Why hiring a Pro makes all the difference:

How hard can it really be to open a bank account in Japan?

As with all official processes, there are a number of hurdles to overcome, including the possibility of being turned away from some branches because you are foreign.

Bank hours are generally 9am to 3pm, Monday to Friday, and banks are closed on weekends and national holidays. This means that you don’t have much time to resolve any issues if something is complicated or unusual, and setting up an account for non-Japanese students is still a rare occurrence for most bank employees.

Opening a Japanese bank account is even difficult for Japanese people due to the large number of identification forms and pieces of information that banks require. You will need identification cards, phone numbers, your inkan, and there are many other documents that you will still need to fill out at the counter, in Japanese.

It takes even longer to open a bank account for foreign nationals due to the strict Japanese banking checks and various laws about money laundering. This means that you may need to be lucky to get it done in one day or one trip, but without a bank account, your life in Japan cannot start.

We at JS Terrace have a long history of working with students at Japanese language schools. We have accompanied non-Japanese language students to help set up their bank accounts more times than we can count.

One of the students we worked with had a very bad experience. He was not yet very good at Japanese, but he tried his best. He went to the bank counter to try to open an account by himself, but he was turned away.

A few days later, we went with him to try to help him out and explained the situation at the counter in Japanese. It took the person at the window checking with their superiors, who checked with their superiors, to try to get a resolution and help get this student his bank account set up. But even with us there explaining everything carefully in Japanese and helping him fill out the details, because of how the bank is set up, even we couldn’t get it done in one day. We went back and helped until he got it done, at no extra cost of course.

Since not all bank branches have English-speaking staff, if you try to set up a bank account on your own, you may need to make an appointment in advance to make sure you can speak with the correct bank teller who speaks English.

All of the documents and explanations are written in Japanese, and some of them are written in very difficult Japanese, so even if you understand some Japanese, it is an extremely daunting process.

In addition, there is sometimes upselling involved, and the bank may make you create a credit card or debit card when you open your account that you don’t actually need, just so they can meet their sales quotas.

When it comes to money and banking, it is imperative that you understand absolutely everything that is going on. Signing and opening an account without knowing absolutely everything involved can really affect you negatively.

And because of very strict laws regarding privacy in Japan, a person cannot speak to a banker for you over the phone, so you cannot have a person help you translate over the phone. The only way of doing this safely is to have someone actually physically with you at the bank.

Is your translation device good enough to help you finish this task? We don’t know of any on the market now that can cover all the scenarios that could possibly happen when you are setting up a Japanese bank account.

We know that a lot of foreign nationals still try to go to the bank by themselves and set up a bank account on their own. We try to let the people we work with know that there are still a lot of cases where they can walk into a bank and be ignored or not listened to so it doesn’t come as a shock.

Add to that the fact that they need to bring a lot of different identification as well as other items, and if you forget even one, the process grinds to a halt and you have to start all over again another day.

The only way to really make sure you are getting it right is to have someone who understands the process go with you. And they need to understand the process for foreign nationals, not just for Japanese people, because it is a little different. So even a Japanese friend who has made their own Japanese bank account might not know what you need.

One of the things we learned helping out students in Japanese language schools was that we needed to search out branches around their school to find ones that could and would open accounts for foreign nationals / foreign students because you cannot just walk into any branch of any bank and get it done.

We work to make sure that you have everything you need to go to the bank and come out with exactly what you need. This includes doing the footwork, prep, making checklists, and helping you make sure you have a carefully filled-in form along with all the identification you need.