Where You Actually Apply, and What to Do in Your First Two Weeks

Which office handles what, why the ward office matters more than immigration once you land, and the fourteen-day clock that gates your bank account, your phone and your health insurance.

Japanese bureaucracy is not hostile. It is sequential. Almost every frustration people have comes from doing things in the wrong order, showing up at the wrong counter, or missing a deadline that quietly gates five other things.

Here is who does what.

The offices, and what each one is for

Regional Immigration Services Bureau (出入国在留管理局). Anything about your status of residence: the Certificate of Eligibility, extensions, changes of status, permission to work outside your status, re-entry, permanent residency. Jurisdiction follows the address of the applicant or the sponsoring organisation. Tokyo's main bureau is in Shinagawa, and it is exactly as busy as you fear. Go early, or use one of the smaller branch offices if your address allows it.

Japanese embassy or consulate abroad. Issues the visa sticker in your passport, once you already hold a Certificate of Eligibility. Usually a few working days. This is the last step, not the first, and it is close to a formality.

City or ward office (市役所 / 区役所). Everything about you as a resident: address registration, national health insurance, pension, the residence certificate that half of the private sector will ask you for. You will visit this building more than immigration.

Legal Affairs Bureau (法務局). Company registration and the official company seal. Only relevant if you are incorporating.

Tax office (税務署) and pension office (年金事務所). Company and personal tax filings, and social insurance enrolment if you have a company.

The first two weeks, in order

At the airport. Hand over your passport with the visa and your Certificate of Eligibility. If you arrive at a major international airport, your residence card (在留カード) is printed and given to you there. If not, it is mailed to your registered address later. Keep the card on you: you are legally required to carry it.

Within 14 days of moving into your address: register at the city or ward office. This is the single most important appointment in your first month, and the deadline is real. Bring your residence card and passport. They will register your address, write it on the back of your residence card, and enrol you in national health insurance and the pension system if you are not covered through an employer.

Do this first. Almost nothing else works until it is done.

Then, in roughly this order:

My Number card. Your individual number arrives by mail after registration. The physical card is optional in theory and increasingly necessary in practice.
Bank account. Bring residence card, address registration, and a phone number. Some banks will refuse to open an account until you have been resident for six months. Japan Post Bank and Shinsei have historically been more accommodating to new arrivals, though policies change.
Phone contract. Needs the bank account or a credit card, and the residence card. This is the loop people get stuck in: bank wants a phone, phone wants a bank. Break it with a prepaid SIM or an MVNO that accepts a debit card, then upgrade later.
Personal seal (印鑑). Less universally required than it used to be, and still requested often enough that you should just get one made. If you will register a company you will need a registered seal specifically.

The loop, and how to get out of it

The classic deadlock is: apartment wants a bank account, bank wants an address, address registration wants a lease.

The way through is a temporary address. A monthly-rental apartment, a share house, or a company-provided address will let you register, and registration unlocks the bank, which unlocks everything else. You can update your registered address later, and updating is a fifteen-minute errand.

Do not try to solve the whole loop at once. Solve it in the order above and each step opens the next.

Two practical notes

Take more copies than you think you need. Passport, residence card, address certificate. Every counter wants its own copy, and the convenience-store copier queue at 4:45pm is a genuinely dispiriting experience.

Go in the morning, and avoid the start of April. The Japanese fiscal and academic year begins in April, which means every office in the country is processing everybody's paperwork simultaneously. A queue that takes twenty minutes in October can take three hours in early April.