This is a short summary of what happen at the Municipal Council or Ward Office during the first week of my stay. I was given a residence card at the airport and the back side of the card was suppose to contain my official address. In order to get that done forms had to be filled. It goes like this:
1. Fill out form with the help of the staff at the house. It's all in Japanese. But the main gist is to put in address, zip code, room number and stuff like that.
2. Brought passport, residence card and it was basically all taken care of by the dorm staff.
I wanted to learn about the process but I felt that it was simplified with the presence of a Japanese citizen/speaker. I also felt like it was pre arranged since we didn't have to take a number or anything.
So, despite of all that, the main takeaway I got from all of this was that:
1) Address is important, way more important than phone number;
2) You have to sometime write you name in katagana (or was it kanji). I got mine printed at the student card so I could just copy the symbols or show them to the officer. I was lucky in that sense; and
3) Don't get your details wrong. Since the use of alphabets are different when filling out forms, so is the understanding/interpretations of information. Tip: Don't mess up the roman alphabets in the first place.
If you apply for anything, this would be them main things to watch out for. I find having someone who can speak Japanese more than helpful, it would make the process A LOT smoother.
Apart from that, I also did my commuter pass. This will save you a ton. Without it I probably would have to spend a fortune to just commute and it just doesn't make sense. I didn't have a Japanese person to help me on this but again, all I need to make sure was, the route I was going to take. So, again address is important.
To open up a bank account and get a cash card (JP post), someone from the university helped us new international students. The form was filled several time as there were a lot of misunderstanding, typos etc. So, I realized that it'll be more helpful if I can find someone who can speak the Malaysia language and Japanese.
So that was what I did when I went to attempt to purchase a phone line. An undergrad helped and he already knew based on his experience the price range and what to look for in a phone package. I realized they use credit card a lot here. And I didn't want to use my Maybank credit card, worried about the conversion rate etc. The packages that allowed customer to pay with cash card was limited and the packages offered doesn't make economical sense. They don't call much here and a lot of the packages focus on internet data. Looking at how we spend so much time commuting, this makes perfect sense. A lot of communication nowadays is done through internet connection. So what happened was, I decided not to get this ridiculous package using my cash card and decided to apply for a Japanese credit card and just rely on wifi connection.
In my head, the general administration stuff checklist looks like this.
1) Get uni, dorm admin and official admin (visa, residence card etc.) sorted - Check
2) Commuter pass - Check
3) Bank account - Check
4) Phone line - in progress
5) House - in progress
6) Dependent visa - Not started
7) Getting my family here - not started
The rest are just routine/operational stuff - food, running but the above are the major ones ..Till then.
