RetireJapan

（My plan to retire in Japan was messed up)
I am living here in Japan with a working visa (IT job),
owning a Rakuten credit card debt of 200万円。
（the minimum payment is being auto withdrawn each month from my 三菱UFJ bank account）

I am going to leave Japan next year, and I want to continue paying this debt oversea, by installments like I am doing now (I do have a friend in Japan here who is willing to help me to transfer the necessary amount each month to my bank account)

What I am worried about :

1. Will Rakuten credit company find out about me leaving the country and force me to pay the debt all at once?
2. Will the 三菱UFJ bank find out about me leaving the country and suspend my account? (Because my apartment contract will be stopped, I am thinking about changing my registered address (with the bank) to the address of the friend mentioned above, so just in case they send me anything, it will not be returned to them)

Thank you very much for your help!

First, glad to see you are trying to make good on your debt.

As long as you are making regular payments on the credit card, I doubt Rakuten will know (or care) that you're no longer in the country.
I know many, many people with Japanese bank accounts even after moving overseas - I kept Mizuho and MUFG accounts while in London for 10 years - so while technically it's apparently not allowed, practically I don't think there will be any issues, particularly if you're updating the address to your friend's house.

Rather than depend on your friend for the bank accounts, I'd set up something with TransferWise, just so that you have complete control over the process.

Separately, I sure hope you have or can get another plan in place, because minimum payments is not the way to go.
I'm assuming you're paying around Y70,000 a month, and the interest rate is around 15%.
At that rate, you'd have to make payments for about 15 years, and that's assuming you never missed a payment or had other issues come up.

On the keeping a bank account after leaving Japan, I left an account open from 2004 to 2016 with no issues at all. However, I recently had to show my resident card to the bank and there is a thread on here suggesting that a few banks are asking for this, possibly on a regular basis going forward.

@DragonAsk
@BeagleHound
Thank you very much for your answers!

Beaglehound wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 1:55 am On the keeping a bank account after leaving Japan, I left an account open from 2004 to 2016 with no issues at all. However, I recently had to show my resident card to the bank and there is a thread on here suggesting that a few banks are asking for this, possibly on a regular basis going forward.

Yes, I am starting to get pestered a bit for this kind of thing from banks which previously didn't seem to bother. I even had a slip
come out from the ATM when I used my post office cashcard the other day asking me to head to a branch to prove birthday etc..
Suggests to me that the government is pushing the banks
to do this. Would make leaving Japan for a year or two more troublesome if you had to shut down all bank accounts , credit cards and esp.
investment stocks/ shares accounts. Maybe you could get around this if you were a permanent resident even if you went abroad ?!