Background: my daughter just graduated from high school in the US and will be attending Temple University in Tokyo this fall. She has dual US/Japanese citizenship, but she's lived in the US her entire life apart from family summer trips there.
Tuition at her school we can pay directly from the US, and we have a 1-year contact at a dormitory there that she'll be staying at and we've already made arrangements for payment.
Her mother (Japanese citizen) and myself (US citizen) will be going over to Japan with her in August a couple of weeks before school starts to help get her moved in, etc.
One thing we haven't figured out is what is the best way to send her money for monthly living expenses?
Some things we know so far:
- Since she's a Japanese citizen and won't be there on a student visa, she needs a マイナンバーカード in order to get a local bank account
- It will take 2-3 weeks to get her マイナン, likely longer than we will be there with her. Even so, we plan on going to the ward/city hall for where she will be living the day after we get there in order to at least get it started as soon as possible.
- She'll need a new phone and phone plan there, but afaik she'll need a bank account first.
Once she gets a local bank account and phone account, we can then send money to her to help cover her living expenses. Ways we've looked at sending her money have either problems or unknowns we haven't resolved yet:
- Domestic bank transfer: her mother has a ゆうちょ銀行 account with enough funds in it to cover her living expenses for a long time. Problem: we are no longer able to do online banking with her post office back account from overseas: it now requires two-factor authentication with a local (Japanese) phone number. So for all practical purposes we can only access funds in that account when we are in Japan.
- Wise: this was going to be our plan, but the Trump tariff insanity has made this not as attractive due to higher fees. I heard some people say that you couldn't use Wise to send money to Japan anymore, but as far as I can tell this isn't the case, just fees are higher now.
- Direct wire transfer from my US bank account to her Japanese bank account: this is the defacto standard, but since I want to send her money monthly (I don't think it would be a good idea to send her an entire semester's worth of living expenses all at once) the wire transfer fees become a significant portion of the sum.
- Get her a bank account in the US that she could use in Japan: I need to look into it a bit more, but I've heard that Chase Bank has branches in Japan, so that possibly I could send money to her Chase account in the US and she could then withdraw in in Japan?
Also since it looks like she won't be able to get a bank account during the time we'll be with her, she'll need money for the first few weeks until we get the process worked out. We could just give her some cash (each if us can carry up to 百万円 without problems at customs, but that much is overkill) or she could just use her US bank account ATM card at any local 7-eleven, so that I can just deposit money into her account and she can then withdraw as needed. This is what I've always done when I travel in Japan.
I'd appreciate any advice people might have on the best way to send her money while she's going to school there.
I also have some questions on how much money would be appropriate for monthly b living expenses, but I'll do that as a separate post.
by derioderio