Leaving Japan is not a single event. It is a forced transaction — dozens of small transactions, really — compressed into a few weeks. You have to sell things, throw things away, close accounts, claim money that's owed to you, and file paperwork that proves you actually left. Almost all of it happens on a deadline, almost all of it happens in Japanese, and almost none of it is explained to you in one place when you sign your original lease or start your job. This is that one place: a reverse-scheduled timeline from roughly two months out to the moment you hand back your residence card at the airport.
The order matters more than the individual tasks. Some things — pet export paperwork, a car sale, your pension refund paperwork — have lead times measured in weeks or months, not days. Leave them until the "final week" and they simply won't happen in time, and in the case of the pension refund, "not in time" can mean leaving real money on the table. Work backward from your flight date and treat each bucket below as a checkpoint, not a suggestion.
About two months out
This is the point where the clock starts on almost everything else, so it's worth being deliberate rather than just "starting to think about it."
- Give lease notice. Most Japanese rental contracts require 解約予告 (kaiyaku yokoku), a written notice of termination, one to two months before your move-out date. Miss this window and you can be on the hook for an extra month's rent even after you've left the country. Check your contract's actual notice period — it varies — before you do anything else. Our guide to breaking your lease walks through the notice letter, key return, and how landlords typically handle the 原状回復 (restoring the room to its original condition) inspection.
- Estimate your pension refund. If you paid into Japanese pension for six months or more, you're likely eligible for the pension refund (脱退一時金), the 脱退一時金 (dattai ichijikin) lump-sum withdrawal payment. Get a rough number now so you know what you're chasing, and write the deadline on a calendar: you must apply within two years of the date you lose your registered address in Japan.
- Appoint a tax representative if you'll be reclaiming withheld tax. If your pension refund includes Employees' Pension (厚生年金, kosei nenkin), a flat 20.42% is withheld at source, and the only way to get it back is to file for it through a 納税管理人 (nozei kanrinin), a tax representative registered with your local tax office. This appointment has to happen before you leave — you cannot easily arrange it from overseas. See taxes when you leave for how the appointment and the later filing actually work.
- Start pet-export paperwork now if you have a pet. This is routinely the longest lead-time item on the entire list. Depending on your destination, you may need a health certificate, a rabies antibody titer test, and a waiting period afterward — some countries require months between the titer test and travel. If you're bringing an animal home, this is the task to start the day you know your departure window, not two months before it.
- Tell your kids' school. Notify the school of 転学 (tengaku, transferring) or 退学 (taigaku, withdrawing), and request transcripts and any records the receiving school abroad will ask for. Schools can take time to prepare these documents.
About six weeks out
If you own a car, this is when it needs to leave your to-do list and enter someone else's showroom. Selling a car in Japan involves an appraisal and then either 名義変更 (meigi henkou, a change of ownership) if you're selling to a person or dealer, or 抹消登録 (masshou touroku, deregistration) if you're scrapping it. Both take real time to process. Sellers who wait until two weeks before departure typically accept a lower offer just to close the deal fast — starting six weeks out gives you room to get competing quotes instead of taking whatever's on the table.
About one month out
This is when your apartment starts visibly emptying out, and it's the point where the "sell vs. dispose" decision has to be made item by item.
- Sell what's worth money. Furniture, appliances, and electronics in decent condition can go through 買取 (kaitori) resale services — this is the one part of the move-out process that actually pays you instead of costing you. Our comparison of how to sell or throw away your stuff covers which categories of items are worth listing versus which ones cost more in time than they'd ever fetch.
- Book municipal oversized-waste collection for everything else. 粗大ごみ (sodai gomi) collection is cheap, but it has to be booked ahead through your local ward or city office, and slots fill up — lead times run from a few days to a few weeks, and considerably longer during the March–April moving rush. Book it now even if you're not fully packed yet; you can always adjust the item list closer to the date.
- If you're weighing whether an item is worth shipping home versus selling here, our breakdown of ship or sell your things compares shipping costs against resale value for the categories people most often get wrong (large electronics, kitchenware, seasonal clothing).
About two weeks out
Now the recurring bills start coming off, but in a specific order.
- Cancel your phone contract, watching for 違約金 (iyakukin), early-termination fees, that can apply if you're mid-contract.
- Cancel home internet and utilities (electricity, gas, water), scheduling the shut-off dates to match your actual move-out, not your flight date — you'll likely need power and water for the final cleaning.
- Cancel subscriptions tied to a Japanese payment method or address.
- Keep one Japanese bank account open. This is the one exception to "close everything." Your pension refund will be paid into a Japanese bank account (or via an international transfer arranged through it), and that payment can land months after you've left. Closing every account before you go can mean the refund has nowhere to go. See closing your accounts for the order to close things in and which one account to keep alive.
Final week
This is the compressed, high-stress stretch, and it's worth knowing your options in advance rather than improvising.
- Consider a same-week paid pickup (回収) if you're behind schedule. A 回収 (kaishuu) collection service can clear an entire apartment's worth of leftover items in one visit. It costs more than the municipal route, but it's faster and it beats simply abandoning furniture for your landlord to deal with, which can come back to you as a charge against your deposit.
- File your moving-out notice at city hall. The 転出届 (tenshutsu todoke) tells your municipality you're leaving, and it generally needs to be filed within about 14 days of your move. This is a separate step from cancelling your lease or utilities — don't assume one covers the other.
- Settle your residence tax. 住民税 (juuminzei), residence tax, is based on the previous year's income and can be billed on a schedule that doesn't line up neatly with your departure date — sometimes after you've already gone. This is exactly why the 納税管理人 (tax representative) arrangement from two months out matters: without one, a bill can arrive at an address you no longer have any connection to.
At the airport
The last official act of leaving is handing back your 在留カード (zairyu kaado), residence card, at immigration on your way out — unless you've indicated you're returning under a re-entry permit. Once that's done, the paperwork trail on the Japan side is essentially closed; what's left is following up on money still owed to you from overseas.
The money you can leave behind
Two things are easy to walk away from without realizing it, and both are entirely recoverable if you act on time.
The first is the pension refund (脱退一時金) itself. If you paid into pension for six months or more, you're due a lump sum, and if you paid into 厚生年金 (Employees' Pension), 20.42% of that refund was withheld at source — tax that most people who leave Japan never bother to reclaim, simply because the process requires a representative already in place before departure. The second is that same tax reclaim: it only works if you named a 納税管理人 before you left, which is why it appears twice on this list.
The single most-missed step: the pension refund must be applied for within two years of the date you lose your registered address in Japan — and if you want to reclaim the 20.42% withheld from the 厚生年金 portion, your tax representative (納税管理人) has to be appointed before you leave, not after. Miss either window and the money is very difficult to get back. Read taxes when you leave before you go, not after.
None of this is legal, tax, or pension advice — it's a general map of how the process tends to work, drawn from publicly available rules that vary by municipality, by visa type, and by how long you've been in the country, and that change over time. Confirm the specifics with your ward office, your pension office, and your tax representative before you rely on any of it. If you want to see how the pieces fit together for your own situation, start with the calculator to estimate your refund and build a personalized timeline, and check the FAQ for the questions people ask most often about deadlines, deposits, and what happens if you miss one.