When Your Job Moves You Within Japan: Tenkin and Living Apart from Family

Quick answer

Hi, I'm Miya, and this is one of the messages I most often help people decode: your company is moving you to another part of Japan. A domestic transfer — tenkin (転勤) — tends to arrive as a decision rather than an invitation, and the first thing most foreign residents want to know is which parts are still theirs to shape.

The short answer is that the destination and the timing are usually set by your employer, while the arrangements around them are where you have room to ask: housing, how the move itself is handled, and whether your family comes with you or you go ahead alone as tanshin funin (単身赴任). What your company arranges or supports depends entirely on its own rules and your employment contract, so read the rest as a map of questions rather than a prediction about your case. I'll go through the notice, the HR conversation, the family decision, the second household, the ward office paperwork, and what immigration does and doesn't need to hear about.

How the notice usually arrives — and what's usually fixed

In most Japanese companies a transfer reaches you twice. First comes the naiji (内示), an informal heads-up from your manager or HR, often given quietly and often with a request to keep it to yourself until the formal announcement. Then comes the jirei (辞令), the official order with your new posting and start date. The gap between them can be comfortable or uncomfortably short, and it's the window in which most of your practical decisions get made.

Whether your employer can require the move at all comes down to your employment contract and the company's work rules (就業規則). Many contracts include a clause letting the company change your place of work; some roles are written as location-limited, with the workplace fixed by agreement. Before you push back or agree, read your own contract and the work rules — what a colleague went through is not evidence about your terms, and two people in the same company can be on different ones.

In practice, the destination and the fact of the transfer are the least open to discussion, while the start date, the handover, and the housing arrangement often have some give. Asking is not rude, and asking early is far easier than asking once the jirei has been issued. If something affects your timing — a child's school year, a treatment already underway, a partner's contract — say it plainly and early instead of hinting.

What to ask HR before you start packing

Housing is the biggest variable. Ask whether you'll be placed in company housing or a company-leased apartment (kariage shataku / 借り上げ社宅), or whether you're expected to find your own place. Ask who signs the lease and who acts as guarantor, because that decides how much of the paperwork lands on you. Ask what happens to where you live now — whether ending the lease is assumed, and who handles it if the company holds the contract.

Then the move itself. Ask whether the company books the movers or whether you arrange it and claim it back, what's covered for the trip out, whether there's temporary accommodation while you wait for a place, and how travel back to your family is treated and how often it's expected. I'm deliberately quoting no figures here: support differs completely between employers, and only your HR can tell you what applies.

Get the answers in writing, even if that's just a confirmation email in your own words after a conversation. Ask specifically what changes if your family joins you later rather than at the start, because that case is often handled differently from either a family move or a solo posting. And ask for the name of your contact at the new location — one name saves weeks.

Moving the family, or going alone

Tanshin funin means taking the posting alone while your family stays where they are. It's common enough in Japan to have its own vocabulary and its own rhythms, and neither choosing it nor refusing it says anything about how much you care. People decide on schooling, work, care responsibilities, and how long the posting is expected to run — so ask the expected length, and ask what happens at the end of it. A two-year posting and an open-ended one are different decisions.

For children, the Japanese school year runs April to March, so a transfer that lands mid-year means a mid-year school transfer for them. Public school transfers go through the local board of education and the schools themselves, and you'll need the documents released by the old school. Entry to high school is tied to the local system and its exams, which makes the last year of junior high a particularly heavy time to move. If your children are in an international school, the question is simply whether a comparable school with space exists in the new city — ask directly rather than assuming.

For a partner, check two things: the job and the status of residence. If they work, a move usually means resigning or asking about a transfer of their own. If their work is tied to a specific employer through their status of residence, changing jobs has its own procedures. And if they're on a dependent status working with permission to engage in an activity outside that status, confirm the current conditions against official immigration guidance before assuming the same arrangement simply continues after a move.

The second household you end up running

If you go alone, you're keeping two of everything a home needs: two sets of utilities, two kitchens' worth of basics, two internet arrangements, two places where post arrives. Company-leased apartments are sometimes unfurnished, so ask before you assume there's a fridge waiting. The post office runs a mail forwarding service for a set period after a move; set it up on your way out rather than after the first letter goes missing.

The part people underestimate isn't the cost, it's the coordination. Two households means two rubbish calendars, two streams of school notices, two sets of appointments, and one person who is only ever physically in one of them. Most families I talk to end up settling into a fixed rhythm — a set weekend pattern for travelling, a set evening for the long call — because re-deciding it every week is what wears everyone down.

Book long-distance travel early where you can, and be honest about how much of a weekend a round trip actually leaves. It also helps to agree who owns which admin: one of you handles the school and the ward office at the family end, the other handles everything attached to the new address.

The notifications a foreign resident still has to file

Moving inside Japan means a visit to two city or ward offices. You file a moving-out notice (転出届) at your current municipality and a moving-in notice (転入届) at the new one, generally within fourteen days of moving in; if you're moving within the same municipality it's a change-of-address notice (転居届) instead. As a mid-to-long-term resident you also have the address on the back of your residence card updated at the same municipal counter — that step happens at the ward office, not at immigration.

The follow-on updates are where the time goes. National health insurance and pension records follow your residence registration, your My Number card needs updating, a driver's licence address change is handled through the police, and a child's school transfer runs through the local board of education. Banks, insurers, and your employer's own records each have to be told separately — nothing carries over on its own.

Immigration is a separate track. Notifications to the Immigration Services Agency concern your affiliated organisation — a change of employer, or your employer's name or location changing — rather than where you personally live, so a transfer to another office of the same company often doesn't trigger one. Often isn't always, and requirements change, so check the current official guidance or ask at an immigration information centre. If you're going alone, also ask the ward office which address you're expected to register at, since that answer feeds into insurance and school paperwork. None of this is legal advice.

Two homes, one line

Everything above quietly runs through your phone. The Friday night train booked from your desk, the video call timed to your child's bedtime, the photo of a school notice your partner sends because it needs answering by Monday, the map to a ward office you've never visited in a city you've just arrived in — a split household runs on mobile data and a Japanese number that local forms and services expect.

If your number isn't sorted yet, that's the part I can help with. With Rakuten Mobile you can apply online with your residence card, and if your phone supports eSIM you're often activated the same day — usually around fifteen minutes. There's a setup guide here on the site that walks through it step by step, and I'd check the official campaign page for current conditions before you apply. Then the calls home just become part of the week, and you can spend your energy on the move itself.