Bills, bills, bills

Paying bills. The one thing that nobody likes to do. Especially when you have not done it before or don’t know how and where to do it.

This is my experiences with paying bills in three different ways.

First rent - the bank

I had to pay my first rent by showing up at the local branch of my bank, Shinsei Bank. I had to pay the first months rent, insurance fee, guarantor company fee, and real estate agent fee. Some of these were on one invoice and I had to pay two invoices in total.

I had to use my one-hour lunch break to visit the bank. And since there were no English speaking employees present we had to use a lot of pointing and body language.

In order to transfer the money, I had to fill out a form in Japanese. And every time I wrote something wrong we had to start over. sigh

The whole thing took about 50 minutes to pay two bills. And since there were no other customers when I arrived, I did not have to wait in line.

In other words, I will try to avoid this solution in the future.

Second rent - online banking

Ok, this one should be smooth sailing since I have been paying bills for my whole adult life via online banking. But that was not through the Japanese banking system. But how could it really be?

Well, it is a bit more complicated than expected. First, you need to know which bank you want to transfer funds to. Second, you need to know which branch of that bank that will receive the funds. And by the way, I had to search for the branch name using Katakana. I knew the branch name in Kanji, so that resulted in some translation and dictionary lookup.

The next part is to enter the bank account number of the recipient and what kind of account it is (savings account, etc). And you have to provide the recipient name in Katakana. And that information I had in Kanji as well. Another visit to the dictionary. But names are not that easy. A Kanji can be read several ways and that means that the Katakana will be different.

I did my best and registered the payment. But the next day it was rejected due to a spelling error in the recipient name. And I had to make another attempt. Now it is ok, I hope.

Electricity bill - convenience store

This is far the easiest way to pay a utility bill (unless you opt automatic deduction from a bank account or credit card). I just had to visit the nearest convenience store and give them the bill and some money and I got a receipt in return. Very convenient and easy. But when I get a credit card, I will try to get automatic deduction enabled.