Starting up a business in Japan 2

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If you want to do a business like restaurant that requires a certain amount of money　(from several million yen to several thousand yen) to get your business started, you have to do things below under the uncertain conditions.

・renting a store building

・have interior finish work

・employing chefs etc.

Generally, you make an application to the Immigration Bureau for the status of residence after being ready to open your business. This means that you would take a big risk, if you fail to get the status of residence.

Even if you get the status of residence successfully in your initial attempt, it does not mean that everything goes well.

In many cases, you have to renew your status of residence every 1 to 3 years.

Of course, there are certain criteria on renewal of the residence status, and if you don’t meet these requirements, you will be forced to leave Japan.

Thus, the status of residence is indispensable to foreigners who want to start up a business in Japan.

As I explained up to here, I hope that you already have understood that you should be careful about the residence status.

The difficulty of understanding the residence status stems from the point where all foreigners aren’t under the same situations and conditions.

What I mean is:

If a person A wants to start a business in Japan, A has to get the status of residence called “Investor/Business Manager” but if a person B wants to do the same thing, B can start a business without any application to the Immigration Bureau like Japanese people.

If there is a person who has to change the status of residence wants to start a business, it doesn’t always mean that he or she has to get “Investor/Business Manager” status.

In some cases, you can get your business started easier and quicker by changing your status of residence into another one than getting “Investor/Business Manager” status.

In general, we have a tendency to think that starting up a business in Japan equals to getting “Investor/Business Manager” status.

But, before taking the action, you have to understand your situations totally and clearly, and you also have to know whether you are really required to get “Investor/Business Manager” status.

Therefore, you have to understand the outline for Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, and also it is essential to understand status of residence system of Japan.

So, if you need some help to understand these things, I suggest you go to the Immigration Bureau or specialists like immigration lawyer(行政書士, Gyosei-shoshi）for some advice.

If you contact me about this issue, of course, I will help you as much as I can.

Thank you.

Solicitor Hitoshi Oishi (司法書士・行政書士　大石人士）

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