Hoping to apply for this visa soon without too many issues. I know people just go and work remotely on tourist visas but I'd rather not take the risk, especially as I want to use coworking spaces.
It's unfortunate that the visa is only 6 months and not extendable, but if I really end up liking Japan maybe I'll go to language school so I can stay for longer.
Used to live in Japan for more than a year. Heard about this visa a few weeks ago while traveling to said country.
Since they don't give you a residence card, I wonder how easy it would be to get a phone number and bank account. If some government officials didn't get information on this visa, how can we expect companies to have? They will look at your passport with dead eyes and think you are fooling them with a fake stamp.
I'm very interested in applying for that visa, but not being in the Japanese system (e.g. no health insurance, no residence card) is kind of putting me off because that spells more administrative nonsense.
They don't? Then what use is the visa? You cannot live here without a residence card. As a non-citizen, you're actually legally required to carry your residence card with you whenever you're in public, and present it to a police officer upon request.
Something doesn't seem right here.
Edit: apparently you can live here, without a residence card, in a temporary apartment, for up to 6 months with this visa. Just be sure to carry your passport everywhere you go.
That's for foreign tourists who have a visa stamp in their passport. So I guess for these digital nomads, that would work too, as long as they don't overstay whatever date is on that visa.
It's not going to help them find a place to live though: they'll be stuck in hotels the entire time they're here.
I see now. Looking at the site, those kinds of apartments are called "monthly mansions"; I stayed in one when I first came here before I could find a real apartment. These places are very small, and furnished, so perfect for someone only staying 3 or 6 months. But they're quite expensive for what you get. But if you're only staying 6 months, it's perfect.
True, and it generally has better amenities than a hotel too: a kitchen (though tiny), fridge, microwave, stove (no oven though), clothes washer, maybe a vacuum, etc. Also importantly, a mailbox, so you can receive deliveries (and in newer places, there's an automated delivery box system).
Tip: a photo of your passport and the stamp will most likely do in most circumstances. Much better than risking taking your passport with you all the time.
Getting a credit card as a long term resident alone is hard. Getting a phone number can be troublesome for some people fresh off the boat. One longstanding issue has been people who come to Japan expecting to settle down, then quickly realize it's not for them and take a flight home without telling anybody. Debts left unpaid and landlords not even contacted.
People who come here with the intention of milking some cash and living in a "cheap" country have even less reason to be loyal to it. The consequence will be companies being even stricter, but parasites like AirBnB and similar companies making a killing off offering apartments 5x above normal asking price to rich nomads who will say "wow, it's so cheap!" without realizing they're being ripped off, and killing neighborhoods by driving rent prices up. Owners of multiple homes stand to gain, but typical companies have been doing the math for a long time and see nothing but losses. The general sentiment by locals towards this policy has been "So we're really becoming like Vietnam and Thailand, huh?", so the vast majority of people will not be welcoming nomads with open arms, or at all. There's already massive controversy over new apartments being bought up by foreign investors and locals being pushed farther out of Tokyo.
People can downvote because they don't like hearing this. But it's the state of things here. It's a system forced against the citizens against their will. In a country with a noted history of centuries of distrust of foreigners, this visa scheme is not helping.
> One longstanding issue has been people who come to Japan expecting to settle down, then quickly realize it's not for them and take a flight home without telling anybody. Debts left unpaid and landlords not even contacted
This really sounds like one of those not-quite-racist "problems with foreigners" that every country likes to pretend they have. Every "knows" it's a problem, there's no way to prove it right or wrong, but hey, it gives people something to complain about.
It might be racism. But those thoughts aren't going to be undone with visas for rich nomads/tourists who'll stay for 6 months and dip. It's only accelerating justification for racism amongst locals.
And lumping any sort of economic concerns a country has into racism, then considering it something that shouldn't even be talked about because it's "racism", is how these issues start to snowball fast and more extreme racist reactions grow. A few European countries have taken hard right swings because people who said anything about immigration policies were shut down as racists. Now people don't even care about being called racist because the word is normalized. And that's a dangerous path to have started treading down. Japan is a country where being said to have some prejudice isn't something people will shamefully back away from; things could snowball much faster than in Europe.
It's not a 'Japan thing'. I pay a higher rate on my mortgage because my spouse was not a citizen of where we live when we took it out. There are fewer providers willing to offer mortgages in this situation but, presumably, there's still enough of a price incentive that the premium isn't pulled out of thin air.
It's also common for landlords to ask for higher deposits or months paid up-front.
It's also possible that the banks have less legal requirements to non-citizens so they make up a bullshit reason for charging you higher. Which is absolutely something a bank would do.
It's quite common for apartment blocks to forbid "holiday" rentals. Mine has visible signage about this in the lobby and the building manager also looks out for it. Your typical apartment owner has zero interest in all the trouble these arrangements bring.
That's for regular apartments. The blog author went to a monthly mansion, which are used for holiday rentals and other short-duration stays of a few months or so (such as people moving to a new city and needing a place before they can find a permanent apartment, or maybe people on temporary work assignments in a new city).
They do. But lots of people buy homes just to rent them out. That removes a home from the market, and the competition pushes prices up.
The problem isn't signage.
Plus evicting/canceling a contract is an arduous process. It almost always favors the renter. And in the case of actually buying a home, there isn't much anyone can do.
No you just need your residence card, fill a form, sign (no hanko required) and you can open a bank account at the Post Bank. At least that's how it went 10 years ago as a student. It's easier to open an account as a foreigner there than opening an account as a citizen in France... (no appointment bullshit, no proof of residency asked)
Getting a bank account via SMBC Olive was a painless experience for me. It can all be done an app and a phone call later confirming some details. I was not employed at the time.
Pretty hard, there are some services like sakura sim card and another that just uses your passport, but the rates/services are pretty meh. But it is a softbank sim card, a JP number (thay may not be used for line verification sometimes) and the lowest priority data - meaning if you're in shibuya or shinjuku, sometimes you have no signal.
And a world of difference in stability and perception. If you have $35k+ to dedicate to this (and note that it does not cost $35k, these are more like initial capital requirements), you should 100% go the investor route.
People underweight how amazing it is to be able to pay less than $50k for the equivalent of a golden visa to a top 5 GDP nation that is well regarded, safe, has some opportunity and is generally easy to live in.
The golden visas usually have no strings attached. I am not sure about this particular visa but last time I checked Japan they demand that you have a certain amount of activity on the company to keep your residence.
Eh, I ran a business in Japan and have had that visa. I still tell most people who just want to dip their feet in that the digital nomad visa is totally fine and a good way to go.
That stability and perception only matters if you _truly_ want to live here, and quite a number of people spend ~3 months here [1] and realize that it's got issues past the honeymoon period (like anywhere else). There's also no reason you can't change your visa type if you find you actually like it after the DN trip.
[1] "here" because I'm back in Japan for a few weeks for friends at the moment, but you get the idea
Is you are on a tourist visa then you cannot work. Actively working as a nomad ok a tourist visa waiver is breaking the law.
Of course, nomads often did come and with in this status. They would exist in a grey area, arguing their with was more incidental in nature and bit the reason to be in Japan (just like replying to a few with emails while in holiday).
The nomad visa is essentially formalizing this grey area. As other commentors have mentioned, it's not a particularly useful status as you don't get a residence card and you can enroll in national health insurance too. You'll also find it harder to find apartments to rent too
Rather than just visiting on a tourist visa and relying on the fact that no immigration officer is going to come bust in your hotel door and yell "hey are you doing work on that laptop!", you go through a bunch of tedious bureaucratic hoops to get the assurance that they definitely for certain won't come inspect what you're doing on your laptop.
People are being too individualistic here - Japan or any other country is never going to go after individuals who happen to work for remote companies or freelance while they globe trot working on tourist visas.
But when companies like Shopify go fully remote, if they suddenly have a lot of employees who are frequenting Japan, they are painting a giant target on their back and exposing themselves to legal risk. A company is never going to expose themselves to this kind of legal risk so HR will very quickly (and understandably) clamp down on this. This is why even the most progressive "work from anywhere" policies tend to have fine print that amounts to "your country of residence and any home countries you can legally work in". This is then why we often see "remote" coming with all kinds of conditions like US remote or EU remote etc because the reality of legal compliance for HR is a huge headache.
These nomad visas are a baby step in the right direction towards unburdening companies from this liability.
Also, while they're unlikely to spend resources toward going after individuals who happen to work remotely on a tourist visa, it's comparatively trivial to pull people out at entry (and that's going to be a regular and well-documented occurrence because the alternative of overstaying your visa is absolutely something countries with governments tend to care about).
> This is then why we often see "remote" coming with all kinds of conditions like US remote or EU remote etc because the reality of legal compliance for HR is a huge headache.
Could they just hire those individuals as contractors instead? It should be up to the contractor to ensure compliance then. (IANAL)
First of all, that's complicated and employees can easily fuck it up.
I once worked at a tiny company, and their first 'contractor' employee didn't realise he had to set aside money for certain taxes, and didn't realise he'd have to record certain details to be able to fill out certain forms, and things like that.
This ended up being a bunch of hassle for the company as he... thought? hoped? expected? that they were paying those taxes, as they would have done if he was a regular employee. Now the guy's resentful, feels you've ripped him off, and is constantly distracted.
Secondly, there can still be local laws you have to comply with. Some countries have problems with sham contractor arrangements, where they insist their normal, regular employees are 'self-employed contractors' to avoid giving them sick pay, holiday, pension, maternity leave, minimum wage, redundancy pay, complying with safety rules, and so on. So they have laws saying that under certain circumstances, contractors effectively turn into regular employees.
As I can't read Kazakh, how am I supposed to know if the Kazakhstani tax code has similar rules?
Some do but from observation lawyers/HR find reasons to resist this.
The most likely explanation is there could be risk but there is zero risk associated with saying no so legal and HR say no to this arrangement because they don't want more work and legal and HR are cost centres so they can't magically pull budget out of thin air to appease some annoying digital nomads. A company is also not going to let their entire workforce of full time employees transition to contractors overnight either, which would be a giant headache for both HR and senior management.
For example VCs prefer "headcount" over contractors for a number of reasons so there is pressure from the top to incentivise full time employees. Large multinationals have a lot of considerations around taxation (its always taxes...)
These are some of the practicalities I've uncovered that provide inertia towards remote working
> A company is also not going to let their entire workforce of full time employees transition to contractors overnight either
This could actually look like tax evasion (in countries with lower taxes for sole proprietors / self-employed people), so not a great idea in any case.
Well whole contractor status is very murky in many places. Either very strict like in UK. Or then you need all sorts of agreements in between, meaning that you might need to give cut to some third company. And then those companies have same problems.
Even inside EU with freedom of movement spending more than 180 days in single country can lead to tax implications. Doing this globally is even bigger mess as ways of counting time might not be the same.
> Or then you need all sorts of agreements in between, meaning that you might need to give cut to some third company. And then those companies have same problems.
It could be a viable solution actually. There’s a bunch of companies that can both employ or subcontract a person on behalf of another company.
I think if the company is not against it in principle, it becomes just another negotiation point, e.g. you can agree to a lower net salary so that the gross amount the company has to pay is the same (including the middleman fee).
Apparently they do, from the article quoting the US Embassy:
Japanese Immigration officials are aware of the pattern of people staying for 80-90 days as “tourists,” spending a few days in Korea, Guam or some other nearby area and then seeking to re-enter Japan for another 90 days. Persons with such a travel pattern can expect to face questions at Japanese Immigration and may be denied entry with the suspicion that they have been or will work illegally in Japan. In that Japanese Immigration records are computerized, a “lost” passport does not serve to mask long stays in Japan.
I think it’s mostly for the visa runs, not the woking per se. (I would still not recommend it, especially not if you are planning on getting a permanent residence status later on.)
It also avoids differentiating on two very different scenarios: coming to Japan without a work visa to work illegally for a local company, and doing work for an employer or client not in Japan while being in Japan.
On paper, all laws are strict. In practice, some of them, and some interpretations of them, are considered a higher priority than others (which can range to straight up ignoring them or even violating them themselves).
The point I'm making is I don't get why they've bothered with such a pointless visa, and it sounds like some PR stunt. If it extended to a year or was a residence permit then it'd be an actual valuable visa worth the effort.
The only thing I can think of is maybe they hoped it'd be used by digital nomads to come work for local companies for 6 months, but that doesn't sound likely. PR gimmick or "we're doing things" purpose more likely.
It is a mixed bag: apartments can be pretty expensive, especially in Greater Tokyo area. Food is pretty cheap IMO. Taxis are prohibitively expensive, but railroad system is really really good and compensates for that pretty well.
But people don’t go to Japan because it’s cheap – it’s just a really nice place to live for some.
Apartments even in Tokyo are still quite cheap compared to today's rents in major American cities, and not needing to own a car also cuts living expenses massively compared to living in the US.
Someone coming from a German city with good public transit might not think it's that cheap though. But a lot of digital nomads are Americans.
Depends on how much space you need to live. If you are fine with very little space, Japan is actually pretty affordable. Cheap food is good/health. Public transport is cheap and good/great. Lots of activities to kill time for cheap. Not sure about health care though.
I visited Tokyo from London recently and found it to be much cheaper. A decent meal is half, or less than half of what you would pay here, not to mention healthier. Another comment mentioned taxis are expensive, but I found the opposite, my journey was cheaper than it would have been in London, and the drivers are much more professional. As for apartments, you can live much cheaper and more centrally (~£1500 is the minimum you need to play with if you want to live in central London.) Public transport is also cheaper, faster, and more reliable.
So yeah, on the whole, Tokyo is like half the cost of London and you get more for your money.
Hoping to apply for this visa soon without too many issues. I know people just go and work remotely on tourist visas but I'd rather not take the risk, especially as I want to use coworking spaces.
It's unfortunate that the visa is only 6 months and not extendable, but if I really end up liking Japan maybe I'll go to language school so I can stay for longer.
Used to live in Japan for more than a year. Heard about this visa a few weeks ago while traveling to said country.
Since they don't give you a residence card, I wonder how easy it would be to get a phone number and bank account. If some government officials didn't get information on this visa, how can we expect companies to have? They will look at your passport with dead eyes and think you are fooling them with a fake stamp.
I'm very interested in applying for that visa, but not being in the Japanese system (e.g. no health insurance, no residence card) is kind of putting me off because that spells more administrative nonsense.
>Since they don't give you a residence card
They don't? Then what use is the visa? You cannot live here without a residence card. As a non-citizen, you're actually legally required to carry your residence card with you whenever you're in public, and present it to a police officer upon request.
Something doesn't seem right here.
Edit: apparently you can live here, without a residence card, in a temporary apartment, for up to 6 months with this visa. Just be sure to carry your passport everywhere you go.
Technically you would be expected to bring your passport everywhere you go.
That's for foreign tourists who have a visa stamp in their passport. So I guess for these digital nomads, that would work too, as long as they don't overstay whatever date is on that visa.
It's not going to help them find a place to live though: they'll be stuck in hotels the entire time they're here.
The author was able to get an apartment and shared the website and the reddit thread be used to find it.
I see now. Looking at the site, those kinds of apartments are called "monthly mansions"; I stayed in one when I first came here before I could find a real apartment. These places are very small, and furnished, so perfect for someone only staying 3 or 6 months. But they're quite expensive for what you get. But if you're only staying 6 months, it's perfect.
> they'll be stuck in hotels the entire time they're here.
Eh, Tokyo has plenty of monthly apartment rentals that are effectively corporate rentals that you can do without a residence card.
(I used to do this before having an actual visa there)
It's functionally better than a hotel, insofar as it doesn't read or act as one.
True, and it generally has better amenities than a hotel too: a kitchen (though tiny), fridge, microwave, stove (no oven though), clothes washer, maybe a vacuum, etc. Also importantly, a mailbox, so you can receive deliveries (and in newer places, there's an automated delivery box system).
Tip: a photo of your passport and the stamp will most likely do in most circumstances. Much better than risking taking your passport with you all the time.
Getting a credit card as a long term resident alone is hard. Getting a phone number can be troublesome for some people fresh off the boat. One longstanding issue has been people who come to Japan expecting to settle down, then quickly realize it's not for them and take a flight home without telling anybody. Debts left unpaid and landlords not even contacted.
People who come here with the intention of milking some cash and living in a "cheap" country have even less reason to be loyal to it. The consequence will be companies being even stricter, but parasites like AirBnB and similar companies making a killing off offering apartments 5x above normal asking price to rich nomads who will say "wow, it's so cheap!" without realizing they're being ripped off, and killing neighborhoods by driving rent prices up. Owners of multiple homes stand to gain, but typical companies have been doing the math for a long time and see nothing but losses. The general sentiment by locals towards this policy has been "So we're really becoming like Vietnam and Thailand, huh?", so the vast majority of people will not be welcoming nomads with open arms, or at all. There's already massive controversy over new apartments being bought up by foreign investors and locals being pushed farther out of Tokyo.
People can downvote because they don't like hearing this. But it's the state of things here. It's a system forced against the citizens against their will. In a country with a noted history of centuries of distrust of foreigners, this visa scheme is not helping.
> One longstanding issue has been people who come to Japan expecting to settle down, then quickly realize it's not for them and take a flight home without telling anybody. Debts left unpaid and landlords not even contacted
This really sounds like one of those not-quite-racist "problems with foreigners" that every country likes to pretend they have. Every "knows" it's a problem, there's no way to prove it right or wrong, but hey, it gives people something to complain about.
It might be racism. But those thoughts aren't going to be undone with visas for rich nomads/tourists who'll stay for 6 months and dip. It's only accelerating justification for racism amongst locals.
And lumping any sort of economic concerns a country has into racism, then considering it something that shouldn't even be talked about because it's "racism", is how these issues start to snowball fast and more extreme racist reactions grow. A few European countries have taken hard right swings because people who said anything about immigration policies were shut down as racists. Now people don't even care about being called racist because the word is normalized. And that's a dangerous path to have started treading down. Japan is a country where being said to have some prejudice isn't something people will shamefully back away from; things could snowball much faster than in Europe.
It's not a 'Japan thing'. I pay a higher rate on my mortgage because my spouse was not a citizen of where we live when we took it out. There are fewer providers willing to offer mortgages in this situation but, presumably, there's still enough of a price incentive that the premium isn't pulled out of thin air.
It's also common for landlords to ask for higher deposits or months paid up-front.
It's also possible that the banks have less legal requirements to non-citizens so they make up a bullshit reason for charging you higher. Which is absolutely something a bank would do.
It's quite common for apartment blocks to forbid "holiday" rentals. Mine has visible signage about this in the lobby and the building manager also looks out for it. Your typical apartment owner has zero interest in all the trouble these arrangements bring.
That's for regular apartments. The blog author went to a monthly mansion, which are used for holiday rentals and other short-duration stays of a few months or so (such as people moving to a new city and needing a place before they can find a permanent apartment, or maybe people on temporary work assignments in a new city).
They do. But lots of people buy homes just to rent them out. That removes a home from the market, and the competition pushes prices up.
The problem isn't signage.
Plus evicting/canceling a contract is an arduous process. It almost always favors the renter. And in the case of actually buying a home, there isn't much anyone can do.
You won't be getting a phone number or bank account without one. You might also have problems getting prescriptions filled.
In my experience, you need more than a residence card to get a bank account here: you also need a certificate of employment from your employer.
No you just need your residence card, fill a form, sign (no hanko required) and you can open a bank account at the Post Bank. At least that's how it went 10 years ago as a student. It's easier to open an account as a foreigner there than opening an account as a citizen in France... (no appointment bullshit, no proof of residency asked)
Getting a bank account via SMBC Olive was a painless experience for me. It can all be done an app and a phone call later confirming some details. I was not employed at the time.
Shinsei sorted me out without one. But wouldn't surprise me for any of the "respectable" banks.
Pretty hard, there are some services like sakura sim card and another that just uses your passport, but the rates/services are pretty meh. But it is a softbank sim card, a JP number (thay may not be used for line verification sometimes) and the lowest priority data - meaning if you're in shibuya or shinjuku, sometimes you have no signal.
There's also the option of spending around $35k to purchase a Japanese business and use that to get an investor visa.
There's a world of difference in the level of effort between this and the digital nomad visa.
And a world of difference in stability and perception. If you have $35k+ to dedicate to this (and note that it does not cost $35k, these are more like initial capital requirements), you should 100% go the investor route.
People underweight how amazing it is to be able to pay less than $50k for the equivalent of a golden visa to a top 5 GDP nation that is well regarded, safe, has some opportunity and is generally easy to live in.
The golden visas usually have no strings attached. I am not sure about this particular visa but last time I checked Japan they demand that you have a certain amount of activity on the company to keep your residence.
Eh, I ran a business in Japan and have had that visa. I still tell most people who just want to dip their feet in that the digital nomad visa is totally fine and a good way to go.
That stability and perception only matters if you _truly_ want to live here, and quite a number of people spend ~3 months here [1] and realize that it's got issues past the honeymoon period (like anywhere else). There's also no reason you can't change your visa type if you find you actually like it after the DN trip.
[1] "here" because I'm back in Japan for a few weeks for friends at the moment, but you get the idea
What's the difference between this and just visit twice on a tourist visa?
Is you are on a tourist visa then you cannot work. Actively working as a nomad ok a tourist visa waiver is breaking the law.
Of course, nomads often did come and with in this status. They would exist in a grey area, arguing their with was more incidental in nature and bit the reason to be in Japan (just like replying to a few with emails while in holiday).
The nomad visa is essentially formalizing this grey area. As other commentors have mentioned, it's not a particularly useful status as you don't get a residence card and you can enroll in national health insurance too. You'll also find it harder to find apartments to rent too
Right so it's a compliance thing.
Rather than just visiting on a tourist visa and relying on the fact that no immigration officer is going to come bust in your hotel door and yell "hey are you doing work on that laptop!", you go through a bunch of tedious bureaucratic hoops to get the assurance that they definitely for certain won't come inspect what you're doing on your laptop.
People are being too individualistic here - Japan or any other country is never going to go after individuals who happen to work for remote companies or freelance while they globe trot working on tourist visas.
But when companies like Shopify go fully remote, if they suddenly have a lot of employees who are frequenting Japan, they are painting a giant target on their back and exposing themselves to legal risk. A company is never going to expose themselves to this kind of legal risk so HR will very quickly (and understandably) clamp down on this. This is why even the most progressive "work from anywhere" policies tend to have fine print that amounts to "your country of residence and any home countries you can legally work in". This is then why we often see "remote" coming with all kinds of conditions like US remote or EU remote etc because the reality of legal compliance for HR is a huge headache.
These nomad visas are a baby step in the right direction towards unburdening companies from this liability.
Also, while they're unlikely to spend resources toward going after individuals who happen to work remotely on a tourist visa, it's comparatively trivial to pull people out at entry (and that's going to be a regular and well-documented occurrence because the alternative of overstaying your visa is absolutely something countries with governments tend to care about).
What circumstance are you referring to with "at entry"?
> This is then why we often see "remote" coming with all kinds of conditions like US remote or EU remote etc because the reality of legal compliance for HR is a huge headache.
Could they just hire those individuals as contractors instead? It should be up to the contractor to ensure compliance then. (IANAL)
First of all, that's complicated and employees can easily fuck it up.
I once worked at a tiny company, and their first 'contractor' employee didn't realise he had to set aside money for certain taxes, and didn't realise he'd have to record certain details to be able to fill out certain forms, and things like that.
This ended up being a bunch of hassle for the company as he... thought? hoped? expected? that they were paying those taxes, as they would have done if he was a regular employee. Now the guy's resentful, feels you've ripped him off, and is constantly distracted.
Secondly, there can still be local laws you have to comply with. Some countries have problems with sham contractor arrangements, where they insist their normal, regular employees are 'self-employed contractors' to avoid giving them sick pay, holiday, pension, maternity leave, minimum wage, redundancy pay, complying with safety rules, and so on. So they have laws saying that under certain circumstances, contractors effectively turn into regular employees.
As I can't read Kazakh, how am I supposed to know if the Kazakhstani tax code has similar rules?
Some do but from observation lawyers/HR find reasons to resist this.
The most likely explanation is there could be risk but there is zero risk associated with saying no so legal and HR say no to this arrangement because they don't want more work and legal and HR are cost centres so they can't magically pull budget out of thin air to appease some annoying digital nomads. A company is also not going to let their entire workforce of full time employees transition to contractors overnight either, which would be a giant headache for both HR and senior management.
For example VCs prefer "headcount" over contractors for a number of reasons so there is pressure from the top to incentivise full time employees. Large multinationals have a lot of considerations around taxation (its always taxes...)
These are some of the practicalities I've uncovered that provide inertia towards remote working
Makes sense, thanks!
> A company is also not going to let their entire workforce of full time employees transition to contractors overnight either
This could actually look like tax evasion (in countries with lower taxes for sole proprietors / self-employed people), so not a great idea in any case.
Well whole contractor status is very murky in many places. Either very strict like in UK. Or then you need all sorts of agreements in between, meaning that you might need to give cut to some third company. And then those companies have same problems.
Even inside EU with freedom of movement spending more than 180 days in single country can lead to tax implications. Doing this globally is even bigger mess as ways of counting time might not be the same.
> Or then you need all sorts of agreements in between, meaning that you might need to give cut to some third company. And then those companies have same problems.
It could be a viable solution actually. There’s a bunch of companies that can both employ or subcontract a person on behalf of another company.
I think if the company is not against it in principle, it becomes just another negotiation point, e.g. you can agree to a lower net salary so that the gross amount the company has to pay is the same (including the middleman fee).
No one will ever know or care if you’re working remotely while in Japan on a tourist visa. Just AirBnB and get ordinary travel insurance.
For a paltry 6 months this nomad visa seems like a massive amount of paperwork for no benefit.
Apparently they do, from the article quoting the US Embassy:
Japanese Immigration officials are aware of the pattern of people staying for 80-90 days as “tourists,” spending a few days in Korea, Guam or some other nearby area and then seeking to re-enter Japan for another 90 days. Persons with such a travel pattern can expect to face questions at Japanese Immigration and may be denied entry with the suspicion that they have been or will work illegally in Japan. In that Japanese Immigration records are computerized, a “lost” passport does not serve to mask long stays in Japan.
I think it’s mostly for the visa runs, not the woking per se. (I would still not recommend it, especially not if you are planning on getting a permanent residence status later on.)
Well, the USA and EU are also equally (if not more) strict about not working on tourist or business visas. You have to get a work visa.
It's mentioned in the article, the US embassy advises against unauthorized employment. https://jp.usembassy.gov/services/visas-japan-u-s-citizens/
It also avoids differentiating on two very different scenarios: coming to Japan without a work visa to work illegally for a local company, and doing work for an employer or client not in Japan while being in Japan.
On paper, all laws are strict. In practice, some of them, and some interpretations of them, are considered a higher priority than others (which can range to straight up ignoring them or even violating them themselves).
The point I'm making is I don't get why they've bothered with such a pointless visa, and it sounds like some PR stunt. If it extended to a year or was a residence permit then it'd be an actual valuable visa worth the effort.
The only thing I can think of is maybe they hoped it'd be used by digital nomads to come work for local companies for 6 months, but that doesn't sound likely. PR gimmick or "we're doing things" purpose more likely.
Isn't Japan an expensive country?
It is a mixed bag: apartments can be pretty expensive, especially in Greater Tokyo area. Food is pretty cheap IMO. Taxis are prohibitively expensive, but railroad system is really really good and compensates for that pretty well.
But people don’t go to Japan because it’s cheap – it’s just a really nice place to live for some.
Apartments even in Tokyo are still quite cheap compared to today's rents in major American cities, and not needing to own a car also cuts living expenses massively compared to living in the US.
Someone coming from a German city with good public transit might not think it's that cheap though. But a lot of digital nomads are Americans.
Depends on how much space you need to live. If you are fine with very little space, Japan is actually pretty affordable. Cheap food is good/health. Public transport is cheap and good/great. Lots of activities to kill time for cheap. Not sure about health care though.
I visited Tokyo from London recently and found it to be much cheaper. A decent meal is half, or less than half of what you would pay here, not to mention healthier. Another comment mentioned taxis are expensive, but I found the opposite, my journey was cheaper than it would have been in London, and the drivers are much more professional. As for apartments, you can live much cheaper and more centrally (~£1500 is the minimum you need to play with if you want to live in central London.) Public transport is also cheaper, faster, and more reliable.
So yeah, on the whole, Tokyo is like half the cost of London and you get more for your money.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...