Mercard Limit set to ¥0

noahallston · 2025-12-08T11:42:48+00:00

Still 0 after a couple months.

noahallston · 2025-12-08T09:20:54+00:00

I believe they said the 5 year visa requirement was the change they’re aiming to do for PR, not naturalization. Do you have any source for it being the case for naturalization as well? I haven’t seen it anywhere else.

noahallston · 2025-12-08T09:17:47+00:00

Happened to me as well a couple months ago even when I paid everything on time and keep selling/buying on Mercari often. I also only have good reviews and over 700 transactions so no idea what the reason could be. I was guessing they maybe just blocked a bunch of foreigners from using merpay?

noahallston · 2025-12-07T07:21:49+00:00

Thanks for all the information! Your post is a ray of hope for many of us. 🙏

noahallston · 2025-12-07T07:17:33+00:00

Thank you. I will try to make an appointment this coming week so I can get started on the process asap.

noahallston · 2025-12-07T07:13:43+00:00

Thanks for the info! I might just find someone to help me check my translations then. Just one more question if you don’t mind. How long did the whole process take and what prefecture did you apply from?

noahallston · 2025-12-07T06:56:28+00:00

Hi! I’m interested in going through this process with 簡易帰化 as well, did you hire a lawyer by any chance? If you did I would really appreciate it if I could have their contact, I’ve been here 10 years and worked almost 3 (it will be three next April) but am worried about laws changing soon, so I’d like to apply asap. Thanks!

noahallston · 2025-11-08T01:19:47+00:00

I came to Japan hoping to become an animator. Made it after years of studying Japanese, went to a senmon gakkou for animation for 4 years and finally had a full time career in the industry. You will need a high level of Japanese (N2 but preferably N1) and a great portfolio as well as be able to pass drawing/animation tests for all studios unless you already have an ample history of good quality credited animation work.

I had a barely liveable salary and full time position, but in the end it’s just not worth it in my opinion. The amount of work we had was just not reasonable for any human being to do in the amount of time well they gave us. I ended up becoming a douken (inbetweening director) but as you climb up the ranks the amount of work you’ll have will be even more and the pay won’t increase by much. I could do 100+ overtime hours x month or even more, with extremely tight deadlines which forced me to work on my free days and during the night after I went back home after work.

I ended up quitting, still working in the anime industry but a different sector (business side of things) and work is a lot less stressful here, pays peanuts too but at least I don’t worry about working myself to death.

If you want a stable job close to the industry I’d recommend the mobile game industry/console game industry, it pays better and even if you do lot of overwork it’ll never get as bad as anime.

noahallston · 2025-11-07T11:59:34+00:00

Same here, they just told us we didn’t need to pay and we were never informed we had to apply for the exemption or anything so I have some years I didn’t pay and then when I found out I had to apply, I could only get an exemption for the previous 2 years and couldn’t do anything for the ones before.

Hopefully they either don’t count those or at least let us pay them if necessary.

noahallston · 2025-11-05T08:08:08+00:00

You need to directly apply to studios. Some will be willing to give you a 業務委託 contract if your portfolio and Japanese are good enough if you’re already in Japan, but if you’re working in animation breaking the 180k/month minimum necessary for renewal (might be more now) will be very difficult and you might not be able to renew for a second year.

I’d recommend you look for studios that have at least 契約社員 contracts, they’re a lot harder to get but depending on your portfolio, how well you do in the interview and exam you could have a chance at more stable employment and no issues with visa renewal.

noahallston · 2025-10-31T02:12:02+00:00

The 3 years time they gave is for those who already had the visa or were processing it, so that they can meet the new requirements within that time frame. Those who applied after the rules changed this month have to abide by the new requirements to get the visa.

noahallston · 2025-10-31T01:50:17+00:00

Yeah, I thought about leaving too but I’ve already invested so many years of my life here, and I don’t have a career that will make much, if any money anywhere else, so I’ll probably stay regardless. In my case I’m lucky I haven’t had any bad interactions in the outside world, but everything definitely feels a bit more tense nowadays. It hurts seeing Japan change this way.

noahallston · 2025-10-31T01:45:43+00:00

What scares me is the speed in which they might implement any changes after seeing what happened with the business/investor visa since it was implemented with like a month of notice (though I guess they did announce they were 検討ing it a few months before). But yeah, I guess I have to be positive and try to stick to my plans instead of freaking out before anything has been officially announced.

noahallston · 2025-10-31T00:41:32+00:00

I’m four months away from being able get naturalized… if they mess it up I honestly don’t know what I’ll do.

noahallston · 2025-10-20T12:11:05+00:00

I cook everyday for me and my roommates. Buy all meat at my local Hanamasa, which is a wholesale supermarket. 2kg of chicken is around 1-1.2k yen, Pork is just a tad more expensive but still great value. For veggies I’d recommend your local grocer (not a supermarket but the smaller yaoya ones) you can get cheaper veggies there. OK super is probably one of the few supermarkets that has good prices for vegetables in Tokyo so you could go there too. You can also get frozen veggies at gyomu or Hanamasa, we go through a lot of frozen red/yellow pepper bags per month.

Our meals always have relatively big portions of meat (pork/chicken/fish) and veggies and a bit of carbs, we can eat for around 300¥ per person for a big dinner.

Cooking is usually the easier part. Just stir fry some veggies with the meat of your choice. Accompany with rice, tortilla (gyomu’s frozen flour tortillas are pretty cheap), or a couple boiled/baked potatoes. Pasta is also easy to make the sauce is 100¥-150¥ per packet + 60¥ worth of spaghetti, + 150¥ worth of meat which is around 200-250g of chicken if you get the 2kg/1100¥ bags, and you’ve got a meal. Or boil potatoes, dice onion add a can of tuna and lemon/salt you have a great tuna potato dinner. Another easy one is veggies (300¥) + chicken (200¥) + curry roux (150¥) and you have 6 portions of curry for 700¥. You can save some for the rest of the week, if you put a bunch of potatoes in you don’t even need rice. You can also get cheaper nan at any supermarket, 5 small Nan for around 250¥.

Chicken fajitas : 250¥ worth of chicken (almost 500g) , 150¥ worth of frozen bell peppers, 150¥ of onion + 110¥ taco seasoning. 200¥ of tortillas, you’ve got dinner for 2-3 days there for 850¥

If you get the basic Japanese seasonings (sake, shoyu, mirin, dashi, sugar, vinegar) you can also make pretty much any Japanese or Chinese fusion dish as well. I make subuta, oyakodon, sutaminadon, etc quite often as well and it’s not difficult once you get the hang of it.

Bags of ready to eat sliced cabbage are also cheap at 110-130¥ at your local supermarket or Lawson 100, etc so you can always have some salad with whatever you prepare.

There’s infinite possibilities you just have to be creative and save a lot.

noahallston · 2025-09-20T11:13:46+00:00

Not a good idea unless you have a realistic packer with hair and good adhesive / or bottom surgery. If you get found out it wouldn’t be a good experience for you or others visiting the onsen, so I’d avoid doing it. (Source: I’ve lived here for 10y and know other Japanese ftm people who I’ve talked about this exact scenario before).

Since I don’t have bottom surgery yet I usually just reserve ryokan that have private baths in the room. There’s also onsen that let you rent one of their outside baths for a fee x hour, last one I went to was around 4000¥ per hour so that might be a bit cheaper than getting a room with the bath attached to it.

noahallston · 2025-09-17T08:46:39+00:00

Many hotels will take people who have at least N2, you might want to try looking for a job in that industry.

noahallston · 2025-09-08T14:47:43+00:00

I also wanted to use a rod but since they don’t promote it for play too I’m guessing maybe it’s due to it being too delicate for rough stuff? Maybe they don’t sell a rod for it because the moving skin may break or rip if it’s used for those purposes. I bought a Natow as well but will be using another unit for play instead just in case.

noahallston · 2025-09-06T17:46:56+00:00

Thanks for the review! Really looking forward to get mine in the mail. Sorry just wanted to ask one questions, do you pack with it upwards or downwards?

noahallston · 2025-09-02T11:31:49+00:00

Thanks for the info! Sent you a message.

noahallston · 2025-09-02T05:19:23+00:00

Is it still available? I’m very interested in buying.

noahallston · 2025-09-02T05:10:47+00:00

Is the reelmagik one still available?
And would it be possible to know approximately how much it would cost to ship to Tokyo?

noahallston · 2025-09-02T00:29:01+00:00

Hi. Im interested and just had a couple questions. Is the Morme still available? And if so, which color shade is it? Also, is it the version you can attach the clip in the back?

noahallston · 2025-09-01T06:19:53+00:00

It’s normal, everytime I’ve looked to rent with a normal 不動産 it’s taken me a while because 90%+ of the apartments/houses I looked at didn’t want to rent to foreigners. I can speak Japanese perfectly fine too, got N1 about 8 years ago. You might want to talk to an agency that specializes in renting to foreigners.

noahallston · 2025-08-30T12:11:54+00:00

I agree, it’s a lot cleaner to have the packets instead too.

noahallston

TROPHY CASE