Paying Bills
Paying your bills in Japan is relatively painless, even if you can’t speak or read Japanese.
Paying with a credit card still isn’t that common, so the ones that do offer credit card payment are specifically gaijin friendly. Telephone and internet banking is common here but of course that doesn’t help those of us that can’t speak or read Japanese.
So the other option is to pay at your local convenience store, or combini. You can tell if your bill can be paid at the convenience store because there will be pictures of the shop logos printed usually on the back of the bill.
Take your bill to the convenience store, the clerk will scan it and tell you how much you need to pay. Or, show you the amount on the register, if you haven’t gotten the hang of numbers in Japanese.
Easy!
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July 10th, 2006 at 9:40 am
You often hear that it is very expensive to live in japan in the United States.
I was just curious if it is true in japan, or if the cost of living goes down as you get away from the city?
July 25th, 2006 at 10:54 am
It definitely goes down as you get away from the city. Mind you, On my part-time salary, I still earned a nice amount, and could afford dinner out often, trips away and Akihabara spending sprees.
But take, for example, taxi charges. In Tokyo/Yokohama, the starting charge is between 600-700 yen. In Okinawa, the starting charge is 400 yen. Much cheaper as you move away from Tokyo.