With company sponsorship, you can usually count on some support from HR or colleagues who went before you. Self-funded study abroad is different. Housing, bank accounts, furniture, groceries — you have to assemble your entire life from scratch.
The author struggled quite a bit with the initial setup after arriving. Here are five things I wish I had known in advance.
Sort out your My Number and an overseas-remittance account before leaving
This is easy to overlook, but check your My Number status before you leave Japan.
Since 2022, registering your My Number has been mandatory for sending money abroad from a Japanese bank. Expenses pile up right after you arrive — furniture, textbooks, household goods — and the moment will come when you need to convert yen savings into dollars. If your My Number is not registered, the transfer stalls.
Be especially careful if you have ever filed a moving-abroad notification, for example for an overseas posting. Without the right paperwork your My Number card may have expired. A system allowing continued use after moving abroad started in May 2024, but it requires advance procedures. I recommend checking your status at your municipal office before departure.
Also open an account that supports overseas remittance ahead of time. Doing the paperwork after you arrive takes far longer.
Sign up for Amazon Prime Student
For setting up life in the US, Amazon Prime Student is more reliable than you might imagine.
With a university .edu email address you get a 6-month free trial. After that it is $7.49 a month — half the regular price.
Why does this matter? Because right after arriving, most students have no car. America is a car country, and few apartments are within walking distance of a supermarket. With Prime's next-day delivery, groceries and household goods arrive at your door.
Many university dorms have no elevator either. Once you picture hauling heavy bags up the stairs, delivery to your doorstep feels like a lifesaver.
My recommendation: create a US Amazon account while still in Japan and pre-order essentials timed to your arrival date. You can land with everything you need already waiting.
Assume you will provide your own air conditioning
This one surprises most Japanese students.
In many parts of the US, especially in older buildings, air conditioning is simply not installed. Serviced apartments and new buildings usually have it, but older rentals near campus deserve caution.
Take New York: data shows 34–36% of rent-stabilized units have no AC. NYC summers can top 38°C (100°F), and the heat index often climbs past 40°C. Spending August in a century-old building without AC is genuinely rough.
The practical countermeasures: order a portable or window AC unit on Amazon before you travel, or stay in a hotel for the first few days while you set things up.
Clean up your app subscriptions
This may be the biggest blind spot of all.
On iOS, changing your App Store country requires cancelling every active subscription — and you cannot complete the change until each subscription's remaining period runs out.
Say you subscribed to Apple Music in Japan. Switching to the US App Store voids that subscription, and you have to sign up again on the US side. Downloaded music and playlists may be reset as well.
Start auditing your subscriptions one to two months before departure: cancel what you do not need, and note the renewal dates of what you want to keep. Working backward so everything clears just before you fly prevents double billing.
Ship cardboard boxes instead of extra suitcases
Some people fly with a mountain of suitcases to save on moving costs, but I recommend cardboard boxes.
Keeping one large suitcase is fine — beyond that, they just eat space. Rooms abroad are often smaller than the Japanese sense of normal, and three suitcases will swallow a serious chunk of yours.
Cardboard boxes can be delivered from the airport to your address by courier. Yamato Transport's overseas moving service handles shipments from a single box. After unpacking you fold them up and throw them away — and until your furniture arrives, they even serve as makeshift tables. Practical.
Alongside departure prep, keep your test prep moving too. For tracking your study progress, make Gradigo part of your routine.
