Originally Posted by
joejones
If you are moving more than a few thousand dollars at once, you can save some money by using a wire transfer. Compare the 2 yen spread on T/C rates at NRT
http://www.narita-airport.or.jp/exchange/index.html
with the 1 yen spread on wire transfers for ordinary customers at Shinsei:
http://sre.shinseibank.com/InterestRateB/FXRate.aspx
If you keep a balance of 20 million yen (Platinum status), you get a fee-free wire out every month at an amazing spread of 50 sen. Otherwise the fee is 4,000 yen -- most other Japanese banks charge 6,000, while the rich-....... account packages at HSBC and Citi offer nominally fee-free transfers but rip you off with the exchange rate.
So my technique is to build up cash in a Shinsei account and wire it over to E-Trade when it's at a good critical mass and when the exchange rates seem good.
I was looking at Citi Gold's pamphlet (requires 10 million yen). It says no exchange fees from USD to Yen and then you pay something like 30% of the fee from Yen to USD. With a normal account it's about a yen off the interbank rate for USD to Yen; depends a bit on the timing of the transaction.
Here I am talking about transfers between sub-accounts at Citi.