Japan · East Asia
Moving to Saitama
Saitama quick facts
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World Bank · 2025Religion
% of populationCIA World Factbook / national censuses
Cost of living in Saitama
Can you move to Japan?
Pick your passport to see whether you can enter Japan — and what it takes to stay.
Entry rules come from github.com/imorte/passport-index-data, updated 17 February 2026. They change without notice — confirm with the official immigration service before booking.
Getting set up in Japan
The residence card, ten wards, and the branch office that stopped serving seven prefectures
Japan issues your residence card at the airport, but the card alone is not enough — you must register your address at your ward office within fourteen days, and that registration is what unlocks health insurance, banking and a phone contract. The Saitama-specific point is that the local immigration counter changed materially on 1 April 2023: the Saitama Branch Office had covered seven prefectures and now covers Saitama alone, so residents no longer need to travel to Shinagawa for routine work. It remains a branch office of the Tokyo bureau rather than a bureau in its own right.
Read the full step-by-step guideConverting a licence in a city that mostly takes the train
Converting a foreign licence — gaimen kirikae — requires a knowledge check and, for most countries, a practical test on a closed course that is notoriously exacting. A defined list of countries is exempt. The rules tightened nationally on 1 October 2025: a jūminhyō is now compulsory for every applicant, so short-stay visitors are shut out of the route, and the knowledge check went from ten questions at 70% to fifty questions at 90%. An International Driving Permit is valid for one year only. In practice most Saitama households near a station manage without a car, and registering one requires proving you have somewhere off-street to park it.
Read the full step-by-step guideOpening a Japanese account, and the six-month problem
Japanese banks vary enormously in how they treat new foreign residents, and several major banks effectively require six months of residence before opening a full account. Japan Post Bank and the online banks are the usual first stop because they do not. You need ward registration first. Saitama Resona Bank is the dominant local institution and is what a lot of local employers and landlords expect to see.
Read the full step-by-step guideHealth insurance, the 30% rule, and the pension you can claim back
Enrolment is a legal obligation, not a choice. Once enrolled you pay 30% of the cost of most treatment at the point of care and the scheme pays the rest, with a monthly ceiling that caps catastrophic costs. Pension enrolment is equally compulsory — and if you leave Japan you can claim a lump-sum withdrawal of part of what you paid, which a great many departing residents never do. Saitama's own addition is that several of the prefecture's flagship hospitals sit together at Saitama-Shintoshin, so specialist care is unusually close for a commuter city.
Read the full step-by-step guideGetting a Japanese SIM, and why the MVNOs are the answer
Japanese mobile has historically been expensive, dominated by three carriers with long contracts and heavy handset subsidies. Government pressure changed that, and the low-cost sub-brands and MVNOs now offer genuinely cheap plans on the same networks. You need a residence card and usually a Japanese bank account or credit card. Home fibre is fast and cheap, but what reaches your actual flat depends on the building.
Read the full step-by-step guideIncome tax, the cheapest residence-tax floor of Japan's big cities, and the exit trap
Most employees never file a return — the employer's year-end adjustment handles it. The two things that catch foreign residents are residence tax, calculated on last year's income and billed from the following June, and the distinction between non-permanent and permanent tax residence, which decides whether Japan taxes your foreign income at all. The Saitama detail worth knowing is that the flat per-capita portion of residence tax is ¥5,000 a year — the standard national minimum, with no prefectural forest or environment surcharge on top — and that the income-based 10% is split 8% city, 2% prefecture because Saitama is a designated city. Where you were registered on 1 January decides who bills you for the whole following year, which matters a great deal in a city people move into and out of Tokyo from.
Read the full step-by-step guideEach guide has verified costs, timelines, required documents, and the non-obvious gotchas — sourced from official government pages. Last verified August 2026.
Essential Japanese phrases
Reading a list isn’t learning it. Globe Quest turns these into a trainer — hear each phrase spoken, drill them with spaced repetition, and get scored as you say them out loud.
What to know before you go
Since April 2023 you do your immigration business in Saitama, not at Shinagawa
CriticalThe Saitama Branch Office of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Services Bureau, in Chūō ward, used to cover seven prefectures — Saitama, Chiba, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Yamanashi and Nagano — which made it one of the more congested counters in the country and pushed a lot of Saitama residents to the main bureau at Shinagawa instead. From 1 April 2023 its area is Saitama Prefecture alone. If you are reading an older guide that tells you to allow a day in Tokyo for a status extension, it is out of date. Note that it is a branch office, not a regional bureau: routine applications are handled here, and the Tokyo bureau remains the parent for anything unusual.
Register at your ward office within fourteen days — Saitama has ten, across three former cities
CriticalJapanese law requires you to register your address at the ward office covering it within fourteen days of moving in. Saitama's wards are Nishi, Kita, Ōmiya, Minuma, Chūō, Sakura, Urawa, Minami, Midori and Iwatsuki. They are grouped by which city they used to be: the Ōmiya side, the Urawa side, Yono in the middle as Chūō ward, and Iwatsuki out to the east. Registration produces the jūminhyō and triggers your My Number, and without it you cannot enrol in health insurance, open most bank accounts or complete a phone contract.
This is one city on paper and three in practice — decide which one you are moving to
CriticalSaitama City was created on 1 May 2001 by merging Urawa, Ōmiya and Yono, became an ordinance-designated city on 1 April 2003, and absorbed Iwatsuki on 1 April 2005 as its tenth ward. Twenty-five years on the merger has not produced a single centre. Ōmiya is the transport hub and the commercial and nightlife district; Urawa is where the prefectural government, the courts and the schools with reputations are; Saitama-Shintoshin between them is the arena, the shopping and the relocated national government offices. They are three stops apart and they behave like different towns. Choosing on rent alone, without deciding which of the three your daily life is in, is the commonest mistake here.
Renting costs four to six months' rent up front and much of it never comes back
CriticalDeposit, key money, agency fee, guarantor company fee, fire insurance and the first month. Key money is a gift to the landlord you never see again. Saitama runs on the Tokyo format — refundable shikikin plus non-refundable reikin — and the underlying rents are perhaps a quarter to a third below the equivalent inside Tokyo's 23 wards, so the absolute number is lower but the multiplier is the same. Have it liquid in a Japanese account before you start looking.
The residence-tax floor here is the lowest of Japan's big cities, by a small and real margin
Good to knowThe flat per-capita portion of residence tax from FY2024 is ¥3,000 to Saitama City plus ¥1,000 to Saitama Prefecture plus ¥1,000 for the national Forest Environment Tax — ¥5,000 a year. Saitama Prefecture is one of the minority that levies no additional forest or environment surcharge on top of the standard ¥1,000, where Hiroshima adds ¥500 and Miyagi adds ¥1,200. It is small money, but it is the sort of line that appears on a first bill with no explanation, and knowing your prefecture does not have one saves you looking for it.
Ōmiya is the reason people move here, and it is a genuinely large station
ImportantŌmiya carries six Shinkansen services — Tōhoku, Hokkaidō, Yamagata, Akita, Jōetsu and Hokuriku — plus JR conventional lines, the Tōbu Urban Park Line and the New Shuttle, and handles several hundred thousand passengers a day. Tokyo Station is around twenty-five to thirty minutes on the Ueno-Tokyo Line and about twenty by Shinkansen. That connectivity, not local employment, is what the city sells. Ōmiya ward itself pulls in more daytime workers than it sends out, but Saitama as a whole is the classic commuter prefecture.
Top industries & employers
Government & public administration
Saitama Prefectural Government, Saitama City, the Kantō regional bureaux at Saitama-Shintoshin
Saitama-Shintoshin was built expressly to take national government offices out of central Tokyo, and the resulting cluster of Kantō-wide regional bureaux is one of the few genuinely large employers headquartered inside the city.
Railways & rolling stock
JR East Ōmiya General Rolling Stock Centre, Tōbu Railway, Saitama New Urban Transit
Ōmiya has been a railway town since 1885 and still builds and overhauls trains; the works is the reason the Railway Museum is here rather than in Tokyo.
Banking & regional finance
Saitama Resona Bank, Musashino Bank, Saitama Shinkin
Saitama Resona is headquartered in the city and operates as a prefecture-focused bank rather than a national one, which is why local employers and landlords deal with it so routinely.
Medicine & research
Saitama Red Cross Hospital, Saitama Children's Medical Center, Saitama Prefectural Cardiovascular and Respiratory Center, Saitama Medical University group
The prefecture concentrated several of its flagship hospitals around Saitama-Shintoshin, which made the district a medical cluster as well as an administrative one.
Retail, logistics & consumer
Sogo and Takashimaya at Ōmiya, Ito-Yokadō, Belluna, Shimamura, prefecture-wide distribution operators
Saitama's position on the Tōhoku and Kan-Etsu expressways makes the wider prefecture one of the Kantō region's main distribution belts, though most of that warehousing sits outside the city boundary.
Tokyo, honestly
Marunouchi, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ikebukuro — twenty-five to forty minutes away
The city's largest export is commuters. Saitama Prefecture has one of the lowest daytime-to-night-time population ratios in Japan, and any realistic job search here should treat the Tokyo market as the primary one and the local market as a bonus.
Where to go in Saitama
Musashi Ichinomiya Hikawa Shrine & Ōmiya Park
Landmark · Ōmiya ward, north of the station
The head shrine of some 280 Hikawa shrines across the Kantō plain, approached by a wooded avenue roughly two kilometres long, with a large park and the prefectural museum beside it.
Local tip: Walk the whole approach from Sandōchō rather than entering from the park end — the length is the point, and it is the best thing to do in the city on a hot afternoon because the tree cover is complete. Ōmiya means 'great shrine' and this is the shrine it means. Hatsumōde in the first days of January draws crowds in the millions, so go at any other time.
Ōmiya Bonsai Village
Hidden gemCulture · Kita ward, near Toro and Ōmiya-kōen stations
A quiet residential grid of working bonsai nurseries founded in 1925 by Tokyo growers who moved out after the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake, with a municipal art museum at its centre.
Local tip: The nurseries are businesses, not attractions — walk the streets, look over the fences, and go into the ones with an open gate. The Ōmiya Bonsai Art Museum is the one place with labels and explanation, and it is small, cheap and worth an hour before you visit the growers. Photography rules vary by nursery, so ask.
The Railway Museum
Culture · Ōmiya ward, one stop on the New Shuttle
JR East's national railway museum, built beside the Ōmiya works — a hall of preserved locomotives and carriages, a working turntable, and simulators.
Local tip: Book online in advance; walk-up tickets are not always available. Go on a weekday if you can, because at the weekend it is the best children's day out in the prefecture and everyone knows it. The bento sold in the reproduction station hall is eaten in a real carriage, which is the detail children remember.
Minuma Tanbo
Hidden gemNature · Across Minuma, Midori and Ōmiya wards
Around 1,260 hectares of former paddy and water meadow kept undeveloped inside a city of 1.3 million — a green belt with cycle paths, canals and a startling absence of buildings.
Local tip: This is the thing residents are quietly proud of and visitors never hear about. The canal-side path from Minuma Daiyō-suiro runs for kilometres with no traffic, and it is the best cycling in the city by a wide margin. In April the cherry avenue along the eastern channel is as good as anything in Tokyo and a fraction as crowded.
Ōmiya east exit — Nanchō and the yokochō alleys
Nightlife · Ōmiya ward, east side of the station
A dense grid of small bars, standing izakaya and post-war alleyways immediately behind the station, busy on a weeknight in a way the rest of the city is not.
Local tip: This is the largest drinking district between Ikebukuro and Sendai and it is where the whole prefecture comes out. Start in the covered alleys near the station and work outward; the further from the exit, the smaller and better the counters get. Last trains north run late, which is a large part of why it exists.
Urawa & Bessho-numa
Neighborhood · Urawa ward, south of Ōmiya
The administrative and academic half of the city — the prefectural offices and courts, the schools with reputations, old eel restaurants from the Nakasendō days, and a lake park at Bessho-numa.
Local tip: Urawa is where families move for the schools and where Saitama's football identity lives; a Reds home match at Saitama Stadium is a genuinely serious atmosphere by Japanese standards. Bessho-numa park is the local Sunday and the cherry blossom there is quieter than Ōmiya Park's.
Emergency numbers in Saitama
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