RetireJapan

Setting up the card to do Tsumitate takes the same amount of time as setting up money sweep and doing bank transfer Tsumitate. I recommend anything that's set and forget and having it be part of your CC bill is quite attractive versus making sure your Rakuten Bank account is filled up every month. ...

Sorry smalldog, Ben beat you to the punch in a PM!

Although I wasn't able to do an online registration, so I'll have to call during business hours tomorrow.

Anybody want to hit me up with a referral code? I've got a business trip to the US coming up and will likely be staying at a Marriot, so it seems like a good time to switch to this card.

I live in Hiroshima, but can't really offer any advice. When we were buying our land, we just did regular searches on Suumo and what not.

Come to think of it, we don’t have many regular female posters here? The gender balance seems quite skewed to men, even though it is often the wife in charge of finances in Japan. I guess they are chatting away on a Japanese language investment forum sonewhere… Let's be honest, they're saving in ca...

I did it for about a year over 10 years ago, before becoming a full time private high school teacher. It was good money for what it was.

Thank you for the info. For the domestic cards, all transactions were attempted late evening. Perhaps that explains things. I don't think it really matters what time of the day it is, it's just they put a lock on the cards for large transactions. Same happened to me in November, had to call rakuten...

Rakuten charges 2%+ on currency conversions and SMBC cards 3%+ which is a hugely expensive premium to pay. (Making those "points" quite expensive....) Rakuten charges 2% for Amex only, all other cards are 1.63% (or JCB is the cheapest with 1.6%). Let's say you bought something that was 10...

Unless you need actual cash (not sure what the state of cashless payments is like in Ireland) I would just go with a credit card, and if the terminal ever asks if you want to pay in yen or euro, choose euro, as the card rate is likely better than the terminal rate. It just makes things easier, inste...

Just got the email. What I find strange is that the website is specifically asking for 在留期間 ... which for a PR holder doesn't exist, but it doesn't let you input blank .... so hopefully they won't ask you to update when the card expires and they'll actually check that it's PR ... I'm not holding my ...