My Hanko cost about 4000yen it was the cheapest available. Make sure you let the owner of the Hanko shop know that the stamp is to be registered as there are rules on size etc for registered stamps.
Next there was so much miss information on the Internet that I had to have 2 stamps made. City hall rejected the first one. They said that your stamp had to contain either your last name, full name or first initials and last name. I went with last name as the less characters the cheaper the stamp. It cannot be written in Romaji, it must be katakana.
I would suggest checking with your local city hall first to make sure, as they may differ.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Buying a car in Japan.
In order to buy a car in Japan you must have a stamp made (Hanko) with your name on it, and have that stamp registered at City Hall. You can see my other post on Getting a Hanko. I did only once find something on the Internet that said you did not need to have the stamp as a foreigner. So if anyone can confirm this please post a reply. I choose just to get the stamp rather than find out if I needed it.
There are a few websites you can look at to figure out prices.
http://www.goo-net.com/english/
This one is in English but I thin the Japanese version is better and easier to search. You just find your location on the map. Then scroll down the next page with types of cars until you get to amounts of money. You can click on less than 20 man and you will have a list of cheap cars in your area.
You can click above the price column and it will reorder from cheapest to most expensive. There are 13 columns in total. Price is number 10.
レガシィツーリングワゴン ＧＴ ４ＷＤ
ドリームファクトリー The second is the type of can and picture
平成5年 Next the age in the Japanese calendar
ホワイト Colour
11.0万K Number of 10,000kms it has done for this one 110,000kms
2.0L Size of the engine.
なし Not sure
なし The shaken this says 'nashi' so it doesn't have any if it does it will give the expiry date in the Japanese calendar
青森県
3.98万円(リ済別) The cost in 10,000yen i.e. 39900yen
-
詳細を見る This will sometime give a different price and it is the price including all on road costs i.e. 2 years shaken.
While I think this site is great to get an idea of costs, I did try to buy a few very cheap cars only to find that they were already sold and the nearest car available was at least twice as expensive as the one advertised. However some of the more reasonably priced cars were really available. Although, apparently the owner of the shop, who advertised the car I wanted to buy, was too nervous to sell to a foreigner. So I gave up and had my school arrange a car for me.
So if your in Japan and looking for a car you will probably know by now that shaken is a 2 yearly tax and can be quite expensive. I managed to find a car for 90,000 yen with one years shaken. I was only staying one year so that was perfect. You can get really cheap cars with only one year shaken left if your only staying one year.
Other things to consider are the yearly tax. For a yellow plate car it is only around 5000 yen but for a white plate car it is about 30,000
Insurance, costs about 5000yen at least per month for the most basic plan.
If your in a snowy area consider 4WD.
There are a few websites you can look at to figure out prices.
http://www.goo-net.com/english/
This one is in English but I thin the Japanese version is better and easier to search. You just find your location on the map. Then scroll down the next page with types of cars until you get to amounts of money. You can click on less than 20 man and you will have a list of cheap cars in your area.
You can click above the price column and it will reorder from cheapest to most expensive. There are 13 columns in total. Price is number 10.
レガシィツーリングワゴン ＧＴ ４ＷＤ
ドリームファクトリー The second is the type of can and picture
平成5年 Next the age in the Japanese calendar
ホワイト Colour
11.0万K Number of 10,000kms it has done for this one 110,000kms
2.0L Size of the engine.
なし Not sure
なし The shaken this says 'nashi' so it doesn't have any if it does it will give the expiry date in the Japanese calendar
青森県
3.98万円(リ済別) The cost in 10,000yen i.e. 39900yen
-
詳細を見る This will sometime give a different price and it is the price including all on road costs i.e. 2 years shaken.
While I think this site is great to get an idea of costs, I did try to buy a few very cheap cars only to find that they were already sold and the nearest car available was at least twice as expensive as the one advertised. However some of the more reasonably priced cars were really available. Although, apparently the owner of the shop, who advertised the car I wanted to buy, was too nervous to sell to a foreigner. So I gave up and had my school arrange a car for me.
So if your in Japan and looking for a car you will probably know by now that shaken is a 2 yearly tax and can be quite expensive. I managed to find a car for 90,000 yen with one years shaken. I was only staying one year so that was perfect. You can get really cheap cars with only one year shaken left if your only staying one year.
Other things to consider are the yearly tax. For a yellow plate car it is only around 5000 yen but for a white plate car it is about 30,000
Insurance, costs about 5000yen at least per month for the most basic plan.
If your in a snowy area consider 4WD.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The cheapest and easiest way to send money home.
There are a lot of forums discussing which way is best to send money back home. I did a lot of research and decided that using http://www.xe.com/ was not only the cheapest option, but also the easiest. However, it was time consuming trying to work out how to do it so here's an outline.
First of all you will need an address in Japan and your alien registration card.
If you have that you can go ahead and apply for a power flex account with Shinsei Bank.
www.shinseibank.com/english/
They have no fees, just say you're interested at the above site and they will send you out an application. You fill it in and return it and they send you an ATM card and all the info you need to log on to an English Internet banking site.
-I don't live any where near a Shinsei Bank or ATM but you can deposit and withdraw money for free via post office or 7holdings ATM's in shopping centres or 7/11's so you can use the account free, anywhere in Japan.
Next you will need to open an account with Xe trade.
http://www.xe.com/fx/
This is also easy you need your new bank account details and also the details of the account you will be sending the money to in your home country, it can be any ones account including your own.
The only problem I had setting up the Xe account was when they asked for a letter from my bank in English with my name the bank name and the date. They did accept the letters the bank sent in the welcome pack, in Japanese, I just had to point out the date, which was written as a string of numbers like 090512, and my address which was written in Japanese.
Once you have both accounts up and running you will be ready to make your first transfer. You just use the basic trade option in Xe.com and then send them the money via a free domestic transfer online using your Shinsei Internet banking page.
I was pretty nervous about this because of all the confusion on the Internet, it does sound quite difficult to make the transfer to Xe from a Shinsei Bank, so don't bother doing it that way use the Internet banking transfer option instead. You go to Transfers and then you have to search for the bank. You need to enter the bank in katakana using the screen keyboard input.xe.com will tell you there bank is the Bank of America and they even sent me an email with that written in katakana. But Shinsei will not accept that. You need to type 'amerika' only, in katakana, and you will see it is displayed with a couple of kanji after it. Next you need the branch which is Tokyo write it as toukyou and it should come up and then you will need the account details they give you.
You should allow about a month to have both accounts working
That's all there is to it. There are no fees at all. Xe makes their money by changing the exchange rate slightly by about 1 yen. So if their site quotes $1 is 100 yen you should be able to send money home for 101yen to the dollar.
First of all you will need an address in Japan and your alien registration card.
If you have that you can go ahead and apply for a power flex account with Shinsei Bank.
www.shinseibank.com/english/
They have no fees, just say you're interested at the above site and they will send you out an application. You fill it in and return it and they send you an ATM card and all the info you need to log on to an English Internet banking site.
-I don't live any where near a Shinsei Bank or ATM but you can deposit and withdraw money for free via post office or 7holdings ATM's in shopping centres or 7/11's so you can use the account free, anywhere in Japan.
Next you will need to open an account with Xe trade.
http://www.xe.com/fx/
This is also easy you need your new bank account details and also the details of the account you will be sending the money to in your home country, it can be any ones account including your own.
The only problem I had setting up the Xe account was when they asked for a letter from my bank in English with my name the bank name and the date. They did accept the letters the bank sent in the welcome pack, in Japanese, I just had to point out the date, which was written as a string of numbers like 090512, and my address which was written in Japanese.
Once you have both accounts up and running you will be ready to make your first transfer. You just use the basic trade option in Xe.com and then send them the money via a free domestic transfer online using your Shinsei Internet banking page.
I was pretty nervous about this because of all the confusion on the Internet, it does sound quite difficult to make the transfer to Xe from a Shinsei Bank, so don't bother doing it that way use the Internet banking transfer option instead. You go to Transfers and then you have to search for the bank. You need to enter the bank in katakana using the screen keyboard input.xe.com will tell you there bank is the Bank of America and they even sent me an email with that written in katakana. But Shinsei will not accept that. You need to type 'amerika' only, in katakana, and you will see it is displayed with a couple of kanji after it. Next you need the branch which is Tokyo write it as toukyou and it should come up and then you will need the account details they give you.
You should allow about a month to have both accounts working
That's all there is to it. There are no fees at all. Xe makes their money by changing the exchange rate slightly by about 1 yen. So if their site quotes $1 is 100 yen you should be able to send money home for 101yen to the dollar.
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