Questions regarding leaving Japan after studying

Living In Tokyo
1

Hello everyone!
Since this is my first topic here, I hope everything is according to the rules :slight_smile:

So, I studied in Japan for 6 months (roughly 5 years ago) and now I’m about to enter Japan as a student again. Naturally I started to gather information about residence procedures. I stumbled across a few things, which made me wonder. For example:

  1. I left Japan and they punched a hole in my Residence Card. But now I read that you have to give it back for good. So…isn’t the hole enough?

  2. I can’t remember at all, if I cancelled my NHI membership (it’s been a few year ^^’). If I hadn’t, they surely would have contacted me one or the other way, in order to get their insurance fees… Since they didn’t, it means I cancelled it, right? I’m super unsure about this, so do you know who I can contact about this matter? Since I don’t want any problems when entering Japan.

If you could help me (maybe with your own knowledge or experience) I would appreciate it very much :smiley:

Have a nice day!

2

Sounds like you did give it back to them - they punched a hole in it and gave it back to you. From my experience that’s normal.

If you didn’t notify the ward office that you were leaving they would have probably continued posting NHI bills to you last address in Japan. In my experience they are usually quite reasonable, so you might be able to sort out any problems with them.