Before you read: This isn't a rant against any particular city or person. It's an anonymous account of trying to file a moving-out notice online from an Android phone on September 1, 2026, checked against official sources from Japan's Digital Agency and others. The goal is to explain how this kind of failure can happen and what made the form so painful. The city, addresses, new home and phone model have been left out.
In Japan, when you move to another city, you normally file a "moving-out notice" with your old city hall. These days you can do it online through Mynaportal, the government's online portal, by tapping your My Number Card (Japan's national ID card) on your phone. That's the promise, anyway.
1. It let me fill in everything, then failed right before I hit submit
I tried to file my moving-out notice online. The first time I tapped my My Number Card, it worked. The second time worked too. I entered my name, address and all the moving details. At that point I was thinking, "Nice, no trip to city hall. Civilization."
Then came the last identity check before submitting. One more tap of the card on the phone.
That one tap just wouldn't go through.
The message said something like "Reading took too long. Please try again." But the error popped up in less than 1 second. It didn't feel like the phone had waited too long. It felt like the timeout alone was traveling faster than light.
And the order is what really got me. If it had failed at the start, fine. Instead it let me type everything in, got me to "just submit now," and then crashed. In video game terms, it's not the final boss. It's the game accusing your save file of being corrupted right before the ending plays.
2. 5 card positions, about 15 tries, then the whole thing again: roughly 30 taps
First I blamed myself. "Is the card in the wrong spot?" I tried the top of the phone's back, the middle, a bit lower, left and right. About 5 positions in all.
Still nothing. I retried just that final read about 15 times. Then I started the whole process over from the beginning and went through it again. Same failure. All told, I spent about 30 rounds as a person holding a card against a phone.
That's way past the point where "try moving the card a little" is useful advice. My card works fine with other readers, like at the hospital, and the first 2 reads in this very same process had worked.
I can't say for sure that card placement had nothing to do with it. But at the very least, an error message that keeps telling you to fix your card placement isn't good enough.
3. Why can the 1st and 2nd taps work while the 3rd one fails?
From the outside, every step is the same: tap the card on the phone. But Mynaportal's official FAQ explains that, inside the moving one-stop service, logging in, reading your name and address, and adding the final signature are separate processes.[1]
So your hand does the same thing each time, but behind the scenes it's not the same job:
- Read the card to log in.
- Read the basic info stored on the card.
- Add an electronic signature to your application.
The Digital Agency also lists the new Myna App's features separately: login, reading basic info, adding an electronic signature, and so on.[2]
That means "the 1st tap worked, so the 3rd will too" just isn't true. Flip it around: if taps 1 and 2 work and only tap 3 fails, it makes sense to suspect something other than a broken card.
4. And late August 2026 was a perfect storm
What makes this even less funny is the timing.
- August 25: The new "Myna App," which merged the old Mynaportal app and other apps into one, was released.[2]
- August 26: Mynaportal officially posted that an outage from around 16:00 to 21:30 caused errors at the final signature step, so people couldn't submit applications.[3]
- August 27: An Android app update fixed bugs including crashes on some phones and a loop of repeated device checks that stopped people from moving forward.[4]
- August 28 (update): The Japan Pension Service announced that some Android phones were getting errors when switching to the Myna App to read a My Number Card.[5]
- September 1: My attempt. On Android, only the final read of the moving-out notice died instantly.
To be clear, I can't say the Pension Service's Android bug and my moving-out problem had the same cause. They're not the exact same service or process. But it's a verifiable fact, not a conspiracy theory, that there were several official bug reports and outages on very similar paths: right after the new app launch, on Android, when switching to the app to read the card, and at the final signature.
The disaster calendar is just a little too neat.
5. "It may take more than 5 seconds," yet it timed out in under 1
A different government online application guide says reading a My Number Card with a phone can take more than 5 seconds, so keep the card touching the phone until it's done.[6]
Mynaportal's own Android guide also says to place the card on your phone's reading spot and hold it still.[7]
Fine. I'll wait. 5 seconds, 10 seconds, whatever it takes.
But this time the error showed up before I could even start waiting. "Reading took too long"? I was never even given the chance to take my time.
Given that, it's possible the phone never actually waited 5 seconds and failed to read the chip. The failure might have happened earlier, like when handing off between apps, starting the signature, or managing the session, and the app just slapped a generic "reading took too long" label on it. Nobody outside can confirm the real cause. But one thing is clear: the error message didn't tell me what to do next.
It's a quiz show where the "wrong answer" buzzer goes off before you even hear the question.
6. "Does it work for everyone else?" Not a full outage, but real problems were reported
There's no evidence that all of Mynaportal was down and nobody could file a moving-out notice. Plenty of people obviously finished just fine.
But right after the new app came out, there were official notices about Android-specific card reading errors and crashes, and a record of an outage on Mynaportal itself at the "final signature" step.[5][3][4]
So writing this off as "you just can't hold a card right" is way too lazy.
The most realistic way to put it: it wasn't a total outage, but I may have hit a period when certain phones, apps or steps could fail.
And honestly, it's not the user's job to figure all that out. I used a service meant to save me a trip to city hall, tapped my card 30 times, and ended up going to city hall. Judging by results alone, going digital automatically generated a longer route to the government office.
7. The real UX failure isn't "an error happened." It's "the error happened at the very end"
No system has zero bugs. NFC varies, phones vary, and signing is complicated. So one error on its own is understandable.
The problem is a design that makes failure as costly as possible.
Long forms benefit from saving progress, letting you resume, keeping what you typed, and checking key outside features early. The US government's design system recommends considering save-and-resume for complex forms. The UK government's design system stresses keeping what people entered when showing errors, and not treating the service's own problems as if the user made a mistake.[8][9]
Basic usability principles say the same thing: prevent errors where you can, and when they happen, explain what went wrong and how to recover.[10]
My experience was the opposite:
Fill in everything → final check → instant failure → "please try again" → no idea what to fix.
This isn't just a card reading error. It's weak design for when things go wrong.
8. The bare minimum I'm asking for: give me an "I've tried enough" button
What this kind of form needs isn't flashy AI. Boring fixes are fine.
- Check up front whether the final signature will work. If you could confirm "this phone can make it to the signing step" before typing a long form, there'd be much less to lose.
- Autosave what I entered. If the final check fails, let me pick up right there.
- Make errors specific. As far as possible, tell me whether the phone didn't detect NFC, the card check failed, the app handoff failed, or the signature failed.
- If the error is instant, don't just give placement tips. It died in 0.x seconds, so "hold still for 5 seconds" doesn't match what's happening.
- After a few failures, show other options. Put "restart," "check for app updates," "try another phone" and "file in person" on one screen.
- Link known problems to the form itself. If there's a known Android bug, show it right there instead of making people dig through FAQs.
And personally, after about 15 failures, I'd love the screen to say:
"You've tried enough. This is no longer just about how you're holding your card."
I'm not asking a government service to praise me. But it'd be a lot smarter than repeating the same advice all the way to try number 30.
9. Then came my health checkup: please don't stress-test me right before a blood pressure reading
The worst bonus that day: I had a health checkup right after.
The Japanese Society of Hypertension recommends sitting quietly and resting before having your blood pressure taken at a clinic, and not talking during the measurement.[11]
Anger and stress can briefly push your blood pressure around, which is nothing unusual. So I'm not saying "Mynaportal causes high blood pressure." I'm saying scheduling 30 rounds of NFC retries right before a blood pressure check is the worst possible plan.
The goal of going online: spend less time at government offices.
What actually happened:
- Fill out the form online.
- Try NFC about 30 times.
- Get irritated.
- Go to city hall anyway.
- Before that, get my blood pressure taken at a checkup.
If the final digital output of all this is a temporary bump in blood pressure, that's just sad.
10. Bottom line: not digital transformation, but a digital detour
The funniest and worst part isn't that "my My Number Card couldn't be read."
It could. Twice. I filled out the whole form. Only the last step died.
That's exactly why people end up doubting how they hold the card, doubting their phone, thinking about restarting, and tapping the card again and again. And at the end of a service sold as "do it online, skip city hall," they decide to go to city hall.
In late August 2026, there really were official notices about Android bugs right after the switch to the new Myna App, and an outage at Mynaportal's final signature step.[2][5][3][4] I can't pin down the exact cause of my case, but no one needs to blame themselves and wonder, "Is it just me?"
Putting government paperwork online isn't finished when it works most of the time. It's finished when it also gives you your time back when it fails.
If you're selling "no need to go to city hall," then at least delete this secret route:
Fill in everything → die at the last step → 30 NFC taps → city hall anyway
That's not digital transformation.
It's a digital detour.
References (11)
- マイナポータル FAQ — 引越しワンストップサービスで必要なマイナンバーカード操作 (Nötige Schritte mit der My-Number-Karte beim Umzugsservice). Beschreibt Login, das Auslesen von Name und Adresse sowie das Anfügen der Signatur als getrennte Schritte faq.myna.go.jp
- デジタル庁 / Digital Agency — マイナアプリの案内・2026年8月25日の提供開始に関する公表資料 (Informationen zur Myna App und Bekanntmachung zum Start am 25. August 2026). Zu den Funktionen gehören Login-Authentifizierung, das Auslesen der Basisdaten und elektronische Signaturen digital.go.jp
- マイナポータル — 障害・メンテナンス情報 (Störungs- und Wartungsinformationen). Dokumentiert die Störung vom 26. August 2026, bei der ein Fehler bei der letzten Signatur eine Zeit lang das Absenden von Anträgen verhinderte myna.go.jp
- Google Play — マイナアプリ更新情報（2026年8月27日） (Update-Hinweise zur Myna App, 27. August 2026). Die Versionshinweise nennen Korrekturen für Abstürze auf manchen Geräten und für eine wiederholte Geräteauthentifizierung, die das Weiterkommen blockieren konnte play.google.com
- 日本年金機構 / Japan Pension Service — 2026年8月28日更新のAndroid・マイナアプリ読取エラー告知 (Hinweis zu Lesefehlern mit Android und Myna App, aktualisiert am 28. August 2026). Nennt, dass auf manchen Android-Geräten beim Wechsel zur Myna App und beim Auslesen der My-Number-Karte im betreffenden Online-Antragsweg ein Fehler auftreten konnte nenkin.go.jp
- 出入国在留管理庁 / Immigration Services Agency of Japan — オンライン申請Q&A (Fragen und Antworten zum Online-Antrag). Weist darauf hin, dass das Auslesen der My-Number-Karte mit dem Smartphone länger als fünf Sekunden dauern kann, und bittet, die Karte bis zum Abschluss am Gerät zu halten moj.go.jp
- マイナポータル FAQ — Androidでのマイナンバーカード読取位置・保持方法 (Leseposition und Haltung der My-Number-Karte bei Android) faq.myna.go.jp
- U.S. Web Design System — Complete a complex form / Progress easily. Hinweise, wie man den Aufwand senkt und das Vorankommen unterstützt, wo sinnvoll auch durch Speichern und späteres Weitermachen designsystem.digital.gov
- GOV.UK Design System — Error messages and service-problem pages. Hinweise zu hilfreicher Fehlerbehebung, zum Erhalt bereits eingegebener Werte und zur Unterscheidung zwischen Problemen des Dienstes und Fehlern der Nutzer. https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/problem-with-the-service-pages/ design-system.service.gov.uk
- Nielsen Norman Group — 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. Fehlervermeidung und hilfreiche Anleitung zur Fehlerbehebung nngroup.com
- 日本高血圧学会 / Japanese Society of Hypertension — 血圧測定に関する案内 (Hinweise zur Blutdruckmessung). Empfiehlt vor der Messung in der Praxis eine ruhige Sitzpause und während der Messung nicht zu sprechen jpnsh.jp
