This new business visa thing in Japan is just so so stupid. As if people with money can't wrangle up 300k to get the business visa and then just do nefarious things like this, all the while locking out potentially millions of hard working entrepreneurial types from all over the world who would actually make good citizens, and good honest money.

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socalgal2 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Can you elaborate?

My understanding:

Before: Need $50k in bank, register business, sponsor yourself for a visa

Result - lots of people just abusing the system for a visa

After: Need $300k, must hire at least one local, must show a profit of $200k within 2 years. Must be reviewed by the government multiple times a year to show your business is serious

I can see some issues. If you want to start a company that requires a year or more of R&D before you can ship you're S.O.L.

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rjzzleep 24 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Sounds logical, but can you elaborate more on what is happening?

	▲	keiferski 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Essentially the amount of capital needed to get a business visa went up dramatically. It used to be about 30k USD and now it’s almost 200k. Plus other more onerous requirements: https://www.bakermckenzie.com/en/insight/publications/2026/0... The result seems to be that a lot of smaller restaurants and other foreign-owned businesses can’t really function and will close.