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.
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.
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.)
> 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?
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
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.
with US passport I can stay in Japan for 90 days without a visa, if I want to work occasionally remotely for jobs at US part time, do I still need go through all the paperwork to get a Nomad visa? what's the purpose of Nomad visa when everyone has a laptop and can work remotely if they want to?
> 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:
> Persons found working illegally are subject to arrest and deportation.
> Persons believed to be entering Japan without a working visa but who intend to work here can be denied entry into Japan. This means that you will not exit the airport and will be required to return directly to the U.S.
>> what's the purpose of Nomad visa when everyone has a laptop and can work remotely if they want to?
Because you are working in a country, consuming its services, but not paying the local income tax. A work permit either officially ops you out of this or allows you to properly file/pay taxes.
And fyi to Americans reading this: you still owe taxes to the IRS for work done overseas. There are all sorts of deductions and such, but only if you actually file. Not filing in either country could see you owe a huge amount to both, even if that means paying more than 100% tax. Don't risk it.
If you read the article the author does quote the US embassy in Japan strictly advising against this and that you risk arrest and deportation, that immigration officials do crack down on digital nomads, especially re-entering Japan to renew 90 day tourist visas to work.
A lot of countries have laws against working remotely without a visa, although apart from the US few actively enforce them.
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.
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.
Japanese salaries are very low (compared to the US). So if you’re coming from North America, local prices combined with exchange rates make it super affordable.
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.
Pooge|1 year ago
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.
morpheuskafka|1 year ago
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.
shiroiushi|1 year ago
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.
tjpnz|1 year ago
rootsudo|1 year ago
forgotoldacc|1 year ago
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.
andy_ppp|1 year ago
jonatron|1 year ago
eftychis|1 year ago
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.)
fxtentacle|1 year ago
Klonoar|1 year ago
grecy|1 year ago
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”?
hotspot_one|1 year ago
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?
triceratops|1 year ago
> paying tax in my home country
Don't you think you've answered your own question?
digging|1 year ago
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.
arandomusername|1 year ago
Because you're breaking the law in that country and your country is actually trying to be help you not do that.
chrisfosterelli|1 year ago
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.
kmeisthax|1 year ago
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
cedws|1 year ago
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.
neillyons|1 year ago
jotaen|1 year ago
[1]: https://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/w_holiday/index.html
Klonoar|1 year ago
Otherwise yes
jalapenos|1 year ago
laurieg|1 year ago
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
gentile|1 year ago
seoulmetro|1 year ago
What's the difference between buying an iPhone and taking one from the Apple store? You get an iPhone at the end of both.
unkeen|1 year ago
dragonwriter|1 year ago
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.)
jlaurend|1 year ago
synergy20|1 year ago
maltyr|1 year ago
> 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:
> Persons found working illegally are subject to arrest and deportation.
> Persons believed to be entering Japan without a working visa but who intend to work here can be denied entry into Japan. This means that you will not exit the airport and will be required to return directly to the U.S.
sandworm101|1 year ago
Because you are working in a country, consuming its services, but not paying the local income tax. A work permit either officially ops you out of this or allows you to properly file/pay taxes.
And fyi to Americans reading this: you still owe taxes to the IRS for work done overseas. There are all sorts of deductions and such, but only if you actually file. Not filing in either country could see you owe a huge amount to both, even if that means paying more than 100% tax. Don't risk it.
shintoist|1 year ago
A lot of countries have laws against working remotely without a visa, although apart from the US few actively enforce them.
DeathArrow|1 year ago
notpushkin|1 year ago
But people don’t go to Japan because it’s cheap – it’s just a really nice place to live for some.
csomar|1 year ago
bamboozled|1 year ago
xenospn|1 year ago
cedws|1 year ago
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...
Klonoar|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
lovegrenoble|1 year ago