The short version
- Electricity and water almost always start with a phone call or a web form — most suppliers do not need to send anyone to your apartment for either.
- Gas is the exception: a technician typically has to visit and turn the meter on in person, and you (or someone you authorize) usually need to be there, so book that appointment as early as you can.
- Home internet is often the slowest piece to arrive, sometimes weeks for a fiber installation, which is why it's worth applying the same week as the lifelines rather than after you're settled.
- For furniture and appliances, buying and short-term rental are both normal choices in Japan — which one actually saves you money mostly comes down to how long you expect to stay.
- Suppliers, appointment systems, and exact requirements vary by region and company; treat the steps below as the general shape, not your specific provider's instructions.
A new apartment in Japan tends to arrive in a very specific state: keys, an empty meter box, and instructions in Japanese taped to the intercom that you probably can't read yet. None of the utilities are connected by default, the internet doesn't exist until someone runs a line to the unit, and the room itself is usually just a floor. The four things that turn that into a livable apartment — electricity, water, gas, and a furnished room — don't have to happen in a particular order, but a couple of them are slow enough that starting late costs you real days.
The order that saves you the most waiting
Of the four things you need to set up, gas and internet are the two with a built-in delay: gas because it needs a scheduled visit, internet because installation slots fill up and fiber work can take a couple of weeks from application to a working connection. Electricity and water are usually same-day or next-day once you've contacted the supplier. Furniture is on its own timeline entirely — you can decide that at any point, including before you move in. A workable sequence for the first few days is to call or apply online for electricity, water, and gas together, get the internet application in as soon as you have an address, and use the days you're waiting on gas and internet to make the furniture decision.
Electricity and water: mostly a phone call or a form
In most of Japan, starting electricity and water service is a matter of contacting the supplier that covers your address — by phone, or through an online application if the company offers one — and giving them your move-in date and new address. No one typically needs to enter the apartment for either service to start, since the meters are usually accessible from outside the unit or in a shared utility space. Some electricity suppliers can turn service on the same day if you call early enough; water is often handled by the local municipal waterworks bureau rather than a private company, and the process is broadly similar. English-language phone support and English application forms exist at several major suppliers, but availability differs by company and region, so it's worth checking your specific provider's site before you call.
Whichever company you start with here, it doesn't have to be permanent. Japan's electricity market has been open to competing providers since 2016, and once you've settled in, our guide to switching electricity providers covers what changes if you decide the default supplier isn't the one you want to stay with.
If your previous address also had separate accounts, remember these are two separate cancellations at the old place in addition to two new start requests at the new one — easy to forget the water account specifically, since it's sometimes billed through the ward rather than a familiar company name.
Gas: the one step you cannot do remotely
Gas is where the pattern breaks. Because gas involves an open flame at the point of use, suppliers generally will not turn the meter on without a technician physically visiting the apartment to check the connection and light the pilot for you (or confirm the appliances are safe to use), and someone usually needs to be present for that visit — you, a housemate, or someone else you've arranged to let the technician in. The appointment itself is normally short, often well under half an hour, but the available slots can be limited in the first days after a move, especially in busy seasons. Book it as soon as you know your move-in date rather than after you arrive, and confirm what happens if no one can be home at the scheduled time — some suppliers allow a building manager or another authorized adult to stand in.
Internet: the one to start early, not the one to solve on day one
Home internet is usually the slowest of the four to actually arrive, not the hardest to apply for. A mobile pocket WiFi or a phone's tethering plan can bridge the gap while you wait — see our guide to temporary WiFi and SIM options before your residence card arrives if you're still in that stretch — but a full comparison of fiber, home routers, and pocket WiFi — including which options take an overseas credit card and which need a Japanese bank account — is covered in more depth in our home internet in Japan comparison. The one habit worth taking from that guide into this checklist: apply in the same week as your electricity and gas, not after you've settled in, since a fiber installation slot booked a week late is a week of no internet at home.
Furniture and appliances: buy or rent short-term?
If you moved from a furnished share house or a monthly apartment into a regular rental, this is usually the first time you're furnishing a room from empty — Japanese apartments are typically rented unfurnished and without a refrigerator, washing machine, or lighting fixtures included. Two paths are common. One is buying outright, from a home center, electronics retailer, or secondhand shop. The other is a furniture and appliance rental or subscription service — companies such as CLAS, airRoom, subsclife, and かして!どっとこむ (kasite.com) all operate in this space, letting you pay monthly for items you can extend, return, or sometimes buy out later. Neither path is universally cheaper; it depends heavily on how long you expect to keep the item.
The table below lays out the trade-offs rather than declaring a winner. Treat "buy" and "rent" as two reasonable defaults, not a right answer and a wrong one.
| What matters to you | Buying | Short-term rental / subscription |
|---|---|---|
| Expected stay | Tends to pay off the longer you keep the item — often cited as roughly two years or more | Tends to suit a stay under a year, or one where the length is still uncertain |
| Up-front cost | Higher — you pay the full price at once, or close to it, for each item | Lower — a monthly fee per item, sometimes with a small delivery or setup charge |
| When you move out | You keep, sell, or dispose of the item yourself — bulky items may need a paid disposal process | Usually returned to the provider, which removes the disposal question entirely |
| Japanese credit card or bank account | Often needed for larger purchases, though cash and some overseas cards work at many retailers | Varies by provider — some advertise sign-up without a credit check, but confirm payment methods before applying |
| English support | Depends on the specific store or site | Depends on the specific provider — confirm before signing up rather than assuming |
| Tends to suit | Longer stays, or wanting to own and choose your own furniture | Shorter or uncertain stays, or wanting to avoid the move-out disposal step |
Official pages for the furniture rental services named above:
The kasite.com link is the affiliate link disclosed below; the other three are plain links with no commercial relationship. Confirm current pricing, plan terms, and English support directly with each one before signing up — kasite.com in particular publishes its site in Japanese only (we found no English version as of August 2026).
Disclosure: the かして!どっとこむ (kasite.com) entry in the list above and the button below are affiliate links — if you order through either, this site may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. CLAS, airRoom, and subsclife are ordinary links with no commission attached. That relationship did not change the buy-vs-rent comparison above, which names all four companies without ranking them.
かして!どっとこむ (kasite.com) One of the furniture and appliance rental services named above
- Rental/subscription furniture in this category is billed as a monthly fee per item, sometimes with a small delivery or setup charge
- Items are usually returned to the provider when you move out, which removes the disposal question entirely
- Site is Japanese only — no English version found as of August 2026
The table above treats "rent" as one lump option, but CLAS, airRoom, and subsclife differ from each other on the details that matter most to a foreign resident — whether a guarantor or a specific kind of credit card is required, how long you're locked in, and what it costs to cancel early. Our comparison of furniture rental subscriptions in Japan goes through those three provider by provider, plus a note on why MUJI's own version of this service stopped taking new sign-ups in 2026.
Reading the table for your own situation
None of the rows above are meant to settle it on their own. If you already know you're staying two years or more and want furniture that is genuinely yours, buying usually works out cheaper over that stretch, even with the larger bill in week one. If your stay is short, uncertain, or you'd simply rather not deal with disposing of a refrigerator later, a rental plan trades a slightly higher long-run cost for skipping that problem entirely. A mixed approach is also common — buying small, cheap items outright while renting the expensive, bulky ones like a refrigerator or washing machine.
Both rows above assume new. There's a third option this table leaves out entirely: buying secondhand through Mercari, Jimoty, or one of the Facebook "Sayonara Sale" groups where departing residents sell off furniture before they fly out. It's a reasonable middle ground between the two paths above, especially for bulky items you'd rather not pay a rental subscription on. Our guide to buying secondhand furniture and appliances in Japan compares those three platforms on language barrier, payment safety, and how well each handles something as large as a bed frame.
What this guide does not cover
This is a general walkthrough of a common first week, not a substitute for your specific supplier's terms or a specific rental contract's fine print. It does not cover individual utility contract disputes, tax treatment of any purchase, or immigration questions tied to your residence status; for those, contact the supplier, a tax office, or your local immigration bureau directly.
Where this connects
This checklist starts from the moment you already have keys, which means the truck has already come and gone. If you're still weighing how to get your things here in the first place, our guide to choosing a moving company in Japan covers how the country's batch-quote sites work, the calls that come with them, and the English-speaking alternatives if you'd rather skip that.
Whether furniture is your responsibility at all depends on how you chose to live in the first place; our comparison of share house, regular apartment, monthly, and guest house living covers that decision, including the regular-rental case this guide assumes. If buying wins out and you later need to get rid of the old or excess pieces, bulky-item disposal has its own paid process, covered in the garbage sorting guide — and when that day comes at your own move-out, our guide to disposing of furniture and appliances before you move out goes deeper on the sodai gomi and appliance-recycling side of it than the bulky-waste section here does. And if this move-in follows a move-out from a previous apartment, what you can and can't be charged for on the way out makes a useful contrast to the buy-vs-rent table above; see our security deposit guide. And the costs on this page aren't the last ones a standard lease charges: around two years in, most Kanto-area contracts come up for renewal with a fee of their own, covered in our guide to Japan's lease renewal fee (koshinryo).
One more errand that tends to land in this same first week: picking up a Suica, PASMO, or other regional IC card if you don't already have one, since you'll need it for the daily commute regardless of which utilities are still pending. Once you've settled into a schedule at work, our guide to IC cards and whether a monthly commuter pass is worth it covers the next question that usually comes up: whether to buy a teiki pass or keep paying per ride, especially if your office days end up being fewer than five a week.
One thing that's easy to forget in the middle of setting up utilities and furniture: making sure mail from your old address actually finds you at the new one. Our guide to Japan's mail forwarding and parcel redelivery systems covers the free one-year forwarding request with Japan Post and what to do about a missed delivery from Yamato or Sagawa. Once mail is reliably reaching you, the next skill is telling which of it actually matters — our guide to spotting important mail among the flyers covers the envelope and postcard formats worth opening carefully, well before you've registered for a residence tax or health insurance notice under this new address.
If the station ends up a little too far to walk once you've settled in, a bicycle is often the cheapest fix — but Japan treats a bicycle as something you register, not just something you buy. Our guide to bicycle registration and insurance in Japan covers the step people skip most: transferring registration into your own name after buying secondhand, plus the separate prefectural insurance requirement that catches new residents off guard.
One more errand worth slotting into this same first stretch, once you have proof of your new address in hand: a public library card. It costs nothing, takes one short visit, and often unlocks free English ebooks and audiobooks on top of the physical shelf — our guide to getting a library card in Japan covers the registration requirements and what to expect.
Not every loose end from this first stretch is about paperwork. Sooner or later a coworker or friend suggests an onsen trip, and if you have a tattoo, that invitation raises a question worth having an answer to before it comes up rather than during it. Our guide to tattoo-friendly onsen and sento in Japan covers why the "no tattoo" sign at the door is a house rule rather than a law, and the three real ways people bathe anyway.
Before a bank account is open and a utility bill has actually arrived by direct debit, the payment slips and cash needs from this whole checklist tend to route through the same corner store. Our guide to what a convenience store can actually do covers paying a barcoded bill in cash, pulling yen from a foreign card at a Seven Bank ATM, and redirecting a missed delivery to a counter instead of your door.
Once the boxes are unpacked, the neighbors become part of daily life in a way this checklist doesn't cover. Our guide to noise complaints and neighbor etiquette covers the aisatsu greeting custom worth doing in your first few days, and what actually happens if a noise notice shows up later.
Sources
Checked 2026-07-23.
For the general shape of starting electricity, water, and gas service described above — including the point that gas typically requires an in-person technician visit while electricity and water are usually handled by phone or online form — see the English-language overviews at E-Housing (e-housing.jp) and Coto Academy (cotoacademy.com). For the furniture buy-vs-rental comparison and the rental services named in the table, see Aonissin's Real Estate Guide (realestateguide.jp), Tokyo Room Finder (blog.tokyoroomfinder.com), and Selectra (selectra.jp). Procedures vary by region and supplier; confirm the specifics with your own utility company, city waterworks bureau, or chosen rental provider.