It's exciting to see progress, but I think 180 days is too short for this to be worthwhile for people who really wanted this. They've leaned heavily into the "nomad" part, but the issue is more of practicality. This visa doesn't come with a Residency Card, which means that getting a traditional lease in Japan is going to be difficult. For 6 months, you'll be on an uphill battle with some services like housing, which can be important. It's just long enough that you won't want to maintain a home in your home country unless it's paid for, and short enough that it makes moving your possessions impractical. You also can't renew it, and you have to be out of the country for 6 months before you can get it again.
I think this would be very appealing if it was a 1 year visa at minimum, but comparable visas (e.g., the Taiwan Gold Card) are up to 3 years. I'm not terribly upset at the lack of Individual Number or Residence Card, but the length is definitely something that makes it unappealing except in the most nomad-of-nomad situations.
Apparently they'll be opening it for public comments in the second half of February. They said that they based the 6 month time period on questions they asked foreigners about how long they would want to stay -- so maybe this is the time to push for a longer period of time.
Agreed, 180 days and no residency card makes this way too much hassle for the meager benefits.
It's similar with the recent 1-year South Korean F-1-D Nomad/Workation visa for Canadians, who get 6 months as tourists anyways. I'm going through the application process since U.S. citizens only get 3 months as tourists, but the hassle is only really worth it for the residency card.
Length is far too short, I can stay for 3 months without filling out anything, an additional 3 for the effort of applying kinda sucks (having applied for a Japan tourist visa for my wife, expect this visa to be just as onerous)
If they allow dependents (like the Korean one does) and allowed for 1 year with the option of extending up to 2, we'd be packing right now.
You can also get another 3 months on a tourist visa by leaving and coming back (at least, most visa-free tourists can; I've had many friends do this).
I suppose it's less cost to do it this way, but it sure seems like a "digital nomad" would have no problem going somewhere else for a week (Korea, Taiwan), and coming back.
I know that's fine for some countries such as the Philippines (though their tourist visa can be extended so long, it's rarely necessary) but IIRC this doesn't fly in Japan, it's 90 days per year, total, and they're very strict about it.
I don't know if it differs by country, but that's incorrect for residents of the US, and various countries in western Europe. You get 90 days per stay, with 2 stays a year.
(edit: I could be wrong about the 2 stay max. It might be higher. I'm pretty sure I entered Japan more than 2 times in a single year on a visa-free waver, but I don't know if there's some window that applies.)
it is not 90 days total per year, but the officials are strict on it. if they see you were recently in japan they may suspect you of working illegally. they also can say you’ve returned too soon and reject you. not worth the risk imo, even though a i know a few people that have done it successfully so they could study in japan without a year long visa.
> it is not 90 days total per year, but the officials are strict on it.
That may have been what I was thinking, I recall on my first trip there, they were pretty strict and wanted to know exactly where I was staying I even had to show them on the map. For my wife's tourist visa we had to apply to a travel agency that was a liaison with the Japan embassy (The Japan embassy required it, you couldn't apply directly in her country) and the process was very tedious, we had to include a day-by-day itinerary, and all kinds of documentation. All that to say I guess when I hear that Japan is strict about something, I just take that as it's not worthwhile to try and get around it.
Yeah, there's likely a citizenship thing at play. I imagine the treatment for a "digital nomad" from the US is going to be pretty different than someone from the Philippines or Vietnam [1], for example. Japan (like most countries) probably doesn't care so much about re-entry of rich tourists, so long as they're not working or doing anything illegal.
[1] Both are countries with lots of unskilled folks who desperately want to work in Japan.
Yeah, I got yelled at once by JP passport control for coming back after a visa run, mainly because on the entry card I put a residential address (short term stay place) and that I was staying another 90 days.
The three main things JP passport control are looking for are asylum seekers, people over and people that are illegally working under the table and not paying into the Japanese tax/retirement system.
Don’t you think that the housing market will create a niche for these people? Foreigners with deep pockets coming in for six months sounds like a great thing for landlords. Plus, you know they won’t squat because they’re gone after 6 months or they get deported
It's not out of the question, but foreigners already have a tough time getting housing in Japan with a Residency Card. There are very real concerns people have about not getting paid for rent, or people not being able to support themselves. This is why normally, residents will have a guarantor sign documents with them to ensure that the landlord is made whole if something goes awry.
I would also expect, pessimistically, that the housing for foreigners on this visa will, if offered, be significantly more expensive than normal housing on the expectation that foreigners can afford it. Maybe this won't be the case, but I think it will definitely make an already-annoying problem harder.
You usually pay four or five months up front to move into a Japanese apartment anyway.
One month thanks for letting me rent here fee
Two months deposit
One month fee to the agent
First month’s actual rent
And most contracts are two years but you can cancel with one month’s notice in the second year. If you cancel in the first year, that’s another one month penalty.
No one’s going to be renting a normal apartment for six months.
Thank you for your comment. I'm interested in this program too and agree with you that 6 months maybe too short to move and rent an apartment there. I assume most place have at lease 1 year contract, right? I would like to give them my comment too. Can you please share where can we give them feedback when they open for public comment?
And will it possible if we ask them to let us apply for residency card?
Properties in rural Japan are VERY cheap (like 20k USD). It makes sense to just buy summer house there. It is pretty good life to spend summers in Japan, and winters somewhere at south.
Please note: these houses you see online for 20k have problems. You aren't going to just be able to move in. Most of them need to be emptied of junk and repaired, if not completely renovated.
If you're lucky, the only problem will be that the house is very remote, and you need a car to get there. That alone is a substantial problem on a 6-month basis if you don't have residency. But realistically, houses that are in move-in state in an area where you'd actually want to live cost far more than $20k.
OK, I'm just saying that you should understand what you're getting into. These online memes are not reality.
> Not everyone has to live in Tokyo.
LOL, I'm not even remotely talking about Tokyo. I'm talking about 2nd- and 3rd-tier cities. If you find a $20k house in Tokyo, it's going to be unlivable, and so far outside the city that you won't believe you're in Tokyo.
Honestly, $20k is low even for a well-maintained place in a small town. Most likely, any house at this price point, anywhere, is in a flood zone or at serious risk of mudslide, filled with junk, and/or requiring seismic/electrical/plumbing improvements before you can move in.
Assuming it’s legal to do so I imagine that some will use this visa as a springboard to access other visas. 180 days is long enough to hunt for a work-visa-furnishing job or a school to attend for an education visa for example.
That may have been possible under the 90 day tourist visa (though I think that one may explicitly bar job hunting), but 90 days disappears surprisingly quickly and the flight out and back in to get the second 90 day period is a nuisance.
Many countries have requirements to maintain residency status -- for example Canada requires 183 days (half a year) residency in the country to maintain access to all the benefits and privileges.
Most aren't aware of the situation Japan is in today because of the world we all grew up in, where Japan was at one point nearly the largest economy in the world. Japan has been in between a recession and stagnation for 30 years. Their GDP was higher 31 years ago than it is today. [1] Their GDP/capita is $33,950 with most wages well below that. They hit a record high for average wages in 2022 of ¥311,800 - about $2,100. [2]
Next - they're dying off. They hit their inflection point in 2009 and they've been shrinking since [3]. They've lost more than 5million people since 2009. And the "fun" thing about fertility collapse is that the decline will never stop. Their population will keep shrinking down at the 'equilibrium rate' (decided by fertility rate) until they start having babies, or go extinct. The exact same will happen to every other country with sub-replacement fertility rates.
This, IMO, is an effort to try to attract a certain type of immigrant largely for the purposes of revenue generation.
There's a lot of gloom and doom around Japan, but I think there are a few counter-points.
1) Yes, the economy is stagnant. But it's interesting to think about it from the point of view that Japan disproves the idea that a growth economy is the only way. Here is a country that increases worker efficiency and has a really high standard of living, but doesn't do it in a hyper growth kind of way.
2) Yes, Japan is super, super xenophobic compared to other countries. This is contrasted with it being one of the top tourist destinations on earth. I think things like digital nomad visa could be a small step on the way to closing this dichotomy. It's clear that one of the easy levers Japan could pull to alleviate their economic issues would be to allow more immigration, and I think the world's facination with Japan and Japanese culture is such that they could pull it off.
But not ever place needs to turn into cosmopolitan London. In the same way that Japan showed it’s possible to have a high standard of living without obsessing over growth, I trust that the Japanese can find a path forward that doesn’t default to “just bring in millions of immigrants”.
Why are we treating a known working and humanitarian strategy as some evil "growth" thing? I feel like we're dragging that term out of the hyper-capitalistic sense it's meant to evoke.
People ought to be able to move where they're most happy / productive. One consequence of that may be that a place turns "into cosmopolitan London". But that's hardly a horror.
I think the argument against can be boiled down to this hypothetical analogy:
A few friends and I like your home better than ours. It's much nicer and safer than where we currently live, so we move into a few open bedrooms.
Now that we outnumber you and your family, we vote to change things in the common areas more to our liking. Some changes are small and happen over time, others more jarring and immediate. You like some of these changes in some cases, but sometimes quite the opposite.
Is it a foregone conclusion that this situation is for the greater good? If so, should your family be pressured or forced to accept?
Who has the power to make that determination?
After all, you were only there first so what gives you the right to prevent others from moving in?
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Personally, I can see the argument for both sides.
I feel like the analogy isn't a service to the problem.
It's got all sorts of baggage and expectations pertaining to homeownership that don't carry over into migration. I feel it'd just be better to address the problem space directly and ask what specific problems you observe/predict with immigration.
The problem I'm inferring from your comment here would also seem to apply to families moving from Chicago to Boston. And what's funny is that people actually do complain about this (our mayor is from Chicago), but it's for nonsensical reasons in my experience.
>I feel it'd just be better to address the problem space directly
Fair enough. Not everyone enjoys naked cosmopolitanism. I don't live in New York City for a reason (I did at one point), and I don't live in the downtown of the city I live closest to (also did at one point, where I watched it change into something else). There are aspects of a nation that go beyond mere economic data, and longing for those things to remain stable and constant is a normal feeling and belief. When people talk about immigration as a mechanism to "solve" some problem, those other aspects get glossed over, usually pejoratively by calling everyone who doesn't agree with mass immigration a "racist" or a "bigot". Talking about Japan is an evocative example because it's so culturally distant from the west in ways that are obvious and stark. Thinking it wise that it changes to echo the mishmash that the west is becoming, in order to make some numbers in a spreadsheet go up, is in my estimation the more extreme position to stake out than simply observing that perhaps not all uniqueness was created equal. There's also the housing problem, where, for some reason, people pretend that this is the one instance in which the laws of supply and demand do not apply and large numbers of immigrants don't have an impact on the cost of housing.
>The problem I'm inferring from your comment here would also seem to apply to families moving from Chicago to Boston.
People complain about this because where you are from is a signal about having skin in the game. It's why politicians advertise their family ties to the place they are running to represent. I don't live in Boston, and am not that familiar with Mayor Wu. Maybe she'll run the city into the ground, maybe she won't. But if she does, she can always just go back to Chicago.
I'd also add here that it's really not even just about the greater good. There's something obviously unique and valuable about different places remaining different, rather than creating some sort of global homogeneity. Austin coined 'Keep Austin Weird' which Portland, and a handful of other such cities, then mimicked.
Of course it failed - the attractiveness of Austin, in part because of its distinct character, left it facing widespread 'migration' of a sort that the city was unaccustomed to dealing with, and it increasingly just looks like any other city. Identical to how if Japan starts opening the flood gates there will be all these people moving there because 'wow, Japan's so weird and unique' and soon enough e.g. Tokyo will look like any other city.
It could well be "better", by some metric or another, for Austin, Tokyo, and everywhere else to be basically the same, excepting some window dressing. But it sure creates a much more bland and less interesting world.
One could argue that when viewed in perspective of a shrinking population, Japan's economy is doing just fine. Just because it doesn't work for hedge fund vampires doesn't mean it's not effective at sustaining a good standard of living for people there.
The xenophobic point hits home, as I've lived there for almost 5 years, and wasn't able to attain a single long/strong friendship with any japanese national. I am glad I had other foreigners there to mingle with, or I'd just be very, very alone.
Japan for tourism? Can't recommend further. Amazing country to visit, clean, safe, good food. They will be educated towards you in big cities like Tokyo etc.
Japan for living (specially if you're from an economy which they perceive as lower/poorer)? Avoid at all costs, you'll be treated as subculture forever.
yeah re point 1) All I've ever heard my whole life is how Japan is an economic basketcase and a disaster, and yet after visiting there well, the quality of infrastructure and vibrancy of the cities is high that it makes Canada look like a third world country tbh. And yet Canada is the one that is always out performing Japan in the economic charts, with our numbers going in the proper up and to the right direction. Obviously there's more to quality of life than merely lines on the economic graph...
One is implemented with the will of the people (in a functioning democracy) and the other is not.
Equating the two and then correlating that to dog whistle terms like “genetic extermination” which has no scientific basis (except in terms of pest control) is disingeuous.
I assure you that there is nothing disingenuous in my comment, and not everything is a "dog whistle". A dog whistle for what, if you mind?
No people has ever willed to be colonised (and that was the proposal in the comment I replied to). Immigration is a different matter. The people in history who welcomed being colonised were very sorry for it afterwards.
Genetic extermination is the same as genocide, and it has happened countless times, it is happening right now, and it will continue to happen as long as humans are faulty beings.
You have yet to explain why genetic extermination (whatever you mean by that) is undesirable.
Naming a natural evolutionary occurrence (and I mean genetic mixing, not colonization) a pejorative doesn’t make it so.
There is plenty of genetic mixing happening in the world in the last single generation without any colonization. Go back in time far enough and you can draw a line from any major event to a calamity that came after it. It’s quite easy to see through your veiled prejudice for inter-racial breeding.
> I'm saying that when people start proposing and planning colonisation of a foreign country, genetic extermination usually follows.
And I don't disagree with you.
What I'm objecting to is your hyperbole; on further thought I don't care much for your throwing around of this "genetic extermination" term either.
"Extermination" implies a third party is involved and has a hand on the gas valve. A more appropriate euphemism would be "genetic extinction."
Genocide is explicitly defined as "the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group." The immigrants are not arriving onshore and butchering the natives.
Words have meaning and this one does not invite ambiguity. A genetic clique disappearing because of cross-breeding is not goddamn Genocide. It's just Nature.
And again, I'd argue they're doing it to themselves. They just handed the title of Miss Japan to a Ukie. Now this. Nobody's making them sell out to foreigners. They could just as easily halve their pointlessly-bureaucratic workweek and subsidize childcare.
> Genocide is explicitly defined as "the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group." The immigrants are not arriving onshore and butchering the natives.
No, but when immigrant/coloniser diaspora becomes large enough in numbers they rise up against the natives and start displacing them, most often violently. As seen almost always throughout history, or in the news tonight.
> It's just Nature.
Nature is nature, and human policy is separate from that. Displacing enormous amounts of people to "fix" some imaginary GDP number is as far from nature as can be, unless we argue that war and genocide is a natural behaviour among human beings. Which unfortunately I think we can. Then again if it's "just nature", then why do people here argue for organising mass migration to Japan. Let nature have it's course then?
As for the rest of your comment, you are arguing automatically based on what you have imagined that I wrote, even though I tried to clarify to you. I don't know how I can get my point through, so you can understand that I connected organised foreign colonisation / mass migration to Japan with genocide. Because one usually follows the other.
Even an outright military invasion can be less of a threat to a nation, since some conquerors only want to extract resources and tributes without taking over the land by putting their own population there.
There's a discussion around the english words for people who come to a country. Some people are "expats" and some people are "immigrants".
I was talking about "immigrants" rather than "expats".
Of course this dynamic has many facets to it. I've met some people in Thailand who couldn't give a shit about Thai people and just wanted to save 50% on their latte. This is a common "expat" sterotype.
There has been, and still is a lot of "orientalization" of Japan, but almost every immigrant you meet in Japan today has a deep love for Japan in some way. (Also because only the truly dedicated would go to the trouble to be able to stay). So if Japan decided to start allowing more people in I feel like they would all fall more on the immigrant side than the expat side.
There isn’t really any ambiguity about the two terms. That’s a dog whistle by people who want to see racism where there is none.
They usually say something along the lines of “so when black and brown skinned people go to Europe they’re immigrants. But when white people go to Japan they’re called expats?”.
The omitted difference being that most white people going to Japan do not stay permanently.
The japanese also differentiate between 移民 and 駐在員 (expat)
Wow, this comment comes across as extremely nationalistic, sorry to say but to the point of being fascistic (and I’m not one for using this term lightly).
I agree the tone was aggressive but this is arguably a real issue and it's not as simple as it seems at first
Israel as a "Jewish state" is arguably a place that would not exist if they let in unlimited immigration because it would soon be majority not Jewish. I see that's in conflict with the idea that people should be/do whatever they want. I don't see how to reconcile the two sides.
Radiolab had an episode on this issue WRT to Samoa (https://radiolab.org/podcast/americanish-2306) My memory of the episode is the first half they paint the picture of a particular seemingly "racist" local trying to keep non-Samoans from owning any land. Most people are okay with it, then this person whispers in their ear and suddenly they're against it.
In the second half they go over why. The reason being rich non-Samoans would quickly buy up the entire island and there would be no Samoa / Samoan culture anymore. I don't know how to resolve that.
Part of me thinks they Samoans, Jews, Japan, British, Native Americans, etc... should not disallow immigration. It seems anti-democratic, anti-liberal values. On the other hand, something will be lost, something that seems to have value, which is the cultures of the people there currently.
> The reason being rich non-Samoans would quickly buy up the entire island and there would be no Samoa / Samoan culture anymore.
isn't this more of a class (rich vs non-rich) issue than an immigration issue?
> I don't know how to resolve that.
allow only people who live long-term and actually reside there to buy property might be one strategy?
> On the other hand, something will be lost, something that seems to have value, which is the cultures of the people there currently.
its true but its also true many of those cultures most prized traditions come from the intersection of native and foreign creating something new in the first-place... something might be lost but another gained...
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btw, slight tangent but i think there is also a contradiction with immigration policy in regards to attracting rich foreigners: many countries want them because its supposed that they bring capital/money with them in the hopes of spurring investment and local economy but the flip-side is what you describe where the rich foreigners start owning/dominating things to the detriment of locals... and countries conversely don't want the non-rich to stay long-term because they aren't perceived as high-class/desirable yet they are the ones that work in the 'productive economy' which might help the locals more in the long and short term....i think there is an issue there as well...
> isn't this more of a class (rich vs non-rich) issue than an immigration issue?
That Doesn't really seem to matter if there are few rich Samoans and lots of rich foreigners. Their culture will still disappear if they have no where to collectively live and access to the things the culture cherishes.
> allow only people who live long-term and actually reside there to buy property might be one strategy?
That's one idea. It has the issue that you can't sell your house if you can't find a local to buy it, even if you desperately need the money.
Nationalism was historically the reaction against imperialism. Some empires transformed into nation states, such as Great Britain. Most countries who are independent today are independent because of nationalistic movements against imperialism and colonisation.
Wait, who is talking about colonization? The Royal Navy isn't planning an invasion of Japan; nobody is forcing anything on the country regarding immigration or demographics. The country has chosen to keep immigration low for decades, as is their right. Now they are facing a demographic crisis and could choose to relax those policies to help alleviate population concerns.
Because I want their shit. Their land and what’s under it. Their seas and what it gives me access to. And either I’m going to take it or they’re going to let me share.
This kind of abject “why won’t you leave us alone” only works on people who listen. Not on people who compete. And the people who listen couldn’t compete in the first place.
My country has been colonized by Spain for 333 years, as far as I know my kind did not go poof. We just inherited all the colonizers language and bullshit.
You are most probably the product of the colonisers, ie "your kind" did not exist in your country before being colonised.
Back to Japan, it is not like there is vast spaces of fertile land there that "needs" to be put under plow by colonisers. It is already a very densely populated country.
What blows my mind is that Japan's GDP per capita (PPP) as reported by World Bank is now lower than 4 formerly comparatively "poor" former Easter Block countries: Czechia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Estonia. And just one place above Poland.
What happened? Simple: Eastern Europe has been experiencing constant GDP growth for the past 3 decades, while Japan stagnated.
Also, regarding sibling comment about relevance of PPP metrics: I challenge you to come to Czechia or Poland - the quality of life can really surprise you. Those are, for example, the two countries with the lowest unemployment rates in EU. We have nice apartments and houses (with photovoltaic panels and heat pumps, mind you), drive nice cars, have good healthcare and free higher education.
Unless I get a $1M+ per year offer from a FAANG in Silicon Valley I feel like no country in the world can offer me a significantly better standard of living.
The typical explanation given is poor economic policy - good times led banks to start lending excessively, excessive lending drove speculation, speculation drove bubbles, those bubbles burst, everything collapsed, and they just never managed to get back up again. But that last part is what most interests me.
Most of the Soviet Bloc type nations you named had reasonable fertility rates under the USSR, only collapsed once the USSR collapsed in 1991, and are inching back up again. Japan, by contrast, never had a particularly great fertility rate post-war. Then it just collapsed in the 1970s and simply kept going down. [1]
Fertility rates just determine so much. With a good fertility rate companies grow naturally because their market size is constantly naturally increasing. And vice versa for poor fertility rates. It also determines the overall age distribution of a population, such as how in Japan now 10% of the population is over 80. When an ever larger chunk of your population is leaving the labor force with not enough people to replace them, and then an even smaller taxpayer base to provide the social benefits necessary to sustain these people in their elder years - everything just becomes completely unsustainable.
And, again, none of this will ever get better such as, for instance, when the older people start passing en masse. This is because fertility rate determines the ratio of distributions within a population. You can see this quite clearly in this [2] population pyramid. The only solution is for them to suddenly start dramatically increasing their fertility rate.
I strongly dislike arguments like this. Because you can apply them to basically any metric and I find that they are generally used to cheaply discredit a potentially interesting fact about the world without actually providing an argument that the metric in question is not a useful one to consider.
In all other contexts would you also say gdp per capita is a metric not worth considering? If not then I humbly question the value of your statement.
I'm not trying to discredit GDP; I don't think it is a useless metric. Lawmakers around the world—some that are paid handsomely—care about it and obviously quite a bit can be inferred from it, but in this case we would be better served utilising a multi-dimensional lens, so to say, in these tangential topics. I'm just against hearing about it as the most important economic metric of a country. It's very often used as a single data point to come to all kinds of conclusions. There are some top-comments in this thread where people are almost forecasting Japan's doom, which is of course a ridiculous view. That's the general direction my comment was aimed at.
At the risk of being out of my depth: You only need a few seconds to look at the per-capita list before finding yourself asking "wait, why is THAT country so high up?". Again, useful info can be inferred, but it doesn't put the country above others in other important lists, which is what people usually imply and use it for, on topics not strictly related to economy statistics.
Thanks for clarifying, that's definitely a more well thought through perspective than I gave you credit for before.
I guess I would avoid updating my beliefs too strongly when a measurement I generally find quite useful (in this case gdp per capita) does not perfectly map onto a more nuanced view of the world! As you say, it's only a single data point.
Czechia did not have demographic collapse, and actually got fair bit of immigration from other Slavic countries, mainly Slovakia & Ukraine (pre-war, post we got even more obviously).
So they only want high earning workers from developed countries, basically the kind of immigrants every other country wants but doesn't dare say it out loud. What's wrong with that? Their country, their rules.
> basically the kind of immigrants every other country wants but doesn't dare say it out loud
Many nations have high standards for immigration relating to income, wealth and professional qualifications. There is absolutely nothing hush hush about it, not even remotely.
>There is absolutely nothing hush hush about it, not even remotely.
You definitely don't live in the progressive parts of Europe. You're not allowed to say here you only want certain kinds of well off immigrant at the expense of other less well off migrants, otherwise you might be called a N*zi.
There's lots of types of immigration and you seem to be focused on only one. Also, I bet you'd find it's very easy to talk openly about immigration if you don't start with a chip on your shoulder and dropping words like "nazi", which you know is inflammatory.
You're a German person who is defending a person who chose to include the word "nazi" as the start of the conversation? That just makes people assume you find that kind of rhetoric acceptable and if that is true, then it is no wonder you can't have a decent conversation on the topic.
I don’t know, everyone but you seems to be able to have a civil discussion.
All I can say as a white Polish immigrant in Germany is that I was hit by the “Nazi club” as it’s called here a hundred times in my lifetime. No matter how mild your statement might be the Nazi insinuation comes fast. My superpower is that I can actually defend myself by saying that my ancestors were killed by Nazis, while native Germans can’t, but such a defense shouldn’t be necessary to begin with.
> You're not allowed to say here you only want certain kinds of well off immigrant
Not out loud, anyway. The Dutch have an immigration system that very much benefits well off immigrants (see the 30% rule vs agricultural immigration schemes), but yeah Wilders is considered ultra-right wing for wanting to kick out all the lower class immigrants (saying that they are all "Moroccans" doesn't help matters). Unfortunately despite him saying the quiet part out loud he got 25% of the Dutch voters to agree with him in November.
Not sure about this comment - I think you need to put up examples here. I think your comment is historically true but not up to date with current policies.
Your assertion is that those countries require their immigrants to go through those tests and pass and your it implies tacitly that this is for almost all immigrants who come through. However at most 50% go through that route (in Canada).
Japan seems conservative compared to New Zealand, which limits immigration for those with a range of disabilities - including autism spectrum disorder:
> Severe developmental disorders or severe cognitive impairments where significant support is required, including but not exclusive to: physical disability, intellectual disability, autistic spectrum disorders, brain injury.
I think that's a deliberate misinterpretation. It obviously means 'low functioning' autism rather than someone who's awkward in adulthood but otherwise leads a normal life.
That's a lot of countries which restrict migration from people with disabilities due to increased pressure on the welfare state. Reminds me of a famous case where a German family moved to Austria with their disabled child and the Austrian authorities were allowed to not register the child.
Unless you qualify for asylum, then all bets are off and these rules are waived.
The article says "Japan hopes its new visa status will attract [..] YouTubers earning advertising fees from overseas companies." and this is about digital nomads. To me, that seems weird because most digital nomads (and most YouTube personalities) aren't going to make that $68k limit.
I can't say for sure whether it is "most" or not, but I do not know a single individual that is a Digital Nomad that makes sub $100,000 a year that is employed by another company.
As for a digital nomad, if you're business is secure enough that you're comfortable traveling full time or as a standard aspect of your life, you're likely making more than $68,000 Pre-Tax.
I don't think this is an incredibly high dollar amount, seeing as several major cities in the US have a minimum wage of nearly $41,000 a year.
It's usually the other waY around. The resentment generally builds if the low wage jobs are taken, leaving the least affluent workers without any prospects.
And this particular visa is aimed at people that are employed overseas, so they're not even gonna take any high paying jobs from the population
I think it at least depends on other factors as well.
For example the German city of Düsseldorf is very welcome to Japanese business, and it resulted in a lot of infrastructure like Japanese schools, kindergardens, cultural institutions , Japanese chamber of commerce, restaurants, doctors with Japanese translators, a temple, as well as a huge yearly Japanese festival.
In the 90s almost all of the Japanese living in Düsseldorf were managers, i.e. paid well.
There is no crime, they cause no trouble, they usually just don’t speak German because they live after a 1-4 year business stint. They are very liked among the local citizens.
Meanwhile when Turks try to build a mosque chaos ensues. But the Turkish population is not a bunch of rich nomads.
resentment? why? won’t the nomads spend money in the local community on goods and services? You make it seem like they would be taking local jobs away, or taking housing away from the locals that earn 2x less. i’m struggling to see your perspective?
Portugal has this very issue. A previous HN thread from a few weeks ago went into more detail about it.
The tl;dr is if you drop 5000 people earning 2x the average salary into a neighborhood, the prices of everything goes way up. Rent, food, entertainment, locals get priced out very quickly.
seems like a tourism issue? that and extremely low wages compared to cost of living. If the government functioned for the people, i imagine it would be trivial to place severe limits on short term tourism rentals, but they have chosen not to do so.
What's wrong with only wanting high earners to come to your country? Japan knows that high earners are definitely going to spend more and probably cause less trouble than lower earners.
If current rates continue, which is a big assumption, then Japan will have 106M people by 2050 and 75M by 2100, which was roughly the population before WW2. Japan is already one of the most densely populated areas in the world, so further population growth may not be the greatest idea. They already have good standards of living, great infrastructure, high societal trust, low crime, a competent government, etc. Europe's strategy of importing millions of low skill foreigners who are mostly dependent on welfare and have destabilized their societies is also probably not a great idea either.
These population projections also ignore the many factors that may change. As the population declines, more opportunities may open for young people, leading to increased family formation. The culture may evolve in response the lopsided demographic pyramid, causing increases in the fertility rate. People are already predicting AGI in the next couple decades, which will render most people unnecessary anyway. These classical analyses around demographics will probably become increasingly obsolete.
This isn't quite accurate. The population projection graphs you see [1] are based on UN numbers which have the Japanese fertility rate skyrocketing [2] relative to past trends, presumably based on the assumption of some sort of successful social policy. That's why the collapse starts to smooth out in the graph, which is not what you see from a constant rate. Fertility rates, at a constant level, are brutally exponential systems which do not 'slow down'.
As for predictions, I remember about 10 years ago making fun of somebody who wanted to get a class C (commercial trucking) license. It seemed like the most idiotic idea imaginable at the time. Self driving vehicles had already been proven viable and surely it was imminent that nobody would be driving themselves around, let alone truckers where companies would love to ditch those relatively hefty labor fees. Relevant link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function
> Fertility rates, at a constant level, are brutally exponential systems which do not 'slow down'.
If fertility rates are correlated to your ancestor's fertility rates, then a decline can "slow down" just because the remaining people of fertile age will be disproportionately from families with higher fertility rates.
Yeah, actual extinction seems impossible, if for no other reason that at some point above "0" the population will no longer be able to sustain a functioning government, and a non-functioning government isn't going to be able to regulate immigration.
In most countries you can't do any kind of work while in a tourist Visa, but this was never enforced, because it was so exceedingly rare for not to be on governments radar.
But once it became more prevalent, it creates the problem (on governments view, especially post 9/11) of having a bunch of foreign folks living for months and receiving money from abroad for god knows which reason.
This creates the problem for law enforcement of having to separate nomad workers from more shady characters that have exactly the same "signature": long term stays, getting regular money from above, not doing the usual tourist stuff that people that have money and free time enough to stay in a foreign country for months usually do.
So, for law enforcement purposes, it makes sense to have an specific kind of Visa for those "working tourists", so they can pre-filter this population and get back to a smaller working set of persons of interest without the added noise of "working tourists" (digital nomad as a term is incorrect, after all, true nomads would be working locally)
When I was in Thailand about 7 or 8 years ago they just recently raided a co-working coffee and jailed the 'nomads' over night (as far as I remember) there was also regular talks about what to tell and not tell border patrol and official visa places.
Most people I met just paid taxes 'at home' or were generally lost in limbo financially but there always was an awareness about this being illegal.
Personally, I'd never do anything as flag-worthy as using a coworking space unless remote working was explicitly OK for the visa I had. In practice, while some countries do require a business visa to attend a conference or meet with customers, most countries in my experience don't care--in a sort of ill-defined way--unless you're receiving local payment for something. (Based on accounts I've read I'd be very careful about saying anything about travel expenses being reimbursed or getting an honorarium.)
You need to finish that story. Those people were released after it was made clear that they were not working for Thai companies. It was not about them working in Thailand while on a tourist visa. It was about not taking local jobs.
> When I was in Thailand about 7 or 8 years ago they just recently raided a co-working coffee and jailed the 'nomads' over night
That was because the authorities did not understand how co-working spaces operated, and had concluded that the foreigners in there were employees of the space's owner.
They have since said that they will not repeat that, and have been true to their word so far.
I challenge this as someone who frequents Thailand and the SEA region. You can get a nice condo (short-term airbnb/utilities paid) for $500 or less; only 20 minutes from central Bangkok. Sure, more expensive options exist. But comparing Switzerland to Thailand when it comes to living costs is plain ridiculous.
I don’t get it. Most of my expenses are “living costs” and food. You also said you have the same tax residency. May we know what other expenses in Thailand that matches Switzerland (I’d guess some electronics, but these are casual expenses that you can pick up from the duty free).
The other possibility is that you are simply spending more in Thailand. I’ve seen some DN who have the same expenses because they get used to going out ever night. But this is an apples to oranges comparison.
Brand electronics and branded imported food is more expensive in Thailand than Switzerland. I went out drinking maybe once a month if at all.
However: I eat good and healthy if possible. I love the street food there, but not 2-3 times a day. I am a coffee junkie, coffee to go is generally more expensive as there are no or only expensive imported options in 7/11 and coffee shops are oriented at tourists.
I definitely didn't waste money, didn't have any money to waste. All I am telling is that Travelling(!) In a cheap country can be just as expensive than staying(!) Long term in a expensive country
However i still paid taxes, health care, a mobile contract, banking, etc in Switzerland.
The actual savings should be in living and food. On short term I rarely rented below $800/month for a single room flat. (Vs $1000 for a old house in Switzerland) for food I have to cook myself now Vs. Eating out twice a day in Thailand.
Without actually moving and centering your life to a cheap country (and giving up on a lot of luxury and safety) you dont easily safe money.
Digital Nomading was an absolute luxury for me. Not a way of saving money (at least looking back)
Might sound surprising but I am looking at immobilia in some parts of Switzerland at the same price range. I enjoy the good health care, fair taxes and generally the environment. My entertainment (outside of my techy home) is nature now.
“Normal” meals in Thailand are food stalls, $2 per meal if not less.
If you’d eat out twice a day in Switzerland, you’d go bankrupt.
Same with renting. Short term leases in Switzerland would be astronomical in price.
The way you air-quoted “super cheap Thailand” implies that it isn’t cheap to live there at all. It is, as long as you don’t go out of your way to spend extra.
>“Normal” meals in Thailand are food stalls, $2 per meal if not less.
I gotta disagree here, that's what low-skilled staff eat on their lunch break. It's usually not very tasty or hygienic (depending on what you order), so westerners only eat this once or twice to try it out before learning their lesson. Then they stick to restaurants which cost $5-12 per meal.
Your average western expat spends 30 euros per day on food in Thailand, if they eat out. I know this because a friend did a survey.
- Cheap first meal: $2-$3
- 2-3 Espresso from Supermarkets: $4
- Coffee or tea to go: $3
- Water: $1
- Eating out: $6-$30
So my average day in Food was about $16 - $41 per day. I rarely spend this much in Switzerland when buying only organic food and mostly from farmers. I save a lot on coffee by having a proper coffee machine.
Not sure about Thailand but key in Philippines is to go in the village/province where the locals are the primary consumers of housing. It helps if you know local families to keep you from getting ripped off.
I am lazy and a sucker for basic luxury. I tried, and I realize I could be living a lot cheaper. But I highly doubt I can live cheaper anywhere else at the same standard :)
However I recommend anyone to find their place and lifestyle and look as far as possible!
>So, for law enforcement purposes, it makes sense to have an specific kind of Visa for those "working tourists", so they can pre-filter this population and get back to a smaller working set of persons of interest
So I guess terrorists/bad actors won't get the idea to apply for this Visa to fly under the radar then?
Having a legally-legitimate drop-shipping / e-commerce business sounds like perfect cover for international drug smuggling and sex trafficking, as well as providing a convenient tool for laundering small amounts of money.
Applying for a visa probably entails explaining where your money is coming from, such low effort barriers actually helps a ton since most criminals aren't very conscientious.
It's more about taxes. If you apply for a working visa you can be flagged as having revenue generated while in the country, so you'll pay an income tax on it.
The other side of it is visa overstay: it's more financially viable for working people to overstay their visa, where pure tourist have to go back at some point.
Terrorists will be flagged whatever they do, as international money transfers are already heavily scrutinized and under a working visa you still have to declare your work.
Overstaying a visa is likely a criminal offense depending on the length of the overstay, these people still have to leave the country, they're going to get caught and flagged. At a minimum they'll be prevented from re-entry but chances are there could be real punishment.
In terms of taxes, I really really doubt it, a DN is not taking a locals job, their clients & business are all out of country, their accounts and transactions are all overseas. Just figuring out what they owe and how to pay it in Japan would completely put people off using the Visa and I really doubt the Japanese government would think it worth the hassle for six months.
Not sure about the first part, but generally the way it works is that first you pay taxes to the country where you are a resident, and then you still must also pay taxes to the US by virtue of being a US citizen but you usually get a credit on those US taxes in the amount you already paid to your country of residence. Sometimes the country where you’re living has much higher taxes, so you end up not owing anything to the US — but you still have to file.
The winning play is the SALT or Charity dodge: pay taxes to an authority who returns a lot more of it to you in benefits than the other authority does.
My impression is that there's a considerable overlap between people monetizing digital nomad content and what citizens of their residence country would call "shady characters".
Please note it is only available to nationals of countries and regions that are either visa waiver countries or have tax treaties with Japan, which is different from the conditions of Korea and Taiwan. Only 48 countries are eligible to be visa applicants; 25% of the world’s 192 countries are covered [0]
“The most similar existing status is usually used by tourists, does not allow work and allows a maximum stay of just 90 days”
I don’t think that’s correct. A tourist visa doesn’t allow you to work locally but they do not limit working remotely for an overseas company. For example, if you’re on vacation in Japan from the US and an emergency happens at work, you can join a call without risk of deportation.
Authorities won't be running after you, or a digital nomad traveling by bike the country while working on his blog. But those are still violation of the tourist status, they're just too small to be cared about.
It would be another story if you published a movie shot in Japan while on a tourist visa.
Why are they a violation of the tourist status? A tourist is someone who brings money in to the local economy, that’s why tourists are coveted. If a person visits Japan for a week and spends $2000 on a hotel and $1000 on activities, why would the Japanese government change their view of the trip if that tourist was also taking zoom calls from their hotel room?
There’s the belief we all apparently hold that tourism isn’t tourism if you take a laptop, but nobody can evidence such a rule because it’s apparently an implied rule: maybe we can get to the bottom of it by asking why, what explanation / reason would there be for such a rule? Why does taking zoom calls from your hotel room change the nature of your trip?
No, this is the correct interpretation in a lot of countries, you are performing paid work there regardless of who and where the employer is.
Emergencies are all well and good, but turning up at the immigration desk and saying you don’t plan on working when you actually do will lead to trouble in a lot of places.
In what places has it led to trouble for tourists to work remotely in their hotel rooms or Airbnbs? Leaving aside cases when those tourists brought that trouble and scrutiny on themselves through other actions like getting into barfights or shoplifting.
I'm not taking a position on its legality. In most cases that's undefined because the law did not anticipate this situation and it's never been tested in court.
They obviously can't prohibit people from checking emails or taking work calls while on vacation, because that means the end of big-spending tourists.
Nobody has drawn a red line at a magic point along the continuum from one emergency work call during a two-week holiday, to 9 hours a day in a hotel room hunched over a computer. Where would it be, and why does that particular point maximize benefit for the host country?
This is not how the US judicial system works. We are innocent until proven guilty. In the case above, to say it is illegal even though it was not proven violates the above. Also, many “laws” aren’t technically codified but instead have been established by precedent, and no precedent is hard and fast. Technically you could argue both the things you mentioned above in court and win, rendering your actions legal.
There is a difference between de jure and de facto.
Defacto, going 61mph in a 60 is legal practically everywhere. De jure, it's not (the law is on the books).
Same as jaywalking. It's more of a law to pass responsibility in an accident (i.e. if you were jaywalking and got hit by a motor vehicle - you are at fault because of jaywalking. Jaywalking itself is very rarely prosecuted as a standalone thing)
The Temporary Visitor Visa is for activities not exceeding 90 days as follows:
tourism, visiting relatives or friends, recreation, convalescence, attending a conference, participation in unpaid lectures, meetings, amateur athletic meetings or other contests, short business trips (e.g. market surveys, business talks, after sales service for machinery imported into Japan)
This category excludes profit-making operations and paid activities. [1]
Usually, paid work means just that.
The thing of course is that you do remote paid work it is unlikely that anyone will notice, especially if you indeed only stay for a few weeks. Plus if business trips are ok, then I suppose noone will care.
That's implied. If you're working with your tourist visa you're changing the purpose of your stay and thus lying regarding your visa declaration:
> Single-entry short-term stay visa for the purpose of Tourism (for a period of up to 90 days) (Note).
> [...]
> If you wish to visit Japan for other purposes or for a long-term stay, please submit your application to the Japanese Embassy, Consulate General or Consular office with jurisdiction over your place of residence.
Setting aside my other response, a better way to look at it is that you declare your purpose on entry, but you're not the one judging if it's appropriate or not.
We/You can see remote work as not invalidating your claim, but that's just how we feel, not how it will be judged. To your larger point, the rules being mildly fuzzy aren't helping foreigners in general, it's usually more leeway for the authorities to pick and choose.
That's like saying your purpose is enjoying the scenery, because even if you're shooting a new photo book, you put your pleasure above all and taking professional photos while looking at the landscape is just a small detail.
I mean, we can invent a lot of way to present it, it all comes down to how the immigration office interprets it (as far as I know, the only real test is suing them when they ask for the money)
I'm not sure if there's a specific rule that says that explicitly, but you aren't allowed to work if you are in Japan on a tourist visa, and the government's opinion is that this includes remote work for a company outside of japan, so it doesn't really matter that there's no rule saying that explicitly.
That's also the whole reason for potentially introducing this new type of visa; if you were allowed to do remote work on a tourist visa, they wouldn't need to do this.
> I’m asking because I visit Japan on a tourist visa and I have never encountered this rule. I’d like to learn more about it from official sources.
Unfortunately, I don't think this a specific rule which makes it hard to point to a source, but you simply aren't allowed to work in any form if you are in Japan on a tourist visa, and from the government's perspective, this obviously includes remote work.
If you want some specific government opinion in writing saying that remote work is illegal under tourist visas under current law, after the government holds public comment, it usually publishes an interim report compiling the comments it has received along with analysis, and I imagine that in this case the report will note this, but right now I can't find an official document stating this. However, googling it, there are various opinions from law firms agreeing that it is illegal.
There is also no reason you would have "encountered" this because the only way you would be able to encounter it is if you somehow made the government aware that you were illegally working remotely and they deported you.
It's basically impossible for them to tell if you are working remotely though, so it's almost a moot point in most cases unless you specifically go out of your way to make the government aware.
> you simply aren't allowed to work in any form if you are in Japan on a tourist visa
You will never get the Japanese government to say this, if "any form" includes incidental remote work. And "incidental" is undefined and they aren't going to want to be pinned down on that either.
IANAL, but it's written in Immigration Act Article 19, Paragraph 1, No 2 (入管法19条１項２号)[1]. Here's a translation from Japanese Law Translation[2]^1
> Article 19 (1) Any foreign national who is a resident under a status of residence listed in the left-hand column of Appended Table I shall not engage in the activities set forth in the following items, with regard to the categories identified therein, except for cases where he/she engages in them with permission as set forth in paragraph (2) of this Article.
> (ii) A foreign national who is a resident with a status of residence listed in the left-hand column of Appended Tables I (3) and I (4): activities related to the management of a business involving income or activities for which he/she receives remuneration.
The quoted "Appended Table I (3)" (別表第一の三) says:
> Temporary Visitor
> Sightseeing, recreation, sports, visiting relatives, inspection tours, participating in lectures or meetings, business contact or other similar activities during a short stay in Japan.
None of this says "within Japan", which from my understanding is that it allows for the maximum interpretation of the law, i.e. "involving income or activities for which he/she receives remuneration [from anywhere]" with the noted activities in Appendix Table being the exception.
Either way, it depends on how immigration interpret the law.
When you get to the passport control desk and they ask you “business or pleasure”, you answer “business” and then depending on the arrangements between your home country and the country you’re entering they may need to you show them a business visa.
Well, it is clear that the understanding of Japan's government regarding working with a tourist visa is different than that and that it indeed didn't allow working even if remotely for an overseas company.
Otherwise, they wouldn't hassle themselves to introduce a new kind of Visa that is geared towards exactly this kind of situation.
A digital nomad visa serves an important purpose: it allows someone to stay in the country longer than as a tourist. The existence of a digital nomad visa bolsters the understanding that digital nomads are allowed to use a tourist visa.
A working visa is very difficult to get in most countries and requires local sponsorship because of the risk to the local economy — you’re potentially taking a local job from local people. Tourist visas are easy to get because there’s no risk: a tourist arrives, spends money, leaves. A digital nomad is a tourist by every measure.
The reason tourist visas are short is to ensure people don’t move to the country without permission. A digital nomad doesn’t present a risk to the local economy so bumping their length of stay is safe for the local economy, hence, digital nomad visas.
> you can join a call without risk of deportation.
Is that a definite interpretation of the law or just an in-practice one? I have had friends have issues are borders with this, albeit not with Japan. That countries feel the need to clarify this the world over tells me that this isn't totally settled.
This is what happens in practice, but in theory you're not supposed to live and work from somewhere without the appropriate visa. All German residents are expected to have a residence permit (if non-EU) and to pay taxes in Germany.
Depends on your definition of tourist. If you are there for legitimate business within that country that is obviously a big no-no.
If you are a tourist who works for a foreign company while visiting a country, well I don't know a single person who has been actually deported for this. I know it can happen, but most places seem to not care much, and mostly care you're spending your money in their country.
I am a digital nomad myself for about 1/2 every year so I do have my biases though.
I agree that people are really unlikely to be deported for this, but I'm not sure that countries would treat you favorably if you walked up to immigration and said "I'm here to work in your country on a tourist visa, but don't worry because I'm just working remotely for a foreign company."
I think a big part of this is that it's basically impossible to find digital nomads. How would a country know if you're in a hotel room or coffee shop working on your laptop? If you don't tell anyone what you're doing, they aren't going to know.
Digital nomads also don't trigger the same "taking a job that a local could have" fear that drives a lot of immigration policies. As you note, you're just a person in that country spending money. However, you're also probably not paying taxes. I think there's a bit of a tension there. On the one hand, you're bringing in foreign money. On the other hand, you're using services just as a resident would and not paying all the taxes (you are likely paying some taxes like sales/VAT).
Ultimately, I think a big part is that countries haven't figured out what to think of digital nomads. Heck, companies haven't figured out how to feel about them. Companies still haven't settled on whether remote workers should be paid less if they move to a cheaper location.
Is it? I know that legally they could deport you so its not a great idea, but how often does someone actually get deported for doing remote work while spending a few months in another country?
Literally never. This topic is one of those things that draws resentful ruleboys out of the woodwork to preach about something they have no firsthand knowledge of because none exists.
Seriously, “ruleboys” is a good one or what I thought of as “hall pass monitor”. I work remotely and have worked remotely from several countries, not once has it been an issue. I just don’t walk up to the customs agent and naïvely say “oh hi, just an FYI that I plan to work remotely for this month from your beautiful country”.
No, I think people are missing the wood for the trees here.
The fact that these visas are becoming available means that governments are wising up to the fact that people have been working remotely on tourist visas and want in on it. They want to be able to charge for it, or set a limit on who can do it, or tax it.
Now that these visas exist, and immigration officers know that, it’s only obvious that they’ll start to ask ‘tourists’ if they plan on working remotely or not. You can lie all you want, but if they find evidence (two laptops, notebooks, equipment) then good luck.
I think you're confusing their goal. It's not that they have a problem with people working remotely on tourist visas, it's that they want them to do it for longer as it brings economic benefit to the country.
If they disliked the idea they wouldn't be creating new visas for the purpose, since that only makes it more prevalent and normalized.
There's digital nomads everywhere, and it's not hard to do legally under tourist visas. I know for a fact there are FAANG employees who do it today -- companies who would certainly shut that down if it was illegal.
There are legal gotchas and grey areas. I would guess the Japan visa is aimed at clarifying the matter for long stays, because there's certainly no shortage of digital nomads in Japan.
During COVID big companies made a huge deal about working internationally. They have to because it affect employees taxes and employer immigration laws.
You can get away with a lot by being sneaky, but the companies are strongly officially opposed to it.
> I know for a fact there are FAANG employees that do it today.
The fact that many companies are risk-averse and don't allow it doesn't mean it's not legal. Like I said, at least one FAANG (maybe more) is fine with its employees working remote internationally if they follow the rules.
Uh huh, and where are these places? I've worked remotely from literally a hundred countries over the past twenty years and can count on one hand the number of such cases I've even heard of.
Nobody gives a shit, as long as you're not staying long enough to be a tax resident and you're not making trouble.
The one famous incident, the 2014 Chiang Mai raid, came about because the authorities didn't know what a co-working space is, and thought that the foreigners were hired by the property owner to work there. None of them were deported for that.
180 days doesn't even make one a Japanese tax resident. In Dubai one can get a 1-year digital nomad visa for $300 with tax residency and/or even 5/10-year Golden Visa with tax residency and the need to spend only a few months there.
...or nice warm winters. Nobody wants to be there between June-September, but outside that it's much better than suffering in rainy gloomy Scotland or another unfortunate European country. And your tax is 0% as a bonus. There is also Andorra with 10% tax but it can get ugly during autumn/winter there as well.
I don't mean the weather. I mean the horrendous 'bling' culture, complete car dependency that would make even LA blush and everything that goes along with it. While Dubai is a massive impressive display of what humanity can do so quickly, the place gives me the shudders. Obviously YMMV but it is not comparable to Japan.
Yeah, it's different, in many ways Dubai is what future looks like these days whereas Japan looks like what future looked like in the 80s. One can isolate oneself from the bling culture by staying in the Internet City or similar zones where there are mostly geeks around and just explore engineering marvels.
If you haven’t run into it, the keyword you're looking for is "world schooling". I have some friends who home school and they decided to travel while doing it. They move to a location for a few months and use a "world school" in the new location. The school is global and has a ton of branches in different countries so there is continuity in philosophy and assessment and whether the kids are curriculum-wise.
I've done remote work from another country, with kids, but that was because my spouse's job placed her there for a multi-year assignment. So it was a longer placement and her work coordinated and paid for a private school.
For me it worked OK. I did remote contract work and was able to figure out work authorization. The cost of living was lower so double taxation wasn't a big deal. The timezone difference was the biggest hurdle, I burned out doing late zoom calls; had the difference been smaller I suspect it would have been even easier.
Changing schools and big moves is hard on kids. No way around that, certainly one of my regrets from that time. However their interest in other cultures and especially languages blossomed. For them it was mostly just an adventure we took. So different from life when I grew up.
I would assume the kids would go to private schools.
Probably necessary since they're traveling so much that they need to follow a foreign curriculum or an international one like IB.
I was an expat child that moved many times in my childhood. The broken connections of each move hurt me more than any 'new experience'. I wouldn't recommend it, imo social stability is very important.
People seem to underestimate how limiting tourist visas actually are.
Imagine you sell digital products automated or something like that. You would have to literally shut your website down if you go somewhere on a tourist visa so you don't accidently make money.
You might think there are exceptions, but no there usually aren't.
And now imagine you actually live from a digital business you run yourself. You literally can't travel on a tourist visa.
I can't legally leave the EU, more or less, as I have no control when and where I earn money. I also wouldn't travel so far for just a month or two so this is really speaking to me :)
That’s not true. The jurisdiction that your business operates in doesn’t change depending on where you’re located. If you’re running a business without a business entity (why?) then you can use a merchant of record service (like Paddle) which will serve that role for you.
Salary workers will still receive their paycheck even while on travel/holiday/vacation. Are they violating tourist visa restrictions? If a person checks their work email while on a tourist visa?
Honestly I just think you and some others get too stuck on specific rules.
There are thousands of people who run digital companies and travel all the time, including people who literally travel full-time as digital nomads with zero issues whatsoever.
I can almost guarantee you that if you left the EU and "accidentally" made money via your website you would have no trouble coming and going given that I literally know and have met people all over outside of the EU, who are from the EU and do exactly this.
Even in just this past week I've met like 3 people from the EU travelling full-time who run their own bussiness online while I'm located here in South America.
I wouldn't even get hung up on the website part. Pretty much any business traveler is making money when they're traveling and may even be doing business-y things like going to a conference or meeting with customers. Some countries require a special business visa for that but many/most don't and mostly don't give you a long precise list of what you can and can't do.
In fact for any visa outside of Europe I had so far I signed a long precise list of things I can and can't do. That's what all the small text is about.
China I definitely needed a business visa to go to a conference. Malaysia was some sort of visa on arrival thing. Indonesia I don't remember but it wasn't something I had to get ahead of time and that was business. Japan I don't need a visa from the US nor Singapore; ditto for Europe.
It's entirely possible if I needed a visa for some of the countries I've been to, I might have needed a business visa of some sort for customer meetings etc. But I've very rarely needed to get a visa for countries I've traveled to.
Visa on arrival forms have a reference to a URL or something attached and mention that you acknowledge their visa rules by applying for a visa. It's like a prechecked privacy policy checkbox.
It was probably actually Indonesia I had a visa on arrival for. And they explicitly allow business meetings and attending events--which is pretty much the norm for most (but not all) countries whether they say so explicitly or not.
The US does seem to have a different visa for temporary business activities.
You can (and probably should) incorporate your business. Then you write yourself an employment contract and give yourself vacation whenever you want to travel.
The bigger issue is that actually having a vacation where you don't work is unrealistic if you run a business by yourself, but is what the letter of the law demands for most tourist visas.
Can you point to a specific article of the law from a country that states that you cannot work on your business registered in your home country, while visiting that particular country?
These rules and laws esp. with regards to visas and immigration are not about the rules themselves. They're a proxy for government to be able to control the types of people they think benefit their society (and whether or not to let them in the country). If you fit within those concepts of what is deemed acceptable, no one will bother you.
Are you a rich, white professional class person with a first-world passport? You have signalled that no one needs to bother with you. Things like visa regulations will be applied less strictly.
If you are from the wrong country or you are the wrong skin tone, your chances of having a bad time are much higher.
This applies not only to Japan, or countries like Thailand or Mexico, but also to the USA and Europe equally.
I mean sure, but the chances of that ever being enforced are close to 0. I'm a full time digital nomad for over a year in various latin american countries, always on tourist visas. Nobody notices or cares.
The only time I ever had an issue is when entering the united states, the immigration department gave me a grilling because my passport showed that I was clearly a nomad and they expected me to be working online.
The people in the raid got jailed over night as far as I remember. Thailand was basically just noticing this trend and reacting, afaik this hasn't happened again.
About the visas people just were really stupid to be honest about their income (or lack of)
These "digital nomads" who would travel to Japan for work+sightseeing aren't taking local jobs and don't have a Japanese bank account.
Does Japan want to tax income produced within its borders, regardless of where one is actually a tax resident? Most countries I'm aware of treat people as tax residents if they reside there for more than 180 days a year.
Japan is a country that is expensive to live in. Having minimum salary requirements already filters out the type of 'digital nomad' who would otherwise become a burden on society or those who merely seek immigration from Africa or South Asia under the disguise of the 'digital nomad'.
$68k about the median household income in the USA - and higher than the median in a lot of states. One could live a comfortable life in many parts of the USA for that salary.
Particularly if you’re not living in Tokyo, Fukuoka for instance is significantly cheaper despite also being a densely populated city with the usual amenities.
They don't want pretenders. They want people who are going to be productive and bring something to the country. They're not looking for "backpackers," they're looking for well paid professionals who will spend money and also conform better (these people would hire people to do paperwork, translate, etc., rather than drain local resources.)
People may not agree with the above, but that's what they want, and I can't blame them for wanting good for their country.
EDIT - you changed "poser" to "pretender" which was a small improvement. It's polite to make it clear that you've edited a comment if someone has replied.
Japan legislature seems to spend a lot of time passing these kind of laws that only ever affect a few people. But with some of the other ones after a few years of no one using the residency statuses, they loosened up the requirement a bit.
Well, the digital nomad doesn't spend a lot of money. Some on accommodation, some for internet, some for food, and that's it. He spends his time remote working on his laptop. His income is paid offshore.
Apart from the tourist aspect of it, the point of a digital nomad is to save money on rent, food and taxes, not to spend all your money in a foreign country.
Of course, a business hub, or a technological hub can attract digital nomads punctually, even if accommodations are more expensive.
Now Japan has a problem with its age pyramid and desertification of its country side. So it should be possible to attract digital nomad for longer and cheaper stays, even if they don't have a lot of money (to spend in Japan), at least that's good for the young body count, and perhaps they'd eventually fixate and have families. But again, this wouldn't be a six-month thing, they would have to add more incentive (free or $1-house in the countryside with minimal occupancy, good internet connection (I don't know if Japan has 100% territory fiber coverage) (that said nowadays there's Starlink), etc.
I would have thought that the point of spending 6 months in Japan was to experience Japan in a deeper and more relaxed way than a short-ish trip as a tourist.
Spending money on living expenses, including rent, and touristy stuff is indeed spending money in the country. And if you are well paid then that may be more than the average local: the threshold for this visa is $68k while the average annual pay in Japan is apparently $41-45k.
How is everyone reading this as me saying "no money"? You can have significantly less than $58k provable income and live very nicely while travelling. Is this some silicon valley bubble thing?
"No money" is obviously a figure of speech. I rephrase: Why would they want people with "significantly less than 58k/68k provable income"?
"Digital nomad" can encompass many and any thing. It seems sensible to target higher earners if they can. It's not about how nicely you think you can live, it's about the benefits a country seeks in letting foreigners in.
Totally. They should allow anyone, even those with no income, to come to their country and use their services for nothing in return. We can see how well that's worked in the US.
I've often seen suggested in forums that tourist visas forbid any kind of work while visiting a country. I've yet to see a single article of the law that actually points to this. So, I'm inclined to think that when people repeat this, they actually haven't checked. I have looked at the clauses on many tourist visas, as given to me by various consulates, and seen no evidence of this new interpretation. A tourist visa often forbids working or doing any kind of local business, other than volunteering and the likes (i.e. taking a local job, selling stuff locally, meeting with local businesses, etc). That this new interpretation coincides with the emergence of nomad visas just tells me that nomads have been questioning their appeal and it's been suggested that they might be infringing some law, if they keep using tourist visas instead.
Think of the ramifications of trying to regulate all the fuzzy definitions of what constitutes "work". What about someone writing their memoir? What about any kind of opus you're working on while on vacation (electronics, code, writing, etc)? What about needing to manage your business at home for an hour everyday? What about being on-call for work emergencies? What about meetings? Such a visa would easily make anyone an outlaw, which many people think is a non-issue, because the country doesn't enforce it, but is actually a big deal.
Visa rules were typically set up at a time when there was no such thing as remote work to speak of. When they mention working, they don't make any distinction between remote or local work.
For example, a US B-2 visitor visa allows "tourism" and also specific business purposes such as "consult with business associates" or "attend a conference". What is prohibited is simply "employment", without making any distinction between remote or local employment. Source: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-...
"Employment" on that list is among other items of "Not permitted travel purposes" that hint at an obvious implied context for the said purposes, i.e. the United States. You are not allowed to visit the United States for the purpose of employment while on a visitor's visa. A digital nomad typically is already employed and doesn't visit countries for that purpose.
Having traveled to the US a number of times and been asked by border agents, I've explained that although employment not being the purpose of my visit, I often work on my computer for my own business, in my own country. After a brief exchange to clarify that my activities in no way involved US businesses or clients, I was cleared. I agree with you that the rule might seem fuzzy, but based on the questions asked, the intent has never been.
In the many years that I've traveled, it's historically been the same in any countries that I've visited. Even the ones where it's currently suggested that the issue might be blurrier (coincidentally after they start issuing nomad visas). Meanwhile, no one can tell you specifically what exactly constitutes a "digital nomad" and what makes them "not a tourist". I think it's unfortunate that instead of asking for more clarity from regulators, travelers are playing along by repeating the suggested tropes.
If you are open in your visa application about what you're going to be doing, then it's obviously all above the board. However, somehow I got the impression that many digital nomads would rather not to mention their work to any officials, and present themselves as just normal tourists. An intentionally misleading visa application can be used as grounds for revoking the visa even if the actual activities were legal.
I think within 10 years this is also needed in Europe. Back in 2000 1 in 5 eligible for working were pensioned. Now its 1 in the 3. This mumber only gets worse.
Japan is a few years ahead. But population decline in a growth based economy is not good. So yeah. Attrack the right people is what needs to happen. Imho still ducktape on the original issue.
I spent 1 month around Kyoto's UNESCO sites 10 years ago while working remotely for a company in the US and am not sure I'd want to spend whole 6 months in Japan when there are so many interesting places all around the world. One needed to know basic Japanese as very few people spoke English, finding an accommodation was a chore as AirBnB was non-existing and hotels with unlimited fast WiFi scarce and one had to book an apartment in some of their temporary housings months in advance. Overall a nice and unique country though people looked overworked (young people complaining about working 996 lifestyles) and isolated from foreigners, similar to Germans (except their children that always wanted to practice Engrish with anyone not looking Japanese).
I think it depends what you’re looking for. You won’t go and find friends in a Japanese bar, like you could in some parts of US or LATAM. But I don’t think I’ve seen more “quiet slice of life” happening while strolling around Japan, Taiwan or Hong Kong. If you’re into people watching, it’s hard to beat.
Especially in some parts of Japan, their obsessions with culture and heritage is very cool. Something like this is always cute to encounter, and it’s weird cause I thought it’s rare up until I visited Japan - https://x.com/kiyotoshi_y/status/1179243144363331585. That being said, I have Latino friends who hated those parts of Asia because they need “hot blooded friendliness culture”. Which is totally cool, to each their own!
Sure, I just remember on my last day in Japan I actually felt sadness that I didn't find whatever I was looking for, despite seeing like 15 UNESCO World Heritage sites, but essentially didn't make any lasting connection on a personal level with anyone due to being unable to break the formal shell of anyone. Total opposite to e.g. Brazil when one could make friends in 5 minutes and those folks remembered you for years.
To each their own - I think its rather crass to castigate a whole country because your own travel didn't find whatever deeper level bond you were searching for.
I for one am suspect at being able make a good friend that lasts forever in 5 minutes. That sounds more like power dynamics in that you had something to offer them then some kind of mutual friendship based on shared interests. That said to each their own.
Maybe. But prior to visiting Japan I actually studied Japanese for 5 years and after visiting it I stopped and quickly forgot whatever I learned as I simply didn't have any reason to as whatever I wanted to find wasn't there (I guess I was looking for a sci-fi wonderland full of robots or something, instead found tired uninterested people everywhere). Wrt Brazil folks, there was no power dynamics between us, they didn't see any $ from me as they were from fairly well-off families, just the society was much more open than the Japanese one. It felt more like Germany where colleagues working at the same desk together for 20 years still use formal polite speech to address each other.
Did you study the culture of Japan or the language? And yes it does sound like you were hoping for some kind of extraordinary event which probably made it all the more unlikely that you were going to find that travel nirvana.
Whereas I am guessing you had no expectation in Brazil and were pleasantly surprised. I'm sorry you didn't have a good experience though I stand by my statement to each their own. Tough to compare societies/populations/cultures based on a sample size of one.
Tourists expecting to form lasting connections with locals always made me laugh. How deep can these connections be if you're only staying for a month? Why would a local invest in a 'lasting' connection that's just for a month?
What's the end-game with these 'digital nomad' VISA's several countries are beginning to offer? Is it basically just 'live here for a few months like a tourist' or is there some pathway to permanent residence/citizenship?
I don't see how this is worth it given the differences from the tourist visa. Sure it's a "legal" way to work while you're in the country, but the difficulties that already exist is going to make it not worth it. It's hard finding longer-term housing in Japan as a foreigner, much less doing banking. While it might be a nice springboard to find a job locally, the remote types that meet the income requirements are going to make much more working in the US, so why give that up? If it was at least a year, then it might be worth it. If it also had the option to extend it without having to leave, then it would be very attractive.
No, this one doesn’t come with a residency card. Therefore, you won’t get an Individual Number, and you won’t get My Number Card or the ability to open a bank account. Japan is very strict on bank account opening and has made it illegal to keep them beyond your residency or to sell them for this reason.
If you rent for short term (6 months), monthly mansions don't need bank accounts or proof of residency. It costs about 50% more than you'd pay for long term but you don't have to pay reikin (key money you don't get back), shikikin (deposit for damages).
I have a quick question, maybe someone can help. They talk about a yearly income of 10 million Yen, so roughly 70 000 US$.
Where i live i pay pretty high income tax. Do these 10 million Yen refer to the money that actually ends up on my bank account, or the amount before tax and health insurance is deducted?
Because if they take the amount of money, before i pay tax, it would work, otherwise i am not even close.
I have not found any information concerning this, did i miss something?
This already exists: visit twice in one year on a tourist visa, and don't loudly yell out your hotel window "hey immigration - I'm doing work in here!".
And that's better because not of those income or insurance criteria apply.
So just some empty "look at us we're doing something (not really)" fluff.
It is difficult even getting a gym membership (yes, there are alternative such as pay-as-you-go at ward gyms) without a bank account. And if you are from a country such as the USA, obtaining a bank account even with a residency (zairyu) card is cumbersome on account of FATCA (some banks will even outright reject Americans unless they are on a corporate expat package or are working for a Japanese company which "takes care of things" for them).
These hurdles, along with many others, make Japan a difficult proposition for typical nomads.
Show up in a new country...
>Let me rent a place
No zairyu? See ya! (yes, there are sharehouses and places which allow foreigners for medium to long term stays, as well as expensive corporate housing type places, but you are limited to options such as these)
>That sucks. Well, let me get a local phone number because that's required for some services
No zairyu? See ya! (yes, there are now more MVNOs and services which will allow foreigners to get temporary Japanese numbers but at a higher cost)
>Alright, what a frustrating day, I'll go to the gym, and I'll bring a wad of cash to pay for my first 3 months membership until I get everything set up
No bank account? See ya!
Are these things surmountable? Of course. But even for foreigners who speak Japanese decently well (such as N2 and above, though N4 is still probably more than enough to navigate basic bureaucratic procedures), navigating these almost circular tasks is not any easier. Are these things that a nomad wants to deal with? lol, *highly* doubtful. Even for foreigners who can speak Japanese and who are studying in Japan or have a job at a Japanese company, there are many hurdles that take time to set up to get fully "situated" there.
Japan is not structured for short term knowledge workers. Heck, it is not structured for even most foreigners (enjoy being stopped on your bicycle by police for the sole reason that you do not look Japanese). Every year, the Japanese government comes out with new initiatives to attract knowledge workers, from the Fukuoka startup zone to the "blue collar labourer visa" to the "PhD visa". Yet they can never even come close to meeting quotas, because the hidden requirements of these visas, combined with friction/hurdles that still exist upon arrival, render all these attempts stillborn. These initiatives are done such that the Japanese government and government-controlled press can say "Look, we're trying!", without doing anything substantive.
Now, Japan *is* structured for short term labourers from Southeast Asia and countries like Nepal, but poor conditions in factory dormitories and having your passport seized upon arrival are not exactly the types of jobs that HN readers have in mind.
Don't get me wrong, Japan is a beautiful country to visit, with a rich history and culture. And if you are a foreign expat on a nice package, there is good money to be made. Students on semesters or years abroad? Probably fun, as well! But as a short term digital nomad? That's a huge ask. So many barriers that do not exist nearly anywhere else in the world for your typical digital nomad reader here. If you want to see Japan, it is probably best to just travel as a tourist. [Side note: even for long term foreign workers in Japan, the new laws passed in 2015/2016 are brutal for foreign income, high taxes on global assets, which caused a bit of an exodus of highly-paid foreign expats. Those taxes hit after 5 years spent in Japan as a resident, so your time is limited to 4.99 years if you want to avoid them. Not relevant to short term digital nomads, but just pointing out that, if anything, Japan is increasingly unfriendly to skilled foreign workers, not that other way around. There are *always* massive strings attached when it comes to "friendly" initiatives from the Japanese government.]
why are cities trying to attract nomads? They are almost by definition doing location arbitrage, thus paying less in both their country of origin and country of destination.
The answer is simple - money. Digital nomads typically don't take jobs from local residents, they on average have more and are willing to spend more money than the typical local resident, and additionally the country has no responsibility to provide social benefits to a digital nomad and thus they are low cost.
Additionally while digital nomads may sometimes be ignorant of local culture/tradition and that can be somewhat annoying, they typically don't cause problems when it comes to crime.
Now there are legitimate concerns with respect to housing with things like AirBNB's/under the table housing arrangements and causing the housing prices to increase, but while that is an issue to a local resident it is actually seen as a positive to the city itself when it comes to the economy.
They spend money and leave. They have a very small negative footprint (excluding the housing market), and require almost no obligations from the host country, but spend money locally.
I think this would be very appealing if it was a 1 year visa at minimum, but comparable visas (e.g., the Taiwan Gold Card) are up to 3 years. I'm not terribly upset at the lack of Individual Number or Residence Card, but the length is definitely something that makes it unappealing except in the most nomad-of-nomad situations.
Apparently they'll be opening it for public comments in the second half of February. They said that they based the 6 month time period on questions they asked foreigners about how long they would want to stay -- so maybe this is the time to push for a longer period of time.