Question

THE COUNTRY is JAPAN

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*Should a company operate a business in this country? Why or why not?

Answer 1

It isn't compulsory to have Japanese workers. Neither have any employees. You can start a company without any staff other than yourself and still get a business investor visa. That being said, it is definitely recommended to have a Japanese person working with you, particularly if your Japanese is not at level N1 or N2. First, if you don't need an investor visa because you have another form of visa (spouse, children, work), you can open a business at very low cost. But even if you need a business investor visa, you're only expected to "invest" (not pay) 5,000,000 JPY, which is less than 50,000 USD at the current exchange rate.

The term "invest" means 5,000,000 JPYs will come into your Japanese bank account from abroad so that the government can be assured that you are bringing in international money. Such money will be used to pay maintenance costs for the office, wages for staff or anything else you may need, money you will need to run your company first.

In Japanese the bureaucracy is everything. Like other Asian countries like Singapore and Hong Kong, where paperwork is in English, in Japan, you need to learn the language to do it yourself. Even for those with a Japanese N1 rank, navigating could still be extremely difficult for you. It takes a long time to understand entrepreneurial society in Japan. It is a completely different game compared to what you are used to in your country. And even though you've been popular with a product that works in your country it doesn't mean it's going to do the same thing in Japan. The Japanese list of failing companies is massive.