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How and why I built Japan Dev

japan-dev.com

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Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#131

Post by etdev »

Panther34543 wrote: post #118

Considering cost of living, what salary would someone need to maintain a similar lifestyle as a senior engineer making ~$170-230k while living in a major U.S. city? Some of the jobs on that site have salary ranges below 9 million Yen, which seems to equate to about $67k. Given that consumer goods are generally pricier in Japan, and that cost of living is generally quite high in Japan, that salary seems quite low.

Cost-of-living comparisons get complex, but I can give you my personal opinion.

Let's assume SF vs Tokyo.

To live the same lifestyle and have the same amount of disposable income as someone earning $170-230k in SF, you'd need to earn ¥12-18M or so in Tokyo.

You can live in a nice apartment in the center of Tokyo and still save a lot of money as a single person earning ¥12M a year.

Also the yen is super weak against the dollar right now (historically so). So converting to dollars doesn't give an accurate value imo. As long as you earn and spend yen, what matters is purchasing power parity. Not the exchange rate.

To me, living in Japan, ¥9M still "feels" roughly like $90k despite the exchange rate.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#132

Post by carstenhag »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #57
nisegami wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that meaningfully different from the LLC suffix in the US?

I don't think that there is a difference in terms of liability: Both UG and GmbH are limited liability companies. However, my understanding is that an UG is obligated to retain a quarter of its annual profits as reserves until it has reached the capital requirements of a GmbH, at which point it can be converted. IMHO, UG are a fudge. They recognised that the barriers to GmbH formation are high but at the same time di…

The 25k is not the problem, having to spend 3000€ on setting up the GmbH is.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#133

Post by jackblemming »

wenc wrote: post #77
Grimburger wrote: post #4

This was incredibly well-written and an enjoyable story. Congratulations on pushing through and getting traction. Something that resonated: > We had to put 5 million JPY (~$45k at the time) in our business bank account and leave it there. For... some reason. Living in Asia I've come across this bizarre government obsession with "money in the bank" when dealing with them: "You need $15k in a bank account to apply" "Ok…

IF you try to understand it from the regulators perspective, it totally makes sense. You see, the law is written for legibility, not for variation, and rightly so. $15k cash in the bank is easier to understand than $300k in ETFs. Your $300k ETF might be stable or it might fall below the value of $15k over 6 months (not likely but government officials are not in the business of investigating the stability of individua…

This is exactly why we aim for consistent and standard code, even if n specific implementations or different patterns might be a better local fit.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#134

Post by post-it »

dzonga wrote: post #120
physicsguy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting. Here in the UK you can set up a limited company (i.e. if the company goes out of business, you are not personally liable for any debts) in about a day and there's no collateral requirement at all.

a lot of people overlook the UK - in terms of the simplicity of doing business. from favourable taxes etc. however the biggest con in the uk, is unmotivated people.

Unmotivated people are the easiest to motivate with money. Motivated people don't want to stop what they're doing to do your thing.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#135

Post by bartlondon »

dzonga wrote: post #120
physicsguy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting. Here in the UK you can set up a limited company (i.e. if the company goes out of business, you are not personally liable for any debts) in about a day and there's no collateral requirement at all.

a lot of people overlook the UK - in terms of the simplicity of doing business. from favourable taxes etc. however the biggest con in the uk, is unmotivated people.

Why do you think people in the UK are unmotivated?

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#136

Post by [deleted] »

yakubin wrote: post #3

I'm getting a blank page. Looking at the source, there is no static content on it, only JS. I have JS turned on, but it seems CORS is blocking loading of JS. Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://static.cloudflareinsights.com/beacon.min.js/v652eace1692a40cfa3763df669d7439c1639079717194. (Reason: CORS request did not succeed). None of the “sha512” hashes…

[deleted]

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#137

Post by [deleted] »

upupandup wrote: post #110

Japan has the highest income tax bracket, horrible working culture (confucian hierarchy, ijime, overtime expected to be norm), no mental health support and to top it off a non-competitive corporate taxation. All of my native Japanese engineers who can speak modicum of English is leaving it to work abroad. I know many startups and companies have pulled out due to the inflexibility of the government (you need to be pro…

[deleted]

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#138

Post by robin_reala »

physicsguy wrote: post #33
foepys wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany there is a similar thing where you need to deposit at least 25,000 € as collateral to be able to create a GmbH (similar to an LLC). This is meant to pay for debts in case the GmbH goes bankrupt. But the government recognized that this was a problem so the "UG (haftungsbeschränkt)" was made possible where you are only required to deposit 1 € initially and than can deposit more each year until you can conver…

That's really interesting. Here in the UK you can set up a limited company (i.e. if the company goes out of business, you are not personally liable for any debts) in about a day and there's no collateral requirement at all.

If you’re interested in doing this, here’s the step by step guide:

https://www.gov.uk/set-up-limited-company

and here’s the registration form:

https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation/register-your-c...

(“It costs £12 and can be paid by debit or credit card. Your company is usually registered within 24 hours.”)

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#139

Post by Asooka »

SapporoChris wrote: post #71
Grimburger wrote: post #4

This was incredibly well-written and an enjoyable story. Congratulations on pushing through and getting traction. Something that resonated: > We had to put 5 million JPY (~$45k at the time) in our business bank account and leave it there. For... some reason. Living in Asia I've come across this bizarre government obsession with "money in the bank" when dealing with them: "You need $15k in a bank account to apply" "Ok…

They have a similar rule for "Specified visa: Designated activities (Long Stay for sightseeing and recreation)". "Documents such as a bankbook to prove that the applicant’s savings is more than 30 million Japanese yen along with the records indicating the current balance as well as deposits and withdrawals for the past 6 months." https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page22e_000738.html 30 million yen is currently 225k USD,…

Does that imply that living in Japan for 6 months costs 30 million yen?

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#140

Post by fomine3 »

Asooka wrote: post #139
SapporoChris wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a similar rule for "Specified visa: Designated activities (Long Stay for sightseeing and recreation)". "Documents such as a bankbook to prove that the applicant’s savings is more than 30 million Japanese yen along with the records indicating the current balance as well as deposits and withdrawals for the past 6 months." https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page22e_000738.html 30 million yen is currently 225k USD,…

Does that imply that living in Japan for 6 months costs 30 million yen?

Govt want to check balance amount is constantly over(near) 3000 rather than temporary have. This visa is for richer people to stay.
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