Advice for those interested in going to Japan on Working Holiday

I just got back from a working holiday in Japan, and I’ve got lots of tips on the experience.

Getting the Visa

I found this informative video on the process.
You will have to mail your passport with the visa application to the Embassy.
You will have to go to the Japanese embassy in your country to pick up your passport.
Don’t stress too much on making an elaborate plan for your stay in Japan. They mostly want to know that you’ve put thought into your trip and are not applying on a whim.

I found Sakura House to be overpriced and have poor quality apartments. It’s very flexible though as you can stay only for a few days.
Oak house has been great. They have English support and web page.

As soon as you have recovered from your flight to Japan and managed to feed yourself, find your nearest municipal office. Don’t go to the main office of your ward, it’s bound to be the most crowded. The addresses of the municipal offices are going to be listed on your ward’s website.
You should get registered for National Health Insurance when you register your address. But if you are not, make sure to get registered for it unless you are already covered by an insurance already.
Recently Japan changed the NHI system to use My number cards and phased out the NHI cards. Ask for a My Number card application form while you’re at the resident’s office.
You will get bombarded with mail, in Japanese. Don’t panic! Get out your translation app and have patience. Japanese information sheets is usually super dense and explain edge-cases that do not necessarily apply to you.
Get a bank account. It will make it much easier to pay your Health insurance, National Pension, and National Taxes. You can’t pay any of these with your foreign bank account. You can’t get around it by using something like PayPay either.

Moving to a new address in Japan is a real pain. Anytime that you change address you will need to go to the city office and register that you’re moving out. Once you’ve moved in you will then need to register your new address. If you’re planning on moving around Japan be aware that it comes with some annoyance. If you’re on the national health insurance and you move to another city or ward, you will also get a new health insurance card and a bunch of new payment slips in your mailbox.
Many institutions like health clinics, hospitals and pharmacies require you to go through a “First visit registration”, wherein you give them all your current residential information. If you move, and will be going to new providers, you’re going to need to go through this process over and over again.

Buying things online can be a real pain. Rakuten and Yahoo Market don’t accept foreign credit cards. You can use PayPay though, but it’s honestly better to just get a Japanese bank and debit card.

I wanted to use a service from the japan post service and the online form would not accept my application because my name was too long.
Paypay is annoying, I had troubles connecting it to my Seven bank account because my name had spaces in it. Support urged me to remove the spaces. But at the same time said the names must be identical. My seven bank account had spaces as well. An impossible situation to solve, and I ended up wasting a lot of time only to go for another solution.

Have your translation app ready when you’re seeking help from people. But always try to communicate in Japanese first and try to understand when they’re speaking to you in Japanese. in my experience I always got better help from people if I put in a real effort to use Japanese from the get-go.
You can lead with Konnichiha! Eigo ii desuka? on the off-chance that they can actually converse in English. Try to get past the initial pleasantries in Japanese, and when you get to the meat of the conversation, then you can whip out the translator. People were the most helpful when I did this, although people were generally helpful.

You must pay National tax on your income but are exempt from most other taxes like municipal taxes. During my time in Japan it was 21% of my income.
I used this form when reporting my tax and it was a smooth process.
I was late by 2 months when reporting my tax and faced no consequence, and I did so during my last week in Japan. I found this to be the easiest as I only had to go to the tax office once.