The rest of JapanPass is written for people planning a trip. This part is for people who already live here, or are about to, and need the ordinary machinery of daily life explained in English.
Visiting Japan and living in Japan are different problems. A traveller needs to know which restaurant is worth the detour. A resident needs to know which bank will open an account without a Japanese guarantor, which phone carrier has English support when something goes wrong, and what happens at the ward office when you move.
Almost none of that is written down in English in one place. It is scattered across forum threads from 2015, company pages that were never translated, and advice passed between friends. The useful version usually lives in somebody's head.
Living is where we put the version that does not.
These are the areas we are working through first, chosen because they are the ones that block people in their first year and keep costing them afterwards.
Banks that will actually open an account, what they ask for, and how to move money in and out of the country without losing a slice each time.
Carriers and providers, what a contract commits you to, and which ones will speak English when there is a problem to solve.
How renting works here, what key money and guarantor requirements mean in practice, and which agencies deal with non-Japanese tenants as a matter of course.
Clinics and hospitals where you can be seen in English, how the insurance system treats you, and what to do when it is urgent.
International schools, Japanese language schools, and the practical differences between them for a family or an adult learner.
Residence procedures, the ward office, pension and tax. The parts nobody explains until you have already got them wrong once.
The same way the rest of the site does. Every place we list gets a plain entry with what it is, where it is, and whether it is realistic to deal with in English. We say when something is not confirmed rather than filling the gap with a guess.
Businesses do not pay to be included, and paying never moves anything up. Where a listing is a paid partner, it says so on the listing.
One word about the name. We call this Living rather than anything about expats or foreigners. Plenty of people who have built a life here have no interest in being called an expat, and plenty of others do not consider themselves foreign anymore. If you live here, this section is for you, and you should not have to pick a label to use it.
This section is being written now, which is the useful moment to hear from you. If there was something you had to work out the hard way, that is exactly the thing worth writing down. It is also the fastest way to make sure we build the parts that matter instead of the parts that are easy.