Starting a Small Business in Japan

[beinghere]

I am interested to start a small business in Tokyo, doing a form of therapeutic massage. I don't want to know about how likely it is I would succeed, and I'm sure there are many who will want to tell me all about that, but I'm not interested to hear about that right now.

My concern right now is, what are the legalities involved? I have heard it is possible, and that there are just steps I need to go through to make it happen. Is anyone aware of those steps.

[Sangetsu]

Opening a business in Japan is not much different than in other places, though being a foreigner complicates things, and makes getting started up more difficult.

The first thing you will need is money. A business license and the legal fees of setting up a basic corporation will be around 300,000 yen ($3000). You will also need a physical address for your business, so you have to add the cost of renting a building and the associated expenses. You will also need to sponsor yourself for a business/investor visa, which usually requires that you have 5 million yen in savings. The initial 300,000 yen will cover the license, application
fees, business stamp, and setting up a bank account in Japan.

Provided you have the money, you can usually get yourself set up in 30 to 60 days, at least as far as paperwork goes. You'll probably need to spend some time and money getting your building/office/store set up, but most Japanese contractors can get the work done in a week.

[beinghere]

Thank you for your help. I'm happy to read your post because I was hoping it was possible and relatively simple like this. That it can be done in a month or two is pretty amazing.

I'm hoping to start a private practice in a form of manual body therapy called Rolfing. There are a number of Japanese people doing this, but I have 17 years experience and will cater more to the expat community. It looks like the major thing I need to do is find someone with a clinic with office space available, someone who would be willing to sponsor me.

[RealJames]

I'm running an SP
business stamp was 6000yen
application was free
bank account was free

I had to show I had spent 5million yen setting up the business and was employing 1 Japanese national full time
my work and home address had to be different and it took about 3 weeks to process after application

after getting the visa you need to register at the tax office

you also will have a very hard time finding a Japanese national to be your guarantor for the office location

[Sangetsu]

Originally Posted by RealJames

I'm running an SP
business stamp was 6000yen
application was free
bank account was free

I had to show I had spent 5million yen setting up the business and was employing 1 Japanese national full time
my work and home address had to be different and it took about 3 weeks to process after application

after getting the visa you need to register at the tax office

you also will have a very hard time finding a Japanese national to be your guarantor for the office location

I used a local law firm who were able to set everything set up for me, and they also provided me with a guarantor. The cost for the guarantor was equivalent to one month's rent, which was expensive.They also handled the registration at the tax office, and assistance with accounting for the first year. It was not cheap, but they did the leg work for me. All I was required to do was show up at the office to sign the paperwork. I was also able to get a business credit card, which was helpful.

[RealJames]

Originally Posted by Sangetsu

I used a local law firm who were able to set everything set up for me, and they also provided me with a guarantor. The cost for the guarantor was equivalent to one month's rent, which was expensive.They also handled the registration at the tax office, and assistance with accounting for the first year. It was not cheap, but they did the leg work for me. All I was required to do was show up at the office to sign the paperwork. I was also able to get a business credit card, which was helpful.

Based on what you're saying, I would only recommend that route as a last resort.
I could do 99% of that stuff on my own very easily, finding a guarantor was a tad complicated but I was able to use local assets as collateral for that.

Oh and check this out, you can't do it legally no matter how you go about it!

You need a business/investor visa in order to operate a business.
To get the visa you need to have spent 5mil yen on establishing that business.
You also need to be employing a Japanese native full time (it used to be 2),
To employ a native, you need to register them with the local tax office.
To register them you need a registered business.
To have a registered business you need to have a business visa.
follow?

I war running and operating my business for 2 months prior to applying for the business visa in order to ensure I met all the requirements necessary for the visa. (I was running it on a teacher visa - specialist of humanities - or something).

I brought this paradox up with a really really nice and super awesome civil servant who basically explained that they know about it and use it as a wild-card to deny applications to people they don't like lol.

So don't be a shithead douche bag when you apply!