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Japan eyes startup visa program

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: Japan eyes startup visa program

#121

Post by neya »

Just curious, anyone knows what's the advantage of starting up in Japan over say, Singapore? I know Singapore is predominantly English-speaking, you get all kinds of food and the laws are friendly to startups as well.

If I'm an English speaker in Japan, there is a huge language barrier, on top of which there are also other minor nuances to be paid attention to such as: high rent (depends on your area), finding Non-Japanese food and so forth.

Anyone with insights into the contrasts between both these countries, would love to hear :)

Re: Japan eyes startup visa program

#122

Post by glandium »

laurieg wrote: post #112
ekianjo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Japan's immigration system seems heavily set up to encourage young people to come, work and then leave. Indeed, even though you have to pay all taxes like a local when you live in Japan, you can never benefit from stuff like pensions if you ever want to retire there.

This is not true. If you have permanent residence you can retire in Japan and claim the National Pension if you paid in for enough years. In fact, recently the number of years of payment required was reduced from 25 to 10.

There are also bilateral agreements between Japan and other countries regarding pension, and how the years you paid in both can cumulate.

Re: Japan eyes startup visa program

#123

Post by GuiA »

staunch wrote: post #61
GuiA wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are absolutely cultural differences at play. I wouldn’t leave my laptop on a table in a coffee shop in NYC for even one second, whereas I’ve done it in Tokyo. But with all that said, I have friends who’ve had shit stolen in Tokyo, or been assaulted by a drunk guy, etc. So I stand by my original point - saying that Japanese people are “the most honest and courteous in the world” is naïveté at best, and exot…

In which major European city could you leave your laptop or purse on a table while you use the bathroom? Japan is incredibly different from Europe and America in thousands of important ways. The idea that it's even similar is absurd. There's very few comparisons you can even make, beyond the very superficial. Everything is different, from childbirth, children, school, dating, food, holidays, marriage, death, etc. You…

You seem to be missing the point.

I am not saying that food or dating in Japan is the same as Europe (although I am not sure how you think childbirth works, I can assure you that the core of the childbirth experience is quite the same across humanity).

What I am saying is that when you compare things that are actually comparable - graduation rates, unemployment, drug abuse, illiteracy, child vaccination, etc - Japan is in many cases more clustered with the leading European countries than the US is.

Furthermore, when it comes to things like sexual assault, Japan is far behind.

On this basis, it is completely ridiculous to claim that Japanese people are the “most courteous and honest in the world”, unless your definition of a honorable society includes one where most women get groped on the subway as teenagers.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/sexual-ass...

Re: Japan eyes startup visa program

#124

Post by laurieg »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #104
laurieg wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular working visas and the points system are completely seperate systems. It is true that if you have enough points on the highly skilled professional visa you can get permanent residence (PR) in only one year. On a regular work visa you must have 10 years consecutive residence in Japan and "must hold the longest visa type available to you (for these purposes longest means 3 or 5 years)" (my rough translation). I…

Hey do you have any links for the points system vs the work visa systems, that are in english for people that might be interested? Even japanese would be helpful as well. Also, +1 for consulting with immigration lawyers. I employ/consult with one as well, and that's about the best information you can get, it's well worth the money (and usually the consultation is free) -- they're very unlikely to get the paperwork/pr…

The immigration bureau has an English page for the highly skilled professional visa: http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/newimmiact_3/en/

The English page for immigration has lots of information, but it is quite vague and not wonderfully organized.

Re: Japan eyes startup visa program

#125

Post by mistermann »

jswizzy wrote: post #58

Good luck with that. I would advise against it having been stationed in Japan, in Yokosuka, on the first Nuclear vessel forward deployed ever. It's an awesome place for tourists but it will never be a place that anyone who is not 100% Japanese can call home. You will always be an outside over there.

Why can't you be an outsider and still consider Japan home? To me, the mild (at least in bigger cities) racism and exclusion you experience is more than made up for the politeness and social order one enjoys in exchange.

Re: Japan eyes startup visa program

#126

Post by whatyoucantsay »

Larrikin wrote: post #68
whatyoucantsay wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The British Empire did it successfully for centuries. These days, it doesn't even take an army. Anglophone chauvinism is actually growing in many ways. In another generation or so even Japan will have a sizable expat class that stops bothering to learn the local language.

Anecdotally from living there for a few years, it was way more common to meet older expats living there with little to no Japanese than it was to meet younger expats, so long as they weren't totally brand new. There's quite a few people who went there during the bubble period that seem proud of the fact that ordering a beer is the extent of their Japanese despite living there for years. Its much easier to learn the l…

I actually agree with your point of view, too. It is getting easier to learn languages and the number of resources only grow.

There are two simultaneous trends. On the one hand the number of people who expect people everywhere to accommodate them in English is increasing. Their ability to remain in an English bubble is stronger than ever, thanks to Netflix, Google Maps, Spotify and online news sites. On the other hand, those who are motivated to learn are making more progress than ever before and they can get very, very far before moving abroad.

We have the same trend with computer literacy. There is a generation of people who have grown up with impenetrable walled garden mobile devices and would be completely lost on a command line. There's also a subset of that generation who has learned more about computing through MOOCs, Github and YouTube than their parents learned over decades of practice that early PCs essentially forced upon users.

Re: Japan eyes startup visa program

#127

Post by codedokode »

selectodude wrote: post #115
pwim wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Tokyo it is possible to get a job as a software developer without speaking Japanese. After living here a couple years someone decides they like life here, but want to run their own business. Maybe they want to run a SaaS or something that targets a global audience. For visa purposes, they need a Japanese company. By this time they’ve maybe picked up up some basic Japanese but aren’t fluent. Becoming fluent in a la…

Especially in Japan. I don't think it's really possible for a native English speaker to ever become 100 percent proficient in Japanese.

Why is that? Except for Kanji, Japanese doesn't look like a difficult language because it doesn't have genders and inflections.

Re: Japan eyes startup visa program

#128

Post by abhinavkulkarni »

patio11 wrote: post #102
laurieg wrote: post #92

Japan's immigration system seems heavily set up to encourage young people to come, work and then leave. This startup visa is good for getting a toe-hold on Japan but only targets people out of country. If you live in Japan already (so you might already speak the language and have helpful local knowledge) there aren't any great paths to starting a business without permanent residency. You can't start a side business o…

You can't start a side business on a regular work visa. You know YC's question "How have you ever hacked a non-technical system?" This is my answer to it. You can start a side business on a regular work visa if the character of your business matches your status of residence and you don't intensify the business to the point where it is undeniable that it is a business as opposed to employment, e.g. by hiring full-time…

> You can't start a side business on a regular work visa.

You can't do that on an H1-B either.

Re: Japan eyes startup visa program

#129

Post by mistermann »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #100
Keyframe wrote: post #22

Wait, what are the benefits apart from 'we let you stay here and do your business and here are some lawyers and maybe a good word here and there'? This is absurd.

I've noted this in a different comment, but Japan is very easy to live in. Japan's greatest strength and it's greatest weakness is that just about everyone in the society is in the same "lane" . This means you get a bunch of good and bad characteristics in the vast majority of the population -- politeness-by-default, general honesty, intense almost blinding nationalism -- it's a mixed bag. Also, if you're interested…

> Japan's greatest strength and it's greatest weakness is that just about everyone in the society is in the same "lane". This means you get a bunch of good and bad characteristics in the vast majority of the population.

I've never heard it described this way before, it makes a lot of sense.

Re: Japan eyes startup visa program

#130

Post by azernik »

drieddust wrote: post #114
laurieg wrote: post #92

Japan's immigration system seems heavily set up to encourage young people to come, work and then leave. This startup visa is good for getting a toe-hold on Japan but only targets people out of country. If you live in Japan already (so you might already speak the language and have helpful local knowledge) there aren't any great paths to starting a business without permanent residency. You can't start a side business o…

That's not just Japan. UK is another example of such behaviour. They killed HSMP (Highly Skilled Migrants Program ) in the name of curbing immigration. But at the same time allowed companies to transfer employees to UK for up to 5 years. So in my view they are no better. Guess what the very problem it was supposed to solved still exists and immigration is increasing. They are just not getting Highly Skilled immigrant…

What's different about Japan is that this is just about the only way to immigrate; Western countries typically have skilled guest worker programs in addition to more general immigration.
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