Originally Posted by
RichardInSF
Note, however, that there are many things that a foreign-owned bank cannot do in Japan. So even if you get a Citibank account you may not be able to use it for everything you want to -- depends on what you need.
Like what?
We can pay bills eletronically, get a Japanese CC, get an ETC for the car, get cash at 7-11 ATMs (i.e. anywhere). What more do you want? And the bank obviously has good services if you are dealing with deposits from abroad like not charging transaction fees and having USD and JPY subaccounts is standard. But most of their customers are locals, so they need to offer competitive (if not better) services than their zombie bank compatriots.
Keeping this to a FT related topic: Citibank gold visa card allows lounge access throughout Japan at domestic airports. And there is no annual fee if you charge more than 300k per year on the card.
A bank like Sumitomo Mitsui charges 5500 yen per transaction if you transfer Japanese yen from abroad. Unbelievable. And Japanese banks even have limited ATM hours! Citibank's ATMs are 24/7.
If you want to read horror stories about Japanese banks go to a site like Gaijinpot.