Student visa: your first 14 days at the Tokyo ward office

A Student residence status of more than three months comes with a residence card and a 14-day deadline. The 14 days start when you move into the apartment, not when you land. You file at the ward office counter. The form is a 転入届 (tennyūtodoke — moving-in notification), and the card is a 在留カード (zairyū kādo — residence card, the photo ID that shows your status and period of stay).

Almost every housing guide written for foreigners in Tokyo assumes you do not have that card. The assumption is correct for tourists. It is correct for the digital nomad visa. It is wrong for you, and acting on it costs you a health insurance card, a bank account, and a phone contract on ordinary terms.

Who gets a card, and who does not

The Immigration Services Agency draws one line. Its Guidebook on Living and Working says a residence card "is issued to a person who stays in Japan over three months," and calls that person a mid-to-long-term resident.

The same page lists six cases where no card is issued: a stay of three months or less, Temporary Visitor status, Diplomat or Official status, special permanent residents, people with no status at all, and one named group under 特定活動 (tokutei katsudō — Designated Activities, the status used when a case fits none of the other categories). That group is "Digital Nomad (a person who stays in Japan for the purpose of international remote work, etc.) and his/her spouse/children."

Student is not on the list. Read the period of stay printed on your card or on your landing sticker. If it is longer than three months, you have a card, and you have the duties that come with it.

Where you landed decides how the card reaches you. Narita, Haneda, Chubu, Kansai, New Chitose, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka issue it at the counter on arrival. Any other airport or seaport stamps "Residence card to be issued later" in your passport, and the card is posted to you after you file the moving-in notification. Bring the passport instead of the card in that case.

The 14 days, and what happens if you miss them

The agency's own wording is short. "Please report the place of residence by presenting a residence card to the municipal office where you live in within 14 days of the day when you decide a new place of residence or change the place of residence."

The same notice lists what failing to report can lead to. Under revocation of status: "Have failed to give notification of the place of residence without a justifiable reason or have submitted a false notification."

If you are already past day 14, file anyway. Take your lease or booking confirmation so the counter can see the date you actually moved in. Late is a conversation. Never is a status problem.

What the counter hands back

One visit does four things.

• The address on your residence card is updated on the spot. The guidebook: "When you file a moving-in notification, the address registered on your Residence Card will be updated at that time."
• A 住民票 (jūminhyō — resident record, the ward's file on who lives where) is created in your name. Copies of it are what a bank or a phone shop asks for when they want proof of address.
• Your 個人番号 (kojin bangō — Individual Number, the 12-digit number used for tax and social security) is mailed to you.
• You become required to join National Health Insurance.

That last one is a duty, not an offer. The guidebook states it flatly: "All registered residents who are under 75 and are not in Employees' Health Insurance are obliged to get enrolled in National Health Insurance." Minato says the same thing in its own words: "Those who have registered themselves as residents of Minato City, in compliance with the Basic Resident Registration Law, must subscribe to NHI."

Enrolment is a second form at a second counter, and the ward gives you 14 days for that one too. Missing it does not save you money. Minato spells out why: "If you delay completing the necessary procedures, you will have to pay insurance premiums for the period going back to the month in which you became eligible for NHI." Register on 1 April, walk to the insurance counter on 1 September, and the ward bills you for April through August as well. Five months of premiums for five months you were not covered. This is the opposite of the travel-insurance gap a short-stay guest has to work around.

The pension bill, and the form that pauses it

Registering also signs you up for the National Pension once you turn 20. The Japan Pension Service is blunt about it: everyone living in Japan becomes an insured person from the age of 20 and is required to pay contributions. Students sit in Category I, the same group as self-employed people, and Category I pays a flat monthly amount.

There is a way out, and it is a form rather than a conversation. The 学生納付特例制度 (gakusei nōfu tokurei seido — Student Payment Special Exception) postpones the contributions while you are enrolled at school. You file it at the National Pension counter of the ward office where your resident registration sits. Same building, different desk. Approval depends on your own income from last year, not your family's.

What registering does not unlock

The guides written for nomads describe a sequence. No residence card means no resident record, and no resident record means no ordinary lease. You now clear the first two steps. It does not follow that the third one opens.

Registration is not what decides a two-year unfurnished lease. Screening decides it, and screening is a different desk asking a different question.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism published numbers on that desk in an October 2016 briefing. Some form of guarantee is required in about 97 percent of rental contracts, and roughly six in ten use a 家賃債務保証会社 (yachin saimu hoshō-gaisha — rent guarantee company, a firm that promises the landlord your rent and charges you a premium for it). The same briefing reports how those companies screen, and it names the pattern directly: welfare recipients and foreign nationals tend to have a harder time passing. Foreign students appear as their own row in the survey it cites.

A resident record does not change any of that. The guarantee company is asking who pays if you stop paying. A student with no Japanese income, no Japanese employer, and no Japanese co-signer looks the same to them whether or not the ward office has your address on record. The ministry treats this as a known problem rather than a rumour. Under the Housing Safety Net Act, the law names low-income households, disaster victims, older people, people with disabilities, and families with children as groups who need help finding rental housing. A ministry rule adds foreign nationals to that list.

The rest of the two-year packet is money, not paperwork. 礼金 (reikin — "gratitude money," a non-refundable payment to the landlord at signing), 敷金 (shikikin — a refundable deposit), the agent's fee, the guarantee company's first premium, then a fridge, a washing machine, a bed, and utility hookups for an apartment that arrives empty. You sign for 24 months. Your first semester does not wait for a unit to come free.

So a student and a nomad arrive at the same housing answer for opposite reasons. The nomad takes furnished midterm housing because the ordinary lease is closed to them in law. You take it because the ordinary lease is open to you on paper and slow and expensive in practice. Register either way. The card, the resident record, the insurance, and the pension form are yours the day you file, and none of them care what kind of housing contract you signed.

City, ward, building: three layers on one address

City level is national and does not change: 14 days, the residence card, the moving-in notification. The rule reads the same in Sapporo as it does in Tokyo.

Ward level is where it varies. Each of Tokyo's 23 wards runs its own counter, its own opening hours, and its own insurance section. Shinjuku publishes its procedures in English at foreign.city.shinjuku.lg.jp and gives you 14 days for a change of address. Minato publishes a living guide that names exactly what to bring: residence card, passport, and a moving-out certificate if you came from another municipality in Japan. Read your own ward's page, not a general one.

Building level is the layer people skip, and it decides whether the rest of this works at all. You register the address where you actually live. A unit run under a hotel licence, or under the 180-night minpaku rules, is lodging rather than housing, and lodging is not an address you register. A unit let on a residential lease is housing, and it is. The listing page rarely tells you which one you are looking at. The contract does.

So ask the operator (the company that runs the furnished rental) one question in writing before you pay anything: can I register this address at the ward office? A yes in an email is worth more than a guess on day 15.

The ward-office run, in order

1. Read the period of stay on your residence card or landing sticker. Three months or less means no card, no registration, and a different set of rules.
2. Ask the operator or landlord in writing whether you may register the address. Do it before you pay the first invoice.
3. Within 14 days of moving in, take your residence card and passport to your ward office and file the tennyūtodoke.
4. Same visit, go to the insurance counter and enrol in National Health Insurance. Do not leave it for next week; the bill backdates either way.
5. If you are 20 or over, ask at the National Pension counter for the gakusei nōfu tokurei form and file it with your certificate of school enrolment.
6. Order two copies of your jūminhyō before you leave the building. The bank wants one and the phone shop wants the other.

Missing the deadline is recoverable. Assuming the deadline was written for somebody else is the expensive mistake.