# Shinsei Bank or CitiBank?



## falcon99er

Will be relocating to Tokyo in a few weeks and I need to quickly set up a bank account. I've been reading some threads about this topic, but I haven't read a lot about Shinsei. They seem very gaijin friendly and their English-language online banking seems robust. Does anybody have experience with Shinsei? Thoughts?


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## larabell

I believe someone posted recently that they couldn't get Shinsei to issue a paper passbook and without it the poster's employer couldn't set up an auto-deposit. When I went to Shinsei (which was several years ago so this may well be old information) they couldn't support auto-deduction of my rent for some reason. Citibank has the same problem... they can't do everything that a Japanese bank can do. On the other hand... I don't know of any Japanese banks that offer online banking in English. I believe Mizuho offers English on their ATMs.

I might suggest an account with one of the major banks for your local transactions (salary deposit, rent and utility payments, etc). If you have frequent foreign transactions, you might benefit from a Citibank account (for example, they understand how to handle personal checks from the States). Once you have a Japanese address and a resident's card, you go to a shop to have a hanko (name stamp) made and you can open an account with any bank. If you can get someone from your company to go with you to translate, that would help a lot.


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