Moving from Japan to Taiwan 🇯🇵->🇹🇼: Part 1

I recently moved to Taiwan from Japan! My motivations, which I will elaborate on in a future post, are to reconnect with my roots, get closer to my extended family, and establish a life here. My original goal when moving to Asia was to establish myself in both Japan and Taiwan, so I’m now fulfilling the second part of that goal. Part 1 of this post will focus on moving out of Japan successfully.

Table of Contents

• Interesting Tech Job Opportunities in Japan

• Procedures to move out of Japan 🇯🇵

  • If you might come back to Japan

  • If you are not coming back to Japan

• Gotchas

• Conclusions

Interesting Tech Job Opportunities in Japan

First, I’d like to highlight some interesting tech job opportunities I came across recently, likely with good culture and pay. Despite technically having moved out, I’m still in touch with the scene in Japan. The US tech scene has slowed down hiring recently which has affected positions in Japan as well, but some opportunities are still available.

Hopper, a travel tech company is looking for a remote frontend software engineer in Japan. No Japanese is required, and it possibly is a contract position.

Flatiron Health Japan is looking for both a Software Engineer and a Staff Data Scientist for their Tokyo office. They are a well funded US startup and this is an exciting opportunity. These roles require professional-level Japanese and English.

MoneyForward, a popular Japanese personal finance app, has multiple tech roles open.

Octopus Energy, a European energy company also operating in Japan, is looking for Backend Engineers.

On the AI front:

Sakana.ai recently raised a $30M round to develop AI in Japan. They are looking for a Compute Platform Engineer and a Business Analyst / Associate.

Stability.ai, the company behind the popular image generation model Stable Diffusion, has various machine learning adjacent engineer positions available, though proficient Japanese is required.

There are definitely more opportunities available and you can get notified of new ones that pop up. Read my post on how to find a job in Japan for tips.

Procedures to move out of Japan 🇯🇵

The procedures to move out of Japan are fairly well documented, but I wanted to expand on some lesser known details. Not including personal life steps, the procedural steps generally are (not necessarily in strict order):

1. Notify your local ward you are moving out (転出届, tenshutsu todoke).

2. Notify your health insurance you are leaving.

3. Appoint a tax representative (納税管理人の届出, nouzei kanrinin no todoke).

4. Pay remaining residence taxes.

5. Cancel your utilities, move or get rid of your stuff.

6. Set up international mail forwarding.

7. (Later) Request a pension refund after a minimum 6 month wait.

If you might come back to Japan:

1. Get a re-entry permit from immigration (再入国許可 sainyukoku kyoka).

If you are not coming back to Japan:

1. (Optional) Cancel bank accounts.

2. Cancel your My Number card.

3. Turn in your residence card at the airport.

In my case, I hold Permanent Residency with Japan, and I intend to come back at some point in time in the future and not give up my Permanent Residency.

Notify your local ward you are moving out (転出届, tenshutsu todoke)

This is a required step. Preferably this should be done 14 days before you move out, and can be done at latest the day you move out.

The procedure varies by city, and you can potentially do this online on the My Number Portal or by mail.

I went in person to my city office to do the notification. My experience was:

1. I was not required to fill out my new address, just the country I was moving to.

2. I was allowed to print out a last copy of my residence certificate (住民票, juuminhyo) and stamp certificate (印鑑証明書, inkan shoumeisho), in case I needed it for any reason, but I needed my My Number Card. The staff said that immediately after the notification was processed, I wouldn’t be able to print these at the convenience store anymore, and would be unable to get these from the city office starting from the following day. I would recommend getting at least 1-2 copies in case you need to complete some procedures after you leave.

Notify health insurance you are leaving

This may differ if you are on NHI or on private insurance. I was on private insurance, so I let the payments lapse past my move out date. For NHI, you should go to your ward office and notify them you are withdrawing from NHI because you are leaving Japan. You need to surrender your health insurance card as it is considered a legal document.

Appoint a tax representative (納税管理人の届出, nouzei kanrinin no todoke)

A tax representative handles notification for all national tax related matters for you. You can still handle your taxes yourself, though your My Number card may not work anymore, but there needs to be someone officially in Japan for notification purposes. This can be done at any time before you leave. If you do not appoint a tax representative and you leave Japan, you are supposed to file a last tax return and immediately pay all owed taxes. If you do appoint a tax representative, you or they can file as usual before the March 15 date.

The tax representative does not need to be present to appoint them, you just need their name, address, and phone number. You can do this at your local National Tax Agency office (税務署, zeimusho). Don’t confuse this with the tax agency of your local ward, as they only deal with ward taxes.

You can read more about this procedure on the official NTA site. Supposedly you can do the notification with e-Tax, but only the desktop version, and I could not get this to work from the experience in my previous post.

Pay remaining residence taxes

You are supposed to immediately pay all remaining residence tax upon leaving Japan. If you have payment slips lying around, pay those. If you don't have payment slips as it's earlier than June you should go to your ward tax office. However, you will not owe residence tax from the current year, as residence tax is only charged for the previous year if you are legally residing in Japan as of January 1 of any given year, and billed in installments starting in June.

You can read more on residence tax here.

Cancel your utilities, move or get rid of your stuff

If you are moving out, you should cancel your utilities and deal with your stuff. Utilities usually need some lead time to be cancelled, otherwise you might unnecessarily be paying for service you are not using. There a lot of groups and services where you can sell your things, as well as various moving companies to help you move out of Japan. This guide will not go into the details on how to do these things.

Set up (international) mail forwarding

If you still want to get your mail, you can set up mail forwarding with Japan Post. You cannot forward your mail abroad, but you can send to any domestic address in Japan. You can read more here.

If you want to get your mail abroad, you can sign up for a virtual mailbox service that either can scan mail for you, or forward them internationally. In this case, you would sign up for a mail forwarding service and have Japan Post redirect to this address.

(Later) notify the pension office you are leaving

You do not need to notify the pension office (年金事務所, nenkin jimusho) that you are leaving Japan. I went and tried to do this and they were quite confused! You cannot immediately request a pension refund, but you must wait 6-8 months first. As a Permanent Resident, I heard cases of being denied the refund unless you give up your Permanent Residency, so I am not bothering with this.

If you might come back to Japan

Get a re-entry permit from immigration (再入国許可 sainyukoku kyoka)

Technically if you always return to visit within the 1 year period of a Special Re-entry Permit, you can just continuously use that to return to Japan. However, these are generally not extendable, and during COVID, people were locked out of Japan and lost their visas. If you plan to return to Japan and want to keep your visa valid (assuming you have a status which doesn’t require you to engage in specific activities in Japan), it’s safer to get a regular a Re-Entry Permit from immigration, as it lasts longer and is generally extendable. A multiple re-entry permit costs 6000 yen and can be processed same day.

You will get a stamp in your passport which looks like the above. You can still use the automated gates if you have registered for those, though you now pick Re-Entry instead of Special Re-Entry. You still will fill out a departure and re-entry card as usual and get it stapled to your passport.

If you are not coming back to Japan

(Optional) Cancel bank accounts

I would advise you to cancel and withdraw your money from your bank accounts anyways as banks will often freeze your accounts if they find out you are not living in Japan. They do this by sending mail to your registered address as well as asking you to submit a renewed residence card once your current one expires.

Once this happens, you will not be able to unfreeze your money unless you come in person to withdraw it.

However, you could pass the mail verification check if you set up mail-forwarding or your current address remains valid to receive your mail.

Return your My Number card

Turn your My Number card in at your local ward. If you return to Japan, you will get your My Number card back. I found out that after submitting the move out notification, the My Number card was now unable to be used from the Mynaportal or at convenience stores to print official documents.

Turn in your residence card at the airport

At immigration, indicate that you are not returning to Japan on the embarkation card and surrender your residence card. Tada! You’ve successfully moved out of Japan.

Gotchas

Watch out for these common mistakes!

You should not donate to Furusato Nozei the year you move out of Japan. As you will not be paying residence tax on that year’s income, you will not receive the full benefits of the program and will only get a deduction from your income for the amount you donate.

Don’t exceed the time limit of your re-entry permit when coming back to Japan, otherwise your visa, residence card, etc. become invalid. Normal (not special) re-entry permits can be extended at Japanese consulates.

Conclusions

People move out of Japan for various reasons, and may come back at a future date. Hopefully they found their time in Japan to be wonderful regardless of the reason. This guide is meant to help people through the finer points of the procedural side of things.

You can always reach out [email protected] if you have any questions. Remember, you can also support this publication by becoming a paid subscriber or a Patreon!