The admin nobody explains

Most English guides to living in Japan tell you what a thing is. Almost none tell you whether you can actually sign up for it in your first year — which is the part that stops people.

The useful answers are written in Japanese, on provider pages, in terms documents, and in government notices that change without warning. We read those and answer the question you actually have.

Start here

• Internet at home — which options you can sign up for without a Japanese credit card
• A phone SIM — which ones need no credit check, and which need a residence card
• A bank account — the six-month rule, and who it doesn't apply to
• Your residence card — what the June 2026 change broke
• Moving in — the order to do things in, and what has a deadline

How we work

Every fact on this site is checked against the provider's own page or an official source, and each page says when it was last reviewed. Where we haven't verified something yet, it says checking rather than a guess. Prices in Japan change often and a confident wrong answer is worse than an honest gap.