What Moving to Japan Actually Looks Like (The Hard Parts)

It’s not uncommon for tourists to visit Japan and feel an immediate urge to move there. The experience for visitors is one of the smoothest travel experiences you can have.

Everything seems designed to run as seamlessly as possible, from the spotless, walkable streets to the incredible food to the public transportation that runs on time.

It’s easy to spend a few weeks here and decide you never want to leave. But the reality is that as a resident, you’ll face a very different story from what you just saw.

The gap between temporarily visiting Japan and actually trying to build a life there is surprisingly large, and when I moved here, I was caught off guard by these things.

Paperwork and Bureaucracy

As soon as you touch down in the country, you are hit with a barrage of paperwork.

As a tourist, you probably will experience a minor version of this with some customs and disembarkation forms, but once you’re beyond this, the paperwork is basically over. As a resident, you’ll constantly find yourself tripping over red tape.

An example every new resident faces is that getting a Japanese phone number requires a bank account, but opening a bank account requires a phone number.

These kinds of circular requirements come up constantly, and there’s rarely a workaround that doesn’t involve physically showing up at multiple offices, often more than once, to sort things out.

Japan is still very much a paper-based society, as well.

When I say paperwork, I quite literally mean you will be filling out printed forms with a pen, and mistakes mean you have to stamp out the error, draw two lines through it, and rewrite the correct information next to it. Sometimes they’ll throw out the entire form and make you start over.

It’s slow, tedious, and hasn’t changed for many decades. It’s unlikely to change any time soon.

Technological Paradoxes

Japan has bullet trains, advanced robots, and engineering marvels that other countries only dream of. The international reputation is that Japan is an extremely advanced society, and in many ways, it’s very true.

At the same time, the number of things you can actually do on a phone or computer for daily administrative tasks is surprisingly limited.

As a visitor, you might notice small hints of this. Hotels will hand you maps printed on copy paper or ask for a physical signature on check-in, even if you handled the reservation online. Cash-only restaurants are still very common, and public Wi-Fi is hilariously bad. For a short trip, these are minor inconveniences and easily survivable.

Once you decide to move to Japan, these inconveniences are defining features of your life. The most essential tasks that every single person must do, such as registering your address, setting up utilities, or dealing with insurance, often require you to physically go somewhere, sit down, and fill out paper forms.

The idea that you could handle all of this online, as you might in the US or Europe, doesn’t apply in many cases.

It’s one of the more jarring contradictions of daily life in Japan. The country that built the Shinkansen still requires phone reservations, physical paperwork, and sometimes even faxed documents rather than handling business online.

Privacy and Social Pressure

Many visitors may feel they can get away with bad behavior in Japan because people usually prefer to avoid direct confrontation in such situations.

When you’re only here for two weeks, mistakes will be forgotten, and you’ll likely never deal with the repercussions. Living here means these mistakes will compound into serious social backlash.

This will depend on where you live, but it is especially true in smaller cities and rural areas.

People will know everything about you, even if you never told them. Your boss and coworkers will know exactly where you live, and neighbors you’ve never spoken to will know who you are, what you do, and probably what time you got home last Tuesday.

As a foreigner, you’re going to stand out no matter what, so once people in the community become aware of you, your reputation becomes incredibly important. Word travels fast, and you’ll occasionally hear things like “I saw you at the grocery store the other day” from someone you’ve never had a conversation with.

This makes rule-following especially important, operating as a panopticon.

I’ve had a coworker whose boss received a phone call from a stranger because they didn’t give up their seat to an elderly person on the bus. I’ve seen 1-star reviews of businesses because their employees didn’t give enthusiastic enough greetings in the morning.

Social pressure is real in Japan, and it goes beyond mere rule-following. There’s an expectation that you’ll fit into the fabric of the community, and the community will notice if you don’t.

For those who enjoy privacy, this will take some serious adjustments.

Apartment Hunting as a Foreigner

Tourists can stay at practically any hotel, and it’s unlikely you’ll be turned away from some places just for being from another country. Trying to rent an apartment, however, is a dramatically different story.

Many landlords in Japan, including the largest real estate companies, will flat out refuse to rent to foreigners, full stop. It doesn’t matter what your nationality is, how long you’ve been in the country, or what your financial situation looks like. Some places simply don’t want to deal with non-Japanese tenants. It’s blatantly discriminatory, but it’s simply how the rental market works.

Don’t assume that having money, a visa, or Japanese fluency will mean you can live wherever you’d like. You’ll likely need a guarantor, a specific type of insurance, and a real estate agent who’s willing to work with foreign clients. Don’t get me wrong, having these things can help, but it’s no guarantee, and you should prepare yourself for rejection on at least one of your desired choices.

Daily Life Still Runs Smoothly

Despite all the bureaucratic frustration, once you get beyond the initial setup, daily life has an efficiency that’s hard to find anywhere else.

Your local convenience store becomes a one-stop solution for practically everything, from paying bills and printing documents to shipping packages and getting last-minute meals. The trains and buses work so well that planning transportation logistics becomes a breeze. Paying for a service like moving or delivery comes with the peace of mind that it will be done with care.

While it’s certainly not the utopia that a short trip may have you believe it is, the services that dictate your daily life usually work incredibly well.

The frustration of Japanese bureaucracy exists alongside a daily routine that, once you’ve cleared the initial hurdles, is remarkably smooth.

It’s a contradiction that never fully resolves, and learning to live with both sides of it is honestly one of the most defining parts of the experience.

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Most visitors to Japan will never encounter any of this, and that’s the point. The tourist experience is excellently precise because it’s been designed to avoid these friction points.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like actually to live there, or if you’re seriously thinking about moving to Japan, researching what’s on the other side of the tourist experience is worth your time.

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The Culture Shock Japan app covers the essentials for visitors, including etiquette guides, transportation tips, and useful Japanese phrases. Available on iOS.