I’ve taken out Mortgages faster than getting a Japanese SIM card

I had finally boarded the plane with a one-way ticket to Japan, and in-hand was my Passport stuffed with a 5 year COE and a nice new Visa. I was on my way at last!

After getting all those documents sorted, actually entering Japan is super easy. At immigration, take the line for visitors (not residents as you are not one yet) and then the immigration officer will carry out the normal tasks: checking your passport, taking finger prints and then checking you have completed the customs and immigration form either physically or online (and have the QR code to scan). Shortly after,  you are handed your Zairyu card (also known as your resident card) all nicely and freshly printed with your photo and details from your COE/Visa. I'll do more a detailed post on this card later. After immigration it's through customs as normal and out of the airport doors to finally start life in Japan!

Sea Donut Aquarium, Amakusa

Some old friends were kind enough to pick me up from Narita, and we drove out to their place on the Chiba Coast where I spent a few days. After that I took 3 trains to travel the 1200kms down to Kumamoto to be reunited with my family whom I had not seen in 3 weeks since they moved earlier.

Our annual trips to Japan had increasing become 'domesticated' for want of a better word, as each year we had seen and done so much of what there is to see and instead spending a bit more time at home. With the arrival of our daughter, our trip last year was just like being at home but in Japan - parenting doesn't stop when you are on holiday. 

This was no different with moving to Japan thus far. By the sounds of it, Tomomi and her parents had struggled to look after our daughter as Tomomi is working full time from home, and she is not quite ready for to allow her grandparents to look after her for long periods of time without demanding for mummy. So my first 2 weeks have been doing childcare from breakfast to early afternoon. This has been tough as we are staying in someone else's house without our stuff, we are in the countryside and if it's just me and my daughter I have no transportation. Oh and it's rainy season too just to make it more challenging. Fortunately Tomomi works NZ business hours so she's finished by 2pm and we can run errands and do some activities in the afternoon.

One of the first of those errands we had to run for me was to visit the local City Office. Now i'm a bit sketchy on the finer details as my wife took care of all of this for me (thanks x), but it involves registering my new address to my Zairyu card (which needs to be done within 14 days whenever you move) as well as signing up for my Pension and Insurance, and also for a 'My number' Card. More info on those later, and they are all very important with regards to living in Japan.

Some photos taken in the past week in Japan

Why is getting a phone plan so hard?

The next item on my list was a phone plan as my horrendously overpriced tourist unlimited data plan was only for 30 days and I definitely need data for being able to navigate and translate when away from Wifi. Previous trips I have just hopped between public WIFI, but as I discovered last year in the city when I went off on my own, I could not contact my Wife to rendezvous as I could not find a free wifi that I could access. 

The phone plan was where I hit a unanticipated hurdle in that I just got stuck in a loop, which I have detailed below in all its loopy glory:

To sign up for any sort of mobile plan online in Japan, even data, they need to do a form of ID verification. For me as a foreign resident that means my Zairyu card as I do not have a My Number Card yet. The problem with this is that they all seem to need me to install an App to be able to scan the card with it to continue the process. But then the apps are only available on the Japanese App Stores, and my App Store is still set to New Zealand. Changing your region is easy providing you do not have any Apple subscriptions. But I do. You are supposed to cancel your subscription, wait until the end of its current period (upto a month), then change your region and then resubscribe. But no. Because to resubscribe, Apple won't let you use a card to pay for it that is from outside the region you have selected - so for Japan I need a Japan based Card, and I cannot apply for even the most accessible of cards (Rakuten) in Japan without a Japanese mobile number, and I cannot get said mobile number because.... restart loop.

So I changed my region and simply used my wife's Rakuten card to keep my iCloud going, then installed the Rakuten Mobile app, did the application including the ID verification to just later receive an email stating they could not verify my length of stay (it's right there on the bloody card). There must be something missing when scanning the card as I had the identical issue when doing the same process with a different provider, Ahamo. I was oh so close to breaking out of the loop.

The only way to sort this was in person, and nothing can prepare you for how painful this was. In New Zealand I can sign up easily online without much info, or even just grab a SIM card at a supermarket checkout. I have taken out mortgages faster and with less paperwork...

Anyhow, we were in Bic Camera, and when you walk into the ground level you get swarmed by telecom company staff. I approached an Indian fellow in a Rakuten shirt because his name tag had the Union Jack to indicate that he speaks English. He even said so when I asked him 'do you speak English?' he then proceeded to not understand a single word of English beyond that... So I had to rope my wife into sitting down with a Japanese staff member to do the application. 

If you aren't aware, Japan still lives in a 90's (or maybe 80's?) society when it comes to paperwork. Everything is forms forms forms. To sign up for a simple mobile phone plan took around 1 hour. The chap read every line of the paperwork and then I had to tick to acknowledge everything and this just went on and on and on. To avoid this pain again anytime soon, we also did the application for a Rakuten Card and Rakuten Bank too. Funnily enough I got rejected for the card shortly afterwards, probably because I don't yet have the bank account...

All the Rice fields are currently being planted

The Phone Plan

This post has unexpectantly and unintentionally just turned into one about getting a phone plan in Japan, so I may as well go into some of the details of the plan itself.

You can apply to sign up here for the Rakuten SAIKYO Plan. This is the base plan. There are a tonne of add-ons (voicemail for instance is an add-on) and the app will constantly pester you into accidentally upgrading but for the most part, the basic plan with no add-ons will be what most people need.

As you can see below, you pay according to how much data you use, and if you use over 20gb in one month then you pay a flat rate for unlimited data for that month.

You get unlimited calls if using only the Rakuten Link app, which from what I gather is like VOIP, so web calling using data. Conventional SMS Texts are not free, yes Japan is still in the dark ages. Neither of these are an issue though considering how much messaging and calling we all do through other apps nowadays: LINE, WhatsApp, Messenger etc.. so treat this like a scalable data plan that has the bonus of giving you a Japanese phone number that can receive texts and calls.

I should also mention Rakuten is an eco system. They have shopping similar to Amazon, online bank, credit card, travel booking, stock brokering etc.. and the more you use and spend, the more points you get and then those points can be used for many things including completely paying for your phone bill.

Rakuten Saikyo phone plan pricing

 

In closing

The reality is, in the 2 weeks since I've arrived not a whole lot has happened. We are waiting for a number off things to happen and there is no rush as we are very much just doing life and working until those things fall into place. The main one is our house in NZ selling which may take a while given the low interest and slow market there at the moment. I'll shortly get onto a post with everything you need to know about the Zairyu and My Number Cards soon. Stay tuned!