[sqrt]

Thanks for sharing this—I'd heard about the points system but I haven't seen any personal accounts of going through the process before, so it was illuminating to read one.

Unfortunately, there's no scheme to allow foreigners to stay as a resident if they work remotely for a company that doesn't have a presence in Japan, as I do. (I'd even be willing to pay taxes in Japan!)

Of course, such a provision is pretty rare, but it's still a bummer. I wonder if immigration policy might ever consider such situations—such a worker is basically injecting money into the Japanese economy for little cost on Japan's part. But perhaps there are downsides that I haven't considered.

[skissane]

When a company wants to hire a remote worker in a country in which they don't have a local legal entity, they often turn to an agency which does have a local legal entity and acts as the official employer (covering pay, tax, benefits, etc) on behalf of the real employer. Do such agencies have branches in Japan? How do the Japanese immigration authorities view them?

Gitlab [1] uses Safeguard Global [2] to act as official employer in a number of countries (including Japan). I'm sure Gitlab is not the only employer using Safeguard's services, and I'm sure Safeguard is not the only company offering this service.

[1] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/master/dat...

[2] https://www.safeguardglobal.com

[polm23]

Besides the method skissane mentioned, if you have sufficient capital (roughly five million yen / 50kUSD last I checked) you can get a "business operator" visa, open a business, and have your foreign employer pay into the business. If the "business" runs a profit you should be able to get your visa renewed continually. It's a little more legally complicated to set up, but has advantages like not requiring a college degree or ten years of proven experience in one profession.

I was considering that route to self-employment before I learned about the change in the HSFP visa.

> (I'd even be willing to pay taxes in Japan!)

If you are a resident of a country it's only reasonable to expect you to pay taxes there...

[flocial]

You can try for a student visa for Japanese language school for two years. If you're willing to pay for a plane ticket to a nearby Asian country, you could probably renew it in perpetuity every three months. There are also other visas like entertainment or modelling that you could try to obtain for three months. You can even teach English part time and try to get a visa that way.

As you make friends and build up a network you're certain to find a way to make it work.

In practice, visas are easier for people from Western developed countries. The only major risk of overstaying a visa is getting a random stop from police and at worst you just get deported. It's really not as restrictive as it seems. I've met plenty of people who visited Japan on a whim and ended up staying for years.

[dempedempe]

No. Japan has cracked down on "visa runs". You can only stay in the country for a max of 6 months out of the year on a tourist visa.

[kyawzazaw]

you talked about deporting and staying in fear of it as a trivial matter

Unfortunately it is not that easy to go through that

[dvcrn]

> Unfortunately, there's no scheme to allow foreigners to stay as a resident if they work remotely for a company that doesn't have a presence in Japan, as I do. (I'd even be willing to pay taxes in Japan!)

That are all countries though and not just Japan.

[tellarin]

Estonia has a Digital Nomad visa - https://e-resident.gov.ee/nomadvisa/

And I remember seeing somewhere else that some other countries in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean either have similar visas or were planning for them.