This week I was finally able to get down the problems with getting a phone number and opening a pank account! Once my wice friend said that there is only two things upset him in Japan: phone companies and banks. He indeed was right about that. We went to three different phone contract offerers to search out our possibilities. The answer was pretty clear, there wasn't any. In Japan it common to have 2 year contract, 1 year contracts exist but those are usually way much more expencive and those are damn rare. Here exist kind of a prepaid cards as well from small companies but you are going to get your self devastated trying to figure out what has what you need.
Let's focus on the bank for a moment. I was recommended Shinsei bank and I really recommend it for everyone else as well. Shinsei is maybe the only bank in Japan which seems to be from a new era, things with it was extreamly easy and at least Shinjuku and Ikebukuro branches they had English speaking staff as well. The whole procces is very simple. You need to have (1) a recidence card granted for you at least for one year, (2) Japanese phone number which is hosted under your own name, friends, school's or foreign number is not accepted and (3) you need to have your passport with you. Some resources are saying that you need to have an inkan (hanko), a japanese stamp with your name in it, in order to get an account from Shinsei, but that info is actually invalid. You can sign papers with your signature or with inkan.
So in order to get a bank account which it self is easy you have to get a phone number. So we were already devastated with the whole thing. I already said that screw this I'll just keep my money in my finnish account, but Mikko insisted to try one more time. So we returned one more time to a really small company's desk in BIC Camera in Shinjuku. It was called "BIC SIM" (they have also English speaking staff). We had been there one more time earlier with our friend who speaks fluent Japanese, but that time the sim card didn't work in my phone. This is another common problem with the phones that are brought from overseas. But this time we tried it with Mikkos phone (we have same model) and surprise, surprise! It worked! So we tried again with mine as well and... didn't work. There was a moment of ackwardness before the company worker mummled something, and after a moment returned with another SIM card. He told us that the card he tried in our phones was "internet-only", now he would try "internet and calling" sim card. And oddly that worked. They couldn't explain that, but we were just happy!
BIC SIMs deal is pretty sweet if you are not planning to stay in Japan more than a one year. The deal is for one year, but it is not that expencive to cancel it than it is in companies like Docomo and SoftBank. You get your own phone number, can receive calls and call with it. You pay for each call 20yen/30seconds, but the deal includes 4GB internet. That set costs you 2 300 yen in a month. The payment is made through a credit card, so you need a credit card under your name in order to make the deal. You also have to be 20 years old and have a recidence card with you. It takes about an hour to sign the contract and receive the SIM card. So I really recommend trying this out!
It was such a relief to get this whole thing done with bank and phone company. We got our money out from euro accounts (which was super good since euro's value is sinking fast) to our Japanese accounts during this week. Now only paper thingy there is left is the working permit. Usually you would have got that done very easily by leaving the workind permit papers in airport, but in all the husttle we didn't know where to leave them. So now we're dealing with it in the country, but that is mostly out from our hands since the school is mostly doing it for us.
I promise next post is more about fun!
Here is a mixture of pictures about Takadanobaba, Shibuya and Koenji :3
Mata ne!
No comments:
Post a Comment