Japan Visas without College Degrees

So in Japan there are about 27 different types of Visa that you can apply for as an American, and as citizens of a few other countries. Generally speaking visas require you to have some type of college degree to obtain or you must be employed by a large company, not a sure fire way for approval but it helps.

My brother and I both have visas for Japan but we don’t have college degrees. For personal reasons we haven’t finished, although close. Originally we had read it would be impossible for us to get visas here without them so it was a little disappointing, but after talking to an attorney in Tokyo we found a way to make it work (or at least for us).

You see we own a business in Hawaii that does Digital Design, Marketing, Advertising and Educational Workshops / “classes” for people. We do it in person and via the internet (YouTube, Instagram, etc). We have had this business for about 5 years and had a steady stream of income. What our attorney suggested was (because we did not have college degrees) to found a business in Japan, so we did; we opened Koji Media, K.K. (Koji Media Kabushiki Kaisha), which is a subsidiary of our Hawaii company Koji Living.

With the business being open in Japan we had to do FOUR really important things. 1st, have an office location; that the business could operate out of, it needed to be physical. 2nd, have someone in Japan willing to be our Representative Director (essentially CEO on paper), 3rd; show we had enough financial resources via, initial investment into the business of at least 1,000,000¥ and finally Open a Corporate Bank Account under the Koji Media K.K. name.

Number 1; was the hardest for us to get done as it required the purchase or lease of property. Fortunately for us, we had been saving for a long time and had enough funds to purchase a home in Saitama (I know this will not be the case for some). Once the sale was complete we had checked off number one. I should note that renting a unit for business is also acceptable; but ghost or virtual offices normally won’t work or may make the process harder. But renting is definitely possible.

Number 2: Representative Director; this for us was hard. Because we did not want to lose autonomy of our company and wanted to ensure that the direction the company went was within what we had in mind. There are companies in Japan that sell their service to act on your behalf as RD but we did not feel comfortable with working with a stranger. So with luck being on our side (for once) we asked our cousin in Yamaguchi, if he would be willing to help us do this. Luckily; he is amazing and agreed.

Number 3: This was an upsetting part of the process. Like I said earlier we had started to save money for our business / investment since we opened in Hawaii and so we had funds put aside for a while. What I wish the attorney told us was that a paper trail of money is what they preferred. So what we should have done; was transfer the money into our business account or at least to our cousin prior to buying the home to show that we had X amount of money on hand when opening the business. This would have increased our initial investment to a much higher number and thus giving our business a stronger standing in the eyes of immigration. Being honest; we barely had the minimum at this point but was able to make it work.

Number 4: Opening the Corporate Bank Account was ROUGH. Our cousin was born and raised in Japan and still had difficulties. The amount of questions Japan Corporate banks ask is crazy. So if / when you head to do this; make sure you have everything prepared. We had to show them business plans, letters from our attorneys, have our attorneys talk to them, show financial documents from Hawaii and have notarized letters stating that our cousin was our cousin and that he was the RD for Koji Media K.K. The entire process took about a month but it was something that needed to be done to give legitimacy to the business. It isn’t always necessary to have a corporate account as a lot of sole proprietors in Japan just use their personal; but it does help when trying to self sponsor a visa.

Okay; so now that 1-4 was done we started the paperwork. The type of visa they decided would be best for us was called an “Intra-Company Transfer Visa” which essentially meant that our business in Hawaii was sending us to Japan to work. It does have its own special requirements but was one that did not require a college degree; as it was mostly based on the foundation of the company standing.

I should probably note that between 1 - 4 and the incorporation process itself it took about three to four months to get done. Things in Japan, take a little longer or rather a lot longer to process then in the USA.

The visa application process itself was pretty straight forward; and someone with a relatively decent degree of knowledge of Japanese could probably do it themselves; but we didn’t want to risk it.

What they apply for initially is called a COE (Certificate of Eligibility); essentially this is a process that takes between 1 - 3 months to verify weather or not you are eligible for a Japanese Visa. They ask for all information about yourself, about the business, about the scope of work, etc. You can apply for a visa without a COE but it may take longer to processes the visa (in most cases it does) or it make decrease the odds of visa approval. With the COE it makes it a lot easier to apply; but again, does not guarantee approval of a visa (just makes it easier).

Once the COE (Certificate of Eligibility) is approved, you take that to the nearest consulate and apply for the visa with it. MOST times; it is approved, ours took about 5 days.

So the moral of our story is that it is possible to enter Japan without a college degree. It’s not a myth and it’s not impossible; my brother and I did it. In the age of remote technology and extreme entrepreneurship there are many opportunities for you to work away from “home”. It just takes some time, patience and getting the right help. My suggestion to you; is if you own your own business or don’t own one but want to move to Japan and DONT have a college degree; try to follow these steps, talk to an attorney and don’t give up.

There were times when we were doing all of this; that we felt like it wasn’t worth it. But after about a year of being in Japan, I can tell you… It definitely was.

Please feel free to email or comment if you have any questions. I’m not an attorney but can help give you some guidance or share stories with you about OUR process.

But until then, see you in the next one.