joejones

Well, there is the issue that you have to do everything through a US address. If there is someone in the US who you trust to receive and forward your mail, fine, but otherwise the statements, replacement cards, correspondence, etc. are all going to go into someone else's hands.

Incidentally, E-Trade will let you open a brokerage account with a Japanese address, and it works just like a US bank account with checking etc. This is really handy for getting paid in USD or maintaining US credit cards/student loans.

ainternational

Interesting. I wasn't aware that US based cards wouldn't generally allow you to use overseas addresses and still have the same card / benefits as a perm US resident.

Immediate thoughts would be to use a mail forwarding service or parents / kin still in the States. Then again, truth is, I haven't received snail mail from Chase (Hyatt and United cards) in a long time. Online statements and other correspondences - I think only replacement cards might be an issue and I'd just tell them I was "traveling" at the time and have them overnight it to Japan. I've done that before when my card was compromised while traveling without issue - once they exhaustively verified who I was via phone.

jamar

To come back to this one:

No, AmEx Japan's transfer partners aren't quite the same (but still no AA). I remember talking someone through using their MR points and was wondering why they were saying they couldn't see the partners I saw on the list until I noticed theirs was Japan-based. Also, there's a cap on transferring points to NH from a Japan-based account.

In my personal experience, most of these vendors will take foreign AmEx cards. I use my Bluebird and regular prepaid AmEx when visiting Japan for this reason (and so that it isn't all load-withdraw-bill pay all the time). But be careful if you link it to Mobile Suica or Edy- loss of signal while attempting to reload left me with over 10k yen tied up in holds once.

gnaget

This is the same as having Citi gold status, which requires 10 million yen in your account. They don't relent on the 1 JPY spread, which is lousy I think compared to Shinsei.

It can also be more than 1 JPY when forex market is volatile (which is frequent for USD/JPY) as they don't constantly update the exchange rate.

Actually the spread is higher or there is a transaction fee that is removed at a lower threshold. I forget but maybe 1 million yen in your account.

gnaget

Chase is really good about this. I told them that I needed a new card (close to expiration) in Japan and they sent it by Fedex. It actually arrived in less than 24 hours after my request!

Capital One refused to send it overseas, I think, or maybe they did at first and then relented. I forget.

Also all banks and CCs in the US are set to paperless so I never get any correspondence.

gnaget

I found out that Tokyo Swallows box office only takes Amex. They don't take any other CCs, including ones issued in Japan.

Scifience

If English is a requirement, you'll miss out on the best options for banking services and cards.

Within six months of moving to Japan, with no local credit history, I successfully got an ANA Amex Gold card (no limit as far as I can tell, but must be paid in full each month) and a JAL JCB card (500,000JPY limit for revolving charges). Both of these cards have some nice perks, reasonable annual fees (for Japan, at least), and good service, but no English whatsoever.

As far as banks, I'm a big fan of Rakuten for their Visa debit card, and MUFJ for everything else. Neither really has any English service worth speaking of, though, as far as I'm aware.

joejones

They can be not so good, though. I tried to get in on the 100k BA Visa offer a while back, having a Chase credit card already and using my parents' house as the address for both, and got a letter in the mail demanding proof that I still lived at that address...

jamar

That's why I regularly renewed my ID and had mail delivered to my US address while living outside the US. Though they don't seem able to do 24-hour delivery to China, unlike Japan.

KPT

Thanks for all your input.

I think this is what I'm going to do when I take the plunge next year:

Banking
- Use both Shinsei and Citi
- Steadily build balances with Shinsei (I'll be starting from zero, so that will take a while )
- Put slightly smaller share of income into Citi for expenses and transfers to the US (since I won't have to pay the remittance fee)

CC
- Not going to bother at all with Japan cards
- Cancel existing annual fee cards except for US Plat*
- Sign up for BofA total rewards 1.5% (no fee card) for most expenses (and put some minimal amount of cash in a US BofA account so that I effectively get 1.65%)
- Use mobile Suica and point it the BofA card

* Since I'm going to be flying a lot of AA (both back home in the US and probably codeshares on CX/JL metal), I'd rather keep the lounge access, plus all the other perks.

Also, I will have a mailing address in the US where I can pick up my mail quarterly, so hopefully it won't be that big an issue.

jib71

Verify the fee payable on a checking account with zero balance. You may find that it makes sense to build up a balance with one bank at a time to avoid fees.

joejones

Citi has a minimum balance requirement to avoid maintenance fees. Shinsei has no maintenance fees.

O Sora

I am curious. Is it a Japanese person who answers on the English line, or is it outsourced to, say , the Philipnes or India?

hamburgler

Last time I called it was a Japanese person, just like Shinsei's English line. This was maybe about two-three years ago.

gnaget

Unless you deposit USD 200,000 in Shinsei then there is no major benefit since that is necessary to get platinum status and the 50% forex discount.

Well, I suppose Shinsei gold gives you 20% discount on forex. If you are converting USD 100k per year then it would save you $200.yy

You might want to be certain that Citi is offering you (effectively) Citigold status without any deposit requirement. http://www.citibank.co.jp/en/banking...ce_fees_en.pdf

But the first threshold with Citi (to avoid monthly fee) is only to have USD 2,000 (JPY 200,000) in ones foreign currency account. They used to punish people below the threshold with even higher forex charges, but that seems to have disappeared (see fees disclosure above). So now somebody with 20,000 yen or 20,000,000 yen in their account pay the same forex fee. Nice.