Job Discussion Forums

[diderot]

I have been assured that I will receive assistance in opening a bank account when I arrive in Japan. I am hoping I will have a choice as to which bank I will employ. Can anybody make a recommendation to me as to the best bank in the Sendai area? Also, are there any American banks with branches in the area, and if so should I consider one of these?

I ask about the American banks because I still have some business to conduct in the States, not the least of which is my Student Aid payments and car payments for which I will have to write checks and pay in American Dollars.

Thanks

~Caio

[Mike L.]

You may ot have a choice as many FT employers here often only deal with one bank only.

[Billy Chaka]

What I'll do is keep my bank account open here in the U.S. My bank has online banking, so with Internet access I'll be able to check my balance, transfer funds between money market and checking accounts, etc. Thus, I'll be able to write checks from Japan. Before I leave I'll let my bank know I'm going and get an address to which I can send postal money orders converted to dollars from Japan for deposit. Just send them the money order and a short letter saying please deposit into such and such account. I'm sure banks will do this. I'm pretty sure I did this the last time I was in Japan (can't quite remember - it's been a while).

There are American banks with branches in Japan. The last time I was there I used CitiBank (in Nagoya). What the last person said is true about your employer choosing which bank you have to use, but of course you can have accounts at more than one bank. I had one account opened by my employer, and I opened another account at CitiBank. CitiBank lets you have accounts in multiple currencies, and as I recall I had an account in yen and another account in dollars and I tried to play the exchange rates (didn't work out too well - wouldn't recommend it ). As I recall, you could transfer from yen to dollars in English over the phone. However, they didn't offer checking accounts, and the interest rates for both yen and dollar accounts were extremely low.

[Billy Chaka]

One thing I forgot to mention is that as I recall, CitiBank let you do a wire transfer from your dollar account there to any bank in the U.S. So if you needed to get your money into your bank account in the U.S. right away so that you could write checks, you could do this, but it was cheaper to go to the post office, get a money order in dollars, and send it through the mail.

[diderot]

That is excellent info. Thank you. CitiBank is a name I am familiar with, so that makes me feel better, and that I will be able to have accounts in dollars comforts me as well.

Thanks.

[kiracle]

Once you get here you'll see that even with advance preparation you'll have to sort out the individual situation you're in. I thought about using Citibank here, too. I still have my U.S. Citibank account and I make my student loan payments from that account online but there is no Citibank near me in Japan and even if there was, it's a different bank and system than the American one and there is no way to link the accounts.

However, it's easy to get money from Japan to your home account. You can do the postal order ( takes about two weeks) or you can use a service like Lloyd's of Londen that transfers money for a set fee the same day. I use Llyod's from the local bank my company insisted upon and it always works like a dream.

Pretty sure there are some threads on Llyods if you are interested. Be prepared though that if you enter on a working visa you'll be able to get a bank account and therefore an Lloyd's account pretty quickly. But if you enter on a tourist visa and have to wait for the change over it can take months to get your Foreigner's card without which a bank account is impossible. Hopefully that's not your situation.

Hope that helps! Good luck and welcome to Japan!

[lajzar]