Happy Lunar New Year 2025! 🧧🐍 Shopping till you drop in the Year of the Snake 🛍️

Happy Lunar New Year of the Snake 🐍 for those who celebrate (Japan doesn’t as they switched to the western calendar during the Meiji Restoration). Here’s a new batch of helpful tips for living in Asia, with a special focus on shopping for everyday goods. 🛒

Table of Contents

• Price hikes hit Japanese immigration application f …

• Roaming text messages with Taiwanese prepaid SIMs …

• Managing apps when you live in different countries …

• Household shopping in Taiwan 🇹🇼🏠

  • Physical Stores (with possible delivery)

    • Home Goods

      • Daiso

      • Don Don Donki

    • Groceries

    • Beauty & Cosmetics

  • Online Shopping

  • Shipping directly from Taobao

  • How to use EZWay to do Taiwan customs declarations …

Price hikes hit Japanese immigration application fees! 💹

Japan is hiking immigration application fees by up to 50% starting April 1, citing rising costs—the first increase in over 40 years. If you need to renew your visa, change status, or apply for permanent residency, it’s worth submitting your application before March 31 to lock in the current rates. Special re-entry permits (for trips under 1 year) remain free. More details at the Japan Times.

Roaming text messages with Taiwanese prepaid SIMs 🇹🇼📲

As I wrote earlier, for mobile connectivity in Taiwan I picked a prepaid plan with Taiwan Mobile (台灣大哥哥, táiwān dà gēgē) versus a postpaid plan, as prepaid rates are cost effective and I could just not pay for service during the summers while not in Taiwan. Initially, I was actually able to receive text messages while abroad, which is necessary to sign into various services, but for some reason last year this stopped working. Internet sources were fairly unclear on if receiving text messages on prepaid plans was possible or not, so I was actually considering switching to a postpaid plan just for texts.

However, I figured out how to receive texts again while abroad, at least with Taiwan Mobile, and in certain countries. You can view their prepaid roaming support page; at the very least it seems roaming service works in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the United States, Vietnam, and Indonesia. I have not been able to test receiving texts outside of those countries yet, if you have any data points, please report back!

From the Taiwan Mobile app (also possible on the website)

You’ll be directed to the 國際漫遊服務 (guójì mànyóu fúwù, international roaming service) screen:

Under the 語音漫遊 (yǔyīn mànyóu, voice roaming) section, tap 申請開啟 (shēnqǐng kāiqǐ, apply for the service). The status may not immediately update, and may take a few minutes to reflect in the app. If the service was already on, it would state 申請關閉 (shēnqǐng guānbì, close the service) instead. It will probably take some amount of time for the roaming service to actually apply; when it does, you’ll see that the Taiwan Mobile line will connect to a network in roaming mode. Also, you’ll probably want to make sure that WiFi Calling is on as well.

I haven’t been able to test with prepaid plans from the other carriers like Chunghwa Telecom (中華電信, zhōnghuá diànxìn) or FarEastTone (遠傳電信, yuǎnchuán diànxìn) but likely they have similar steps to enable receiving texts abroad on prepaid plans without having to resort to a postpaid plan.

Side hint: for those with Taiwan Mobile prepaid plans, it seems like topping up any amount of data extends the expiration date of your current data allocation to the expiration date of your latest top-up. So you don’t need to worry about data expiring as long as you are diligent about top-ups.

Managing apps when you live in different countries 📱🌏

If you're spending significant time in other countries, you’ve probably encountered situations where some local smartphone app isn’t available in your current smartphone region. There are ways to navigate these restrictions to download apps you want to use. Here's are guides for Android and iOS:

Android

Switching your Google Play Store region can be done, but there are a few limitations.

• Country Change Limit: You can only change your Play Store country once per year. This makes it crucial to plan ahead if you’re relocating or frequently moving between regions.

• Automatic Updates: Google might automatically update your country based on your physical location, but this isn’t guaranteed and may depend on your billing information.

• Billing Methods: To set up a new region account, you’ll need a valid payment method from that country. While credit cards are the default option, other region-specific methods, like PayPal or gift cards, can often work depending on the country.

A practical workaround is adding multiple Google accounts to your device. Keep your original account tied to your home country and create a new account for your new region. When switching accounts in the Play Store, you can access apps specific to the region linked to each account. EDIT: Tip from reader Colleen, if you add a new account with no payment methods linked, it will auto-update to whatever region Google detects your device to be in!

Apple (iOS)

Apple offers more flexibility but still requires careful management:

• Switching Regions: You can switch back and forth between countries in your Apple ID settings, but a payment method from the new country is required. Keep in mind that active subscriptions tied to your current country may need to be canceled before switching.

• Alternative Payment Methods: Besides credit cards, region-specific Apple gift cards can be an easy solution. For some countries, PayPal or mobile carrier billing might also work.

• Using Multiple Apple IDs: To avoid the hassle of switching countries repeatedly, consider creating a separate Apple ID for the new region. When you want to install apps from a different region, you can sign off your original account in the App Store, then sign in with the new account while keeping your original account for iCloud and other services. This allows you to access to apps from both regions without needing to toggle your country settings frequently.

How to change your App Store country/region

Alternatively, to sign out and sign back in with another Apple ID in the App Store (previous apps will remain on your device), tap the Sign Out button in the Account panel.

Household shopping in Taiwan 🇹🇼🏠

With my new apartment in Taiwan, I needed to stock it to make it feel homey! Here are tips on where to shop for everyday household goods.

Physical Stores (with possible delivery)

Home Goods

Daiso

Daiso is a Japanese chain offering affordable home goods, stationery, and small household items. Perfect for budget-friendly shopping.

Don Don Donki

Also known as Don Quijote, this Japanese retailer carries a wide variety of products, from snacks and cosmetics to unique gadgets. A great place to find Japanese imports. Known for their annoying theme song.

Furniture and Home Goods

• IKEA: Familiar and reliable, with Taiwan-specific product options.

• Nitori: A Japanese chain similar to IKEA, offering quality furniture and home goods at competitive prices.

Groceries

For fresh fruits and vegetables, there are traditional markets almost everywhere. For actual grocery stores, these are Taiwan’s main retail chains:

• RT-Mart (大潤發, dàrùnfā): Owned by PX Mart, offering a mix of groceries, electronics, and household goods. Online delivery.

• PX Mart (全聯, quánlián): Focused on groceries and local products. Online delivery.

• Carrefour (家樂福, jiālèfú): Known for a good selection of international items alongside local goods. Online delivery.

• Carrefour Market: these were formerly Wellcome 頂好 stores. They carry similar products as the larger Carrefours, but in a smaller format.

Beauty & Cosmetics

Poya, Watsons, Cosmed, Tomod’s and Matsumoto Kiyoshi seem to be the major chains in Taiwan, each with their own quirks.

Costco

Costco is incredibly popular in Taiwan, catering to both locals and expats.

• Foreign Memberships: Your overseas Costco membership is accepted, and foreign co-branded Costco credit cards also should work.

• Taiwan Memberships: You can apply for a Taiwan Costco credit card even with a foreign membership, but it requires a credit check, which normally means work history in Taiwan or Taiwanese citizenship.

• Payment Options: Cash is accepted if you don’t have a Costco credit card, local or foreign co-brand.

• Online Delivery: You can only set up an account for online delivery if you have a Taiwanese membership. So far I have been unable to create online Costco accounts outside my membership home country.

As of September 2024, the annual fee for a Costco Business Membership in Taiwan is $1,150 NTD, and the annual fee for a Standard Gold Star Primary Membership is $1,350 NTD, which is cheaper than memberships in many other parts of the world. So it may be worth considering switching over foreign memberships to a local one.

Online Shopping

Online shopping is reasonably convenient in Taiwan, with wide selection and fast shipping times (it’s a small island!) If the website is only in Chinese, then you can use browser translation features if you aren’t literate in Chinese. Safari goes a step further and will also translate text in images. For Chinese language platforms, searching for products in English can sometimes work, but I found it's better to use a translation tool to find the Chinese name of an item and search using that. ChatGPT and DeepL seem to be the best, Google Translate can be pretty inaccurate. If you are buying items from overseas shipped to Taiwan, you need to declare those to customs and potentially pay tax, which I detail below. Packages with value under 2000 NTD are exempt from customs duty, and this is counted per-package, though if you are getting a batch shipment, customs reserves the right to bundle those together when assessing customs duties.

Shopee

Shopee is an online shopping platform available in many Asian countries. It’s one of the most convenient platforms for online shopping in Taiwan.

• Shipping Options: Ordering to a Shopee delivery point is typically the most affordable option. You can also ship to a local convenience store, or directly to your address for extra fees.

• Shipping Tips: As Shopee has local merchants and overseas merchants, select “Ships from Taiwan” for the fastest delivery, though estimated times can vary. Always check the delivery timeframe listed by the seller.

• Free Delivery Minimums: Most merchants offer free delivery to Shopee stores for orders over 199 NTD, but this threshold can vary. Since the minimum is calculated per merchant, it may be hard to qualify for free shipping when ordering smaller items.

• Shipping Domestically vs. from Overseas: Domestic orders do not require real-name authentication, making it easy to shop locally without additional verification. However, ordering from overseas requires real-name authentication, which can be done via JKOPay. Even without a valid Taiwan credit card, you can authenticate your account.

• Large or Heavy Items: These may not qualify for convenience store or Shopee store pickup and may require home delivery.

• Payment Options: Shopee accepts Taiwan-issued credit cards, JKOPay (requires a Taiwan bank account or credit card), and cash on delivery (COD). COD is a convenient option if you lack a Taiwan bank account or credit card.

• Pickup windows: If you do not pickup your package from the Shopee store or convenience within the given time window, usually 7 days, it will be automatically returned, so be aware.

iHerb

iHerb is an online platform for supplements and other health products that ships globally. Prices are fair, though I find oftentimes buying from Amazon is cheaper.

Amazon

Amazon is a reliable option for international shipping to Taiwan.

• Amazon Japan: The closest and fastest Amazon store for Taiwan. They frequently offer promotions for free shipping to Taiwan (plus import fees) on orders over 12,000 JPY for select items. Delivery is reasonably fast, about 1 week. Check out the promotion here.

• Other Amazon Regions: You can also shop on Amazon US or other regions, though shipping costs and delivery times may vary.

PC Home

PC Home specializes in electronics and other goods. It accepts some foreign credit cards, but you may need to fit your foreign billing address into the Taiwan address fields. If that doesn’t work, opt for COD and pick up your order at a convenience store.

Momoshop

Momoshop is a popular site for home goods, with a wide selection of household items and furniture.

Coupang

I haven’t tried it myself, but the Korean online delivery app Coupang operates in Taiwan, selling a number of everyday goods.

Facebook Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace is widely used in Taiwan, particularly among expats. It’s a great place to find:

• Used Items: Appliances, furniture, and home goods at discounted prices.

• Hard-to-Find Foreign Products: A good resource for expats looking for specific items not readily available in Taiwan.

Taobao

Taobao is the giant when it comes to shopping in China. You can buy almost anything on there, with great pricing and reliable service. It’s meant for the domestic market, so they have various features to indicate reputable sellers, and reviews seem to be more reliable. In this sense it is much better than TEMU, which is infamous for being unreliable quality wise. Whatever you think about the ethics of buying from China, it seems like most products online and many in-store products come from China anyways. Below this section, I have a guide on how to shop on Taobao with free international shipping.

I've personally been picking up a lot of kitchen gear. I might stay away from plastics that touch food, nor would I buy any food ingredients (may not pass customs) or chemicals. But there’s a ton of selection on Taobao - my girlfriend buys a lot of clothes and health products.

You can use foreign credit cards through Alipay and it adds on around a 3% fee. Theoretically there may be a way to link directly to your Alipay account to get waived fees under ¥200 RMB but I haven’t figured that out.

There’s a two major shipping strategies, you can use Taobao official shipping, or you can ship to a forwarder in China.

• Taobao official shipping: more straightforward, and likely better protected in terms of insurance. If you are in a free shipping country, and the item qualifies, this is probably the best option. The downsides are that not all items may be available to be shipped directly. Furthermore, if the item doesn’t qualify for free shipping, it sees like the Taobao official consolidator is more expensive than third party forwarders.

• Using a Forwarder: For items that aren’t available in your region, or don’t qualify for free shipping, a forwarding service can be better.

  • How It Works: The forwarder consolidates your orders, repackages them, and ships them to you at reduced rates (around $0.67-$1 USD/kg, with both weight and size considered). Some consolidators will even take the items out of their packages to further reduce weight and space.

  • Shipping Options: Electronics and liquids ship by sea (cheaper but can take a few weeks), while most other items can go by airmail (more expensive, but only takes 4–6 days).

  • Recommended Forwarders:

    • CN-Express: apparently has very little restrictions compared to official Taobao shipping or other forwarders.

    • Sufengda / 速風達集運: Offers a user-friendly app.

      • Android App

      • iOS App

Shipping directly from Taobao

As of late last year, Taobao has introduced free international shipping to select countries, starting with a number of Asian countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, as well as Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

The free shipping threshold seems to vary by country, as well as what items qualify. For example, to Taiwan only requires a ¥99 RMB minimum, where as Japan is ¥199 RMB and I’ve noticed a lot less items qualify.

You need to first add and set as default an address in the country you intend to ship to to see free shipping offers. Figuring out what items ship for free is easier to do on mobile (there doesn’t seem to be an indicator on the product page on desktop currently). On product pages, you’ll see something like this: 滿¥99免運到Y (mǎn ¥99 miǎnyùndào Y, free shipping over ¥99 to Y). Items bought this way generally can be returned locally as well! (it will marked 本地退, běndì tuì). Screenshots are from the mobile app, but should be similar to the desktop UI.

In your shopping cart (购物车, gòuwù chē), there will be indicators for free shipping (desktop will show this as well).

When it comes time to checkout, you have two options, either consolidated shipping (官方集運, guānfāng jíyùn), or direct shipping (官方直郵, guānfāng zhíyóu). Consolidated shipping is where your orders accumulate in a single location first, then you specify later which ones should be bundled together in a single shipment in order to save on shipping fees. Direct shipping is when there are multiple items in your order, only the items in that order are potentially automatically consolidated together before shipping to you. In either case, free shipping only seems to apply to sea freight (海運, hǎiyùn), not air mail (空運, kōngyùn) which costs extra. And actually, for consolidated shipping, you don’t need to hit the minimum in a single transaction, you can buy in smaller orders as long as when you finally send out the consolidated shipment, the total value of the items hits the minimum for free shipping. For direct shipping, you must hit the minimum in that order to qualify.

After paying for the shipment, now it’s time to play the waiting game… For consolidated shipping there is separate step you need to take to actually have the items shipped to you. You’ll notice on the Waiting for Receipt (待收货, dài shōu huò) page, items will have the status 您的包裹已入库，需要您合并包裹与支付运费 (nín de bāoguǒ yǐ rù kù, xūyào nín hébìng bāoguǒ yǔ zhīfù yùnfèi, your package has arrived in the warehouse, you need to consolidate the packages and pay the shipping fee). Either click 合并转运 (hébìng zhuǎnyùn, consolidate and ship) on the order status page, or click 待集运 (dài jíyùn, waiting for consolidation).

On the my consolidated shipping (我的集运, wǒde jíyùn) page, you can select which items you’d like to bundle into a shipment. You are supposed to hit the shipping minimum, and it gives you the value of the item to the right of the 灼満¥99包部 (zhuómǎn ¥99 bāobù, ¥99 minimum free shipping), but the UI at present doesn’t show what’s the total value of the items you’ve currently selected. Click 去合包 (qù hébāo, go package) to proceed to the next screen. This screen gives delivery options; in Taiwan I can pick to send directly to my address, or to a nearby convenience store or supported grocery store. Click 去支付 (qù zhīfù, go pay) to pay.

Follow the normal payment procedures, and as long as your package doesn’t get lost at sea 🚢, you can expect your goods a 1-2 weeks later!

How to use EZWay to do Taiwan customs declarations 🇹🇼📦

In Taiwan, you need to declare incoming overseas shipments and potentially pay taxes on them if they exceed the duty-free limit. EZWay is the digital system for customs declaration and duty payment. The full features can only be used if you are a citizen or have a residence permit / ARC. If you register only using a passport, then you are limited to filling out an authorization form via the app.

Here’s a tutorial on how to register for EZWay and confirm incoming packages. When ordering from abroad, you need to provide:

• Name

• Phone number

• For sites that support it: identification number, either your National ID number (身分證字號, shēnfènzhèng zìhao) if you are a Taiwanese citizen, or Unified ID number (統一證號, tǒngyī zhènghào, UI number) if you are a resident. Otherwise your passport number if you don’t have any of the above.

Customs will do their best attempt to match to an individual using this information, so make sure you input these correctly. If the shipping company supports it, the package will be registered to customs even before shipping to Taiwan, as opposed to being registered by upon arrival. In any case, once a package is registered and identified to you, you’ll receive a notification from the EZWay app as well as see it in the list of packages needing to be confirmed.

I haven’t had to pay any customs duty that was not already prepaid for me (such as when I ordered from Amazon), so I’m not sure about that procedure. The UI for the EZWay App is a bit clunky, but apparently is a big improvement from the earliest versions and seems to work well enough!

Conclusions

I really need to cut down on my shopping addiction 🛍️, but hopefully these tips help you stock your home and make it a cozy place. Remember, you can always reach out at [email protected] for comments or questions! You can also support this publication by becoming a paid subscriber or a Patreon!