, they ask in average above 40$ per month for a normal contract if you add up all costs. So i was looking for some alternatives. What i eventually did is: I bought a 3 months data-only SIM with 2 GB, (cost 35$) which is totally enough for me. Additionally i got myself a Japanese Skype number. For 3.50$ per month Skype gives you a local number people can call you on. It looks like a local number, it smells like a local number. There is one disadvantage though. You can‘t receive text messages with that number, so if you need to get a verification code for anything via text, you will not be able to do so, i tried.