Japanese Pension System

In Japan, part of their social systems is the pension service, which in essence is for retirement and / or disability. Since moving to Japan I have been required to pay into this program, although cheap I don’t foresee myself using this, any time soon, or at least hope not.

The last couple of weeks I have been getting letters from the pension office stating that I needed to make a payment to the pension as they had not received payment from me since December 2022. This was strange for me as I paid from March 2022 - March 2023. Kept receipts, etc.

I emailed the pension system to get an automatic response stating they did not respond to these types of emails. So I sent a letter to the pension system a little after that and got no response.

Then again, this past week I got another letter stating yet again, payment not received. So finally i searched and found a phone number to call to resolve the matter.

After about 30 minutes of trying to explain the situation they finally called an interpreter to help and thats when things finally got moving.

I explain the situation again and they pulled my records. The lady stated that they in fact had on file that I had made payments to the pension system by year and that I did not owe anything. She told me it was probably an error.

What makes this crazy for me is the fact that I got this letter about 4 times in the past since moving here.

The scary part is the Nenkin or pension system is something the government looks at when you apply for permenant residency. And as that is something i’d like to apply for in the future i’m worried that errors like this even on their part may hurt me in the long run.

Now I don’t know if this is because its an issue but you can request copies of payments made to have. So my plan is to request them every year as things move forward. I do not want to get caught off guard like I was with this.

So tips, if you’re moving to Japan and need to pay into the pension system, then please make sure to keep you receipts from wherever you paid it and if you have the time request official copies from the office itself. After all it doesn’t hurt to be prepared!

So that’s my situation or was; until the next one.