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.
There's at least one company (Mobal) that will give you a "real" (not VoIP prefix) phone number with a passport as a tourist, so that would work for DN too. The data part of their eSIM wasn't great but the voice part worked fine when I tried it.
If you need health care it would definitely be a hassle at least if you don't have a lot of spare cash--you'd have to see if the mandatory travel insurance you purchased has some sort of direct payment arrangement with selected clinics. But it shouldn't be any issue to just receive the service and pay the full cash price, again same as a tourist.
The real issue is going to be a bank account, which would primarily be needed if you tried to rent a "regular" apartment. The best workaround might be to see if the owner would take cash, up front if needed. You'd be within the "treated as nonresident" period at first anyway, so it would already be hard to get an account even with a residence card. If you don't need it for rent/utilities (ex. share house that takes online payments, hotel/airbnb, etc.) then you probably wouldn't want the hassle of opening and closing a local bank account anyway.
Look for 'Nomad travel insurance' and see if it fits your individual needs for health insurance
I use one called safetywing, though thankfully have never had to claim and don't know if they are better or worse than their competitors. (posted as an example and not a recommendation or endorsement)
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
The parasites in this case are the landlords, not AirBnB. And they're the one driving the rent prices up, not the renters.
Why does everybody refuse to adress the elephant in the room? Because they have parents and uncles who live by exploiting young workers for rent, and don't want to hurt their feelings?
When the girlfriend was living in Japan I stayed for 89 days and then went to Taiwan (amazing country, highly recommended) and came back for another 87 days and nobody cared. I guess if you did this a lot it would be an issue but you’re reasonably fine to do it once I think. I was not working but I did have “free” accommodation in the smallest apartment I’ve ever been in so I’d be more concerned about this if I was actually breaking the rules and didn’t have a reason to be there.
"You are only allowed to stay as a "Temporary Visitor" for a total of 180 days during a 12-month period."
Similarly, the EU has a 90/180 day rule, so it doesn't work long term.
As the sibling comment noted, you were within the legal prescribed boundaries.
The flag is automatic if something is off. No person (I think/in general/most countries) sits and counts days. The computer does.
In fact if they note they can not track exactly how many days you were in and out of the country that is a separate flag, that would likely in most jurisdiction lead to questioning.
(Source: friend had to pull his tickets and explain his travel path, when following unusual route via Schengen in between his entry/exit.)
Currently in the countries of the Schengen area - a person is supposed to do preciesly that at border control, the electronic entry-exit system, targeted for launch in 2022 is (was) supposed to be that computer however.
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.
> My first thought was to work remotely and use the 90 days permitted by the tourist visa. Yet working in Japan on this visa is a gray zone at best and a practice I would stay away from. In fact, the US Embassy in Japan strictly advises against this
I’ve always wondered why countries care about this. If I’m employed in my home country, earning money there and paying taxes, what difference does it make if I happen to sit in another country?
Or if I save up 6 months of PTO, then go to another country for those six months. I’m very much earning money and paying tax in my home country. Why is it ok for me to open my laptop and spend 10 hours a day on random stuff, but not “work stuff”?
> If I’m employed in my home country, earning money there and paying taxes, what difference does it make if I happen to sit in another country?
Why does "home country" have tax priority over "sitting in" country? How does that make sense vs having the taxes paid in "sitting in" country instead of "home country"?
with perhaps the strongest argument being jurisdiction. What gives "home country" the legal right to claim taxes on income earned in "sitting country"?
and that's where things get complicated. In order to pay taxes in "sitting country" you need a "sitting tax ID number" and other admin, also if the taxes involve wage withholding, who does the withholding and ensures compliance, etc, etc.
How does this align, in the US, with state-level taxes? If you were born in MN and moved to FL, do you pay MN or FL state income taxes (noting that FL does not have state income tax)?
Is "home country" the state with the home office of the company which employs you, or the state you live in? Should employees of a California company pay California state income tax even when working remote from Texas (another no income tax state)? Or the classic Washington/Oregon divide?
> with perhaps the strongest argument being jurisdiction. What gives "home country" the legal right to claim taxes on income earned in "sitting country"?
Usually a treaty. At least here in Canada the government has tax treaties with most other countries whereby both countries agree the citizen should pay taxes to the country they reside in the majority of the year.
When you put it that way, the answer seems obvious. You're not paying taxes to the country you're residing in. You're not paying taxes for the infrastructure you're using.
Why is it ok for pure tourism? Because tourism is expected to be shorter-term, and you're likely to be putting more money into the local economy as a tourist.
So they need to register this at the very least. I don't know if they tax digital nomad work but they do obviously want to have some control over it.
> I’ve always wondered why countries care about this. If I’m employed in my home country, earning money there and paying taxes, what difference does it make if I happen to sit in another country?
Based on the practical enforcement I get the feeling that most countries don't really care about this, but this situation started happening much faster than visa law changes. Hence the grey area.
Well, they probably want to double-tax your wages[0]. But that's why the digital nomad visa class was established.
But the real explanation is mostly just that it's how the law was written. In general, laws are brokered agreements between those who are currently in power, so they have no principles. More specifically, when countries[1] started implementing categories-and-quotas based immigration control, they decided leisure travel should have its own category, and wrote a restrictive definition of a tourist into the law.
It's important to remember that at the time these laws were written, remote workers didn't exist. If you were entering a country and doing work, it was going to be for a local business, and that visa category had far more restrictive visas intended to privilege native workers over foreign in the labor market. Ergo, the tourism visa has to exclude any work at all. This separation was carried forward into the various reciprocal[2] visa-free travel arrangements that made it so you don't have to physically go to an embassy and file paperwork to get a tourist visa.
Of course, all of this is silly in the Internet age, but good luck convincing every country in the world to allow worldwide labor rights.
[0] Fun fact: the US taxes based on citizenship, not residency, so you will always be double-taxed as a US emigrant, even if you're not remotely working for a US company.
[1] I realize Japan is probably a bad example for this discussion, because they used to be completely closed to both immigration and emigration for over a century. This policy even has a name: "sakoku". In contrast, America used to have an extremely racialized immigration policy, which is what was replaced with the (deracialized) categories and quotas. Before that policy, we actually had a really liberal immigration policy.
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.
That was covered in the article, but as the author was already older than 30 years, it wouldn’t have been applicable for them. It also seems the Working Holiday visa is intended for “employment as an incidental activity of their holidays for the purpose of supplementing their travel funds” [1], whereas the author rather appeared to be looking for a “working full-time with some incidental holidays alongside” situation.
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.
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.
Can someone please explain to me why it is called “Visa” in some languages and “Visum” in others? My understanding is that “visum” means “that which has been seen” in Latin. What does “visa” mean then?
> My understanding is that “visum” means “that which has been seen” in Latin. What does “visa” mean then?
Basically the same thing, from the same root verb “vidēre”; vīsum is “that which has been seen” (noun), vīsa is “which has been seen” (adjective), from which English and some other languages have derived a noun “visa” as a shortening of the modern Latin “charta vīsa” (“paper/document which has been seen”) possibly through a french intermediary before English (different sources I’ve seen disagree on this.)
They're both forms (perfect passive particle in particular) of the latin verb "video". So they both mean "having been seen". The difference is in gender. visa = feminine; visum = neuter; visus = masculine.
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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.
If you need health care it would definitely be a hassle at least if you don't have a lot of spare cash--you'd have to see if the mandatory travel insurance you purchased has some sort of direct payment arrangement with selected clinics. But it shouldn't be any issue to just receive the service and pay the full cash price, again same as a tourist.
The real issue is going to be a bank account, which would primarily be needed if you tried to rent a "regular" apartment. The best workaround might be to see if the owner would take cash, up front if needed. You'd be within the "treated as nonresident" period at first anyway, so it would already be hard to get an account even with a residence card. If you don't need it for rent/utilities (ex. share house that takes online payments, hotel/airbnb, etc.) then you probably wouldn't want the hassle of opening and closing a local bank account anyway.
I use one called safetywing, though thankfully have never had to claim and don't know if they are better or worse than their competitors. (posted as an example and not a recommendation or endorsement)
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.
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.
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.
The parasites in this case are the landlords, not AirBnB. And they're the one driving the rent prices up, not the renters.
Why does everybody refuse to adress the elephant in the room? Because they have parents and uncles who live by exploiting young workers for rent, and don't want to hurt their feelings?
Deleted Comment
In fact if they note they can not track exactly how many days you were in and out of the country that is a separate flag, that would likely in most jurisdiction lead to questioning.
(Source: friend had to pull his tickets and explain his travel path, when following unusual route via Schengen in between his entry/exit.)
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.
I’ve always wondered why countries care about this. If I’m employed in my home country, earning money there and paying taxes, what difference does it make if I happen to sit in another country?
Or if I save up 6 months of PTO, then go to another country for those six months. I’m very much earning money and paying tax in my home country. Why is it ok for me to open my laptop and spend 10 hours a day on random stuff, but not “work stuff”?
Why does "home country" have tax priority over "sitting in" country? How does that make sense vs having the taxes paid in "sitting in" country instead of "home country"?
with perhaps the strongest argument being jurisdiction. What gives "home country" the legal right to claim taxes on income earned in "sitting country"?
and that's where things get complicated. In order to pay taxes in "sitting country" you need a "sitting tax ID number" and other admin, also if the taxes involve wage withholding, who does the withholding and ensures compliance, etc, etc.
How does this align, in the US, with state-level taxes? If you were born in MN and moved to FL, do you pay MN or FL state income taxes (noting that FL does not have state income tax)?
Is "home country" the state with the home office of the company which employs you, or the state you live in? Should employees of a California company pay California state income tax even when working remote from Texas (another no income tax state)? Or the classic Washington/Oregon divide?
Usually a treaty. At least here in Canada the government has tax treaties with most other countries whereby both countries agree the citizen should pay taxes to the country they reside in the majority of the year.
> paying tax in my home country
Don't you think you've answered your own question?
A) You work for a US company, earn money from the US company, pay income taxes in the US, live and spend money (and thus sales taxes) in the US
B) You work for a US company, earn money from the US company, pay income taxes in the US, but live and spend money (and thus sales taxes) in Japan
Clearly (B) is better for Japan economically? I think these laws are mostly enforced out of inertia and not any rational reason.
Why is it ok for pure tourism? Because tourism is expected to be shorter-term, and you're likely to be putting more money into the local economy as a tourist.
So they need to register this at the very least. I don't know if they tax digital nomad work but they do obviously want to have some control over it.
Because you're breaking the law in that country and your country is actually trying to be help you not do that.
Based on the practical enforcement I get the feeling that most countries don't really care about this, but this situation started happening much faster than visa law changes. Hence the grey area.
But the real explanation is mostly just that it's how the law was written. In general, laws are brokered agreements between those who are currently in power, so they have no principles. More specifically, when countries[1] started implementing categories-and-quotas based immigration control, they decided leisure travel should have its own category, and wrote a restrictive definition of a tourist into the law.
It's important to remember that at the time these laws were written, remote workers didn't exist. If you were entering a country and doing work, it was going to be for a local business, and that visa category had far more restrictive visas intended to privilege native workers over foreign in the labor market. Ergo, the tourism visa has to exclude any work at all. This separation was carried forward into the various reciprocal[2] visa-free travel arrangements that made it so you don't have to physically go to an embassy and file paperwork to get a tourist visa.
Of course, all of this is silly in the Internet age, but good luck convincing every country in the world to allow worldwide labor rights.
[0] Fun fact: the US taxes based on citizenship, not residency, so you will always be double-taxed as a US emigrant, even if you're not remotely working for a US company.
[1] I realize Japan is probably a bad example for this discussion, because they used to be completely closed to both immigration and emigration for over a century. This policy even has a name: "sakoku". In contrast, America used to have an extremely racialized immigration policy, which is what was replaced with the (deracialized) categories and quotas. Before that policy, we actually had a really liberal immigration policy.
[2] COVID-19 notwithstanding
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.
[1]: https://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/w_holiday/index.html
Now, if it was called Working Vacation...
Otherwise yes
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
For a paltry 6 months this nomad visa seems like a massive amount of paperwork for no benefit.
If you mainly passively own a business in a different country, is that work?
If you mainly passively manage your portfolio of foreign assets, is that work?
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.
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.
What's the difference between buying an iPhone and taking one from the Apple store? You get an iPhone at the end of both.
Basically the same thing, from the same root verb “vidēre”; vīsum is “that which has been seen” (noun), vīsa is “which has been seen” (adjective), from which English and some other languages have derived a noun “visa” as a shortening of the modern Latin “charta vīsa” (“paper/document which has been seen”) possibly through a french intermediary before English (different sources I’ve seen disagree on this.)