A Japanese passport doesn't come with a Tokyo address

A Japanese passport has never printed your address on it. Since February 2020 it does not even have the blank page at the back where you used to write the address in by hand. Kyoto's passport office gives the reason in one clause: 「住所は、パスポートの記載事項ではありませんので」, meaning an address is not one of the things a passport records.

That sounds like trivia until you fly back to Tokyo for three months and try to rent somewhere to live. Your passport clears immigration in about a minute. It does almost nothing at the leasing agency, the bank counter, or the phone shop, because those three are not asking who you are. They are asking where you live, and Japan keeps that answer in a different file.

There are two registers, and returning citizens usually think about only one of them.

戸籍 (koseki — family register) is held in your 本籍 (honseki — registered home town), which can be a town you have never slept a night in. Nakano's own explanation: 「戸籍は、身分事項（父母名、出生、婚姻、離婚、縁組等）を公証するものです。」 It certifies parents' names, birth, marriage, divorce, adoption. Family facts.

住民票 (jūminhyō — resident record) is the second one. Same ward office, different job. Nakano again: 「住民票は、住民登録地つまり居住関係（「住んでいること」）を公証するものです。」 It certifies the fact that you live at an address.

Landlords, banks, and phone carriers want the second file. Your citizenship sits in the first one. Holding a Japanese passport does not put you in the second.

If you moved abroad properly, you took yourself out of it on purpose.

Leaving Japan for the long term means filing a 転出届 (tenshutsu todoke — moving-out notice). Koto draws the line at about a year. The notice is for 「江東区から国外へお引越しをする方で一定期間（おおむね1年以上）国外に滞在する予定のある方」, a person planning to be outside Japan for roughly a year or more. And 「1年未満の旅行や出張、留学など、江東区に生活の本拠を置いたまま短期間、国外に滞在する場合は必ずしも国外への転出届をする必要はありません。」, meaning a trip, work posting, or study period under a year does not need one, as long as your base of living stays in the ward.

Filing it was the right call at the time. It ended your resident tax and your national health insurance bills for a life you were no longer living here. It also took you off the resident register, and nobody at the counter had a reason to tell you what that would cost you years later.

Here is the sentence that decides where you sleep.

Most people assume you can walk into a ward office on day two, show the Japanese passport, and switch the resident record back on. You cannot, not for a three-month stay. Nerima writes the rule in a single line: 「休暇による一時帰国など生活の本拠地が国外である場合には、住民登録は行えません。」 A short trip home while your base of living is still overseas is their own example, and resident registration cannot be done. Nakano says the same thing from the other side: 「国外に移住している方が一時的に帰国した場合は、転入届をする必要はありません。」

Even if a counter did take the filing, the address on it has to be a place you actually live. Adachi states the limit: 「足立区ではホテル、旅館、ウィークリーマンション等の一時宿泊施設等では原則として住民登録を認めていません。」 Hotels, ryokan, and weekly apartments are not addresses you can register.

So the advice everyone gives a person arriving in Japan, go to the ward office first and the rest follows, is not slow for you. It is not available to you.

Now compare yourself with the foreigner waiting in the same room.

An engineer arriving on a one-year work visa is what the Ministry of Internal Affairs calls a 中長期在留者 (chūchōki zairyūsha — mid-to-long-term resident). The register covers 「中長期在留者」（在留カード交付対象者。「短期滞在」の在留資格や「3月」以下の在留期間を有する方などは含まれません。）, mid-to-long-term residents who hold a residence card, with short-stay statuses and stays of three months or less left out. She files at the ward within 14 days of settling in, and the Immigration Services Agency counts that same filing as her address report. The ward writes her address on the back of her residence card. Name, date of birth, and address, on one piece of plastic she carries in her wallet.

You have a passport with no address, and the card does not exist for citizens.

That comparison is uncomfortable, and it is accurate. She is not a citizen, may not speak the language, and has been in the country a week. On the one question a landlord actually asks, her answer is cleaner than yours.

The real damage is not the missing document. It is which queue you get put in.

At a rental agency you look like the easy domestic case. Japanese name in kanji, Japanese passport, Japanese spoken at full speed. Nobody thinks to show you the furnished short-lease listings, because those listings exist for people who obviously cannot do the normal thing. So you get the normal thing: a two-year lease, a guarantor company, proof of Japanese income, and a registered seal. The seal is already impossible. Koto: 「江東区に住民登録をしている方（意思能力を有しない方、15歳未満の方は除く）は、1人1個に限り、印鑑登録をすることができます。」 Seal registration is for people on the ward's resident register, and you are not on it.

The foreign resident is sent to a product built for her situation on sight. You are sent to a product you are formally eligible for and cannot finish. Looking domestic is the expensive part.

The money, at the two lengths that matter.

Take a ¥110,000 unfurnished studio, roughly what an agent shows a returning Japanese renter in a residential ward. Before you sleep in it, the signing bill looks like this:

• Deposit, one month: ¥110,000, some of which comes back
• Reikin, one month: ¥110,000, none of which comes back
• Agency fee, one month: ¥110,000
• Guarantor company, half a month: ¥55,000
• Fire insurance for the term: ¥20,000
• Lock change: ¥20,000

¥425,000, and the room is empty. A fridge, a washing machine, a bed, curtains, and a ceiling light in each room is another ¥150,000 if you buy carefully.

Set that against a furnished midterm apartment at ¥165,000 a month, with a ¥50,000 departure cleaning fee and nothing else at signing.

At 60 days, the two-year route costs ¥425,000 of signing fees plus ¥150,000 of furniture plus ¥220,000 of rent, less roughly ¥60,000 of deposit returned. That is ¥735,000. The furnished apartment costs ¥330,000 of rent plus ¥50,000 of cleaning, or ¥380,000.

At 90 days it is ¥845,000 against ¥545,000.

The crossover is the number to remember. Once you are in, the unfurnished studio runs ¥110,000 a month and the furnished one runs ¥165,000, so the furnished apartment costs ¥55,000 more per month to keep. The unfurnished route starts ¥465,000 further behind. ¥465,000 ÷ ¥55,000 = 8.5. The two-year lease only wins if you stay about eight and a half months. You are here for three.

And that assumes you can sign it. A two-year lease application normally wants a copy of your juminhyo attached. You cannot order one, because there is nothing to order it from. Most two-year leases also go through a guarantor company, which is one more check that starts from your address in Japan. Three weeks of viewings can end in a no.

The koseki does have a job, and it is a different one.

If you are moving home for a year or more, the koseki is what rebuilds the resident record. Nakano's list for a move in from overseas is the passport with the entry stamp, 戸籍の謄本または抄本, and 戸籍の附票, filed 「住み始めてから14日以内（届け出が遅れると過料がかかる場合があります）。」, within 14 days of moving in, with a fine possible if you file late. Koto adds 「本籍地が江東区の場合は不要です。」, meaning you skip the koseki documents when your honseki is already in that ward.

Most returning citizens are not that lucky. If your honseki is a town in Ehime and you are moving to Suginami, those two documents come by post from Ehime. Order them the month before you fly, not the week after you land.

One more thing the register controls, and it is the one that gets expensive fast.

National health insurance follows residence, not citizenship. Abiko's insurance division puts it plainly: 「生活の拠点が海外にある方が一時帰国（日本に短期滞在）する場合、国民健康保険に加入することはできません。」 A person whose base of living is overseas cannot join while briefly back in Japan. At a clinic you are paying the full price or using travel cover, and your Japanese passport changes none of that. The 90-day healthcare gap is the same problem seen from the other side, and banking has its own version.

If you are back for less than a year, stop trying to get the resident record. Nerima has already answered you in writing. Book the furnished apartment that exists for people who do not have one, and treat the rest of it, the phone plan, the payment card, the insurance, as the normal path rather than a workaround. If you are moving home for good, the koseki documents are your first errand and not your last, and the 14-day clock starts the day you move in.

— HalfKey runs furnished Tokyo apartments for stays of 30 days to 12 months. Browse listings for your dates.