How this is written and checked
The useful answers about living in Japan are written in Japanese. This site reads those and answers in plain English.
Who it's for
People setting up life in Japan who can't yet read a provider's terms page, a city office notice, or a ministry announcement — and who keep finding English guides that explain what something is without saying whether they can actually get it.
How facts get on the page
- Every price and condition is checked against the provider's own page or an official source, and the source is linked at the foot of the page.
- Each page carries the date it was last reviewed. Japanese pricing changes often, and a figure without a date is not much use.
- Anything not yet verified is marked checking. We do not fill gaps with a plausible number.
Showing "checking" looks worse than showing a number. It is the honest state, and a wrong price on a contract you are about to sign for three years is a real cost to you — so the gap stays visible until it is closed.
How advertising works here
Some links are advertising links. If you sign up through one, this site may earn a commission; your price is unaffected. Pages carrying them are labelled Ad · PR at the top, as Japan's stealth-marketing rules require.
Commission does not set the order. On the home internet page the option that pays the most is ranked second, because most readers of that page cannot meet its payment requirement. Where that happens, the page says so directly rather than quietly reordering.
Corrections
If something here is wrong or out of date, it should be fixed rather than defended. The review date on each page tells you how stale it might be.