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Comment by arvinder | Hacker News Reader

>Based on the New Business Implementation Plan, Fukuoka City officials will conduct a review on the progress of startup businesses founded by entrepreneurs who utilized this system and received approval for his/her Business Manager residential status. There will be three review sessions during the six-month period, of which at least one session will be held either at the entrepreneur’s place of business or residence. During the review sessions, the business’s bank account, lease for the place of business, and employment contracts may be reviewed. If progress is not satisfactory, Fukuoka City may direct the entrepreneur to return to his/her home country.

Sounds like a lot of biannual headache.

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Try opening a business bank account in Japan. Or any bank account for that matter. Be prepared to start every handwritten form over if you make even the slightest error, and I hope you’ve been practicing your kanji. No credit cards or foreign transfers until you’ve got a few years in your business. Capital requirements. It’s a whole different ballgame, for better or worse.

> and I hope you’ve been practicing your kanji

Shinsei bank offer applications in English

> or foreign transfers until you’ve got a few years in your business

Fortunately there are options to transfer JPY funds overseas using companies like Transferwise.

I’ve never heard of Shinsei bank. My accounts are at UFJ, and obtaining them was my second proudest achievement in Japan after my driver’s license.

How or why did you choose UFJ?

// disclosure: head of Tech Strategy for Americas

No good reason, really. It could have been any of them —they’re all pretty much upside down and backward, to be honest. I guess it’s a way to enforce stability.

They're a really small bank that happens to be owned by an American PE firm.

Shinsei was easy to work with (for a business account), have English language online banking and telephone support. Never had an issue with foreign transfers.

Does help to have a Japanese friend who can help when opening the account, etc, and it’s important to find accounting and legal help that speak English.

Shinsei is the most foreigner friendly bank in Tokyo, bar none. They're known for it, and they make their services convenient -- go there.

Initially you might have some trouble with the Address/Phone Number/Bank Account requirements, because they're almost all required at nearly the exact same time, making some weird pseudo requirement stalemate but here's what you do:

1. Get a place to live (likely through some online agency before you get to japan -- you're gonna pay a premium)

2. Register with your local ward office, get your foreigner card, which will have your address on the back and your face on the front

3. Get a phone at UQ Mobile (or whichever carrier will give you one, more choices if you have a longer VISA), IIRC the only real hard requirement is a credit card.

4. Get a bank account (phone required)

NOTE: some places will even let you pay for your apartment with a credit card

Oh BTW when I did this, I avoided the requirement stalemate by staying with a friend (thus I had a place to "live" at) when I arrived, and a phone number I could use (friend's phone number). It is possible to secure a place to live before you get to japan, there are sites that cater to foreigners for this purpose and will get you set up almost completely before you arrive so you just sign some paperwork when you arrive and have a place to live.

IIRC, you now get the "foreigner card" during immigration. You still have to register at the local ward, though.

You get the card at the airport, but it's useless without the stamp. Can confirm that the dependency graph stated by the parent is a (the?) correct way to navigate the system. The only thing I'd modify is that you can save money by bringing your own phone, and getting a phone+data SIM card from Bic, which you can set up on a recurring plan with a foreign credit card.

Yeah, it's been so long that I actually forgot the proper (I think) way to go through it, and that it was actualy easier for me because I had contacts/friends willing to help.

The problem with the phone+data sim thing is that you need an actual callable phone number, a lot of the time. Also, you can tell what numbers are used for in Japan by how they start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Japan#Non... , and some places will be sticklers about it.

One sad/funny thing is that I actually needed a phone number to get a place to live as well, but actually my agent just used their own temporarily (literally right in front of the leasing agent, and they didn't care). I get the feeling that if you get a place from abroad they'll overlook that/work that out somehow, even if you don't have an agent that was as understanding/nice/flexible as mine.

Oh, if you have a phone+SIM card from Bic, you get a number. You need a non-tourist visa for that one, though...which means you need the stamped gaijin card.

I never had issues with anyone being snobby about the number, but I was in a bigger city, so maybe I had it easy.

(My sad/funny story was that in order to cancel the recurring phone payment, I needed to receive a text message to the phone number I was cancelling. But I had left the country by that point, and the SIM didn't work for international SMS. So I was screwed. I just told my credit card company to reject the recurring billing, and thus I'm probably blackballed from all future SIM-card purchasing in Japan.)

Could you have mailed the SIM back to a friend in Japan?

Probably, but I'd have to explain the whole thing and do international postage and whatnot, and it wasn't worth the hassle.

These days for phone numbers you can bootstrap that with a free VoIP account (only charges for outgoing calls) which doesn't require any form of ID.

For personal accounts Shinsei is fine. For business, not so much. They only do Japanese speaking, they require IE for certificate pinning I believe, and a lot of banks charge extra for online banking even.

Rakuten Bank is the best for startups I think, but you still need a Japanese speaking person in the company.

Please excuse my ignorance, but why would you start a business in a country you don't understand its language? Doesn't sound logical to me, except if there's a big part of the country that doesn't speak that language or something bizarre like that.

(this is a serious question, but I'm unable to phrase it this late in a way that doesn't sound like I'm trying to provoke you)

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 language now with the internet, and Tokyo offers near free lessons all over the city that are staffed by volunteers. Had one friend who came in with absolutely zero Japanese and by the end of his first year was understanding conversations. I see the opposite happening.

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.

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 language is quite challenging, especially if you’re working full time in an English language environment. Even without fluency, it’s possible to enjoy life here.

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

What makes you think that? Japanese is just a normal language. You have to study vocabulary and grammar and interact enough with native speakers to learn expressions. The writing system and the lack of cognates makes it harder for an English speaker than, say, Swedish, but there is no reason to believe that you can't ever reach full professional proficiency.

The only category V language for English speakers, that also has an asterisk:

https://www.atlasandboots.com/foreign-service-institute-lang...

> Category V: 88 weeks (2200 hours) Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers

> Arabic

> Cantonese (Chinese)

> Mandarin (Chinese)

> [asterisk] Japanese

> Korean

> [asterisk] Usually more difficult than other languages in the same category

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

Japanese does have inflections. Specifically, verbs are conjugated: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Japanese_verbs#Conju...

You are right, I meant cases [1] , like those that are there in German.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case

The Wikipedia article you linked has a section on cases in Japanese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case#Japanese

Shinsei bank is no better for business accounts. No help given. Just has hard to open. Only one branch for business accounts in all of Tokyo

Can confirm. With local banks it's a major nightmare. Even Japanese startups take MONTHS to have official banks account they can use for charging their clients. If you need anything fast, Rakuten Bank is your (pretty much) only option.

Yuucho, as well, though they are very slow with int'l wire transfers. Almost walked in/walked out to set up, though.

It's not as bad as Hong Kong. I had to visit seventeen (17) banks and spend over USD$10,000 to get a bank account for our company over the last 1.5 years. I did everything from opening accounts in the same banking groups overseas to renting needless physical offices. None of it helped. Finally I got accepted by a startup bank with a special KYC process approved by the HKMA. Hong Kong accountants and other professional services firms privately report that their business is down immensely. It's the US' fault and they've announced in The Banker a month or two ago that they're preparing to roll back pressure, but the damage has been done.

I remember being recommended Shinsei for banking.

"Oh great, they have an account setup app".

I go through the app, take pictures of my documentation etc.

"How easy!" I thought.

I get a call later asking me to visit a branch.

"Sorry, the app is only for Japanese" they tell me.

These kind of stories abound.

The largest bank in Japan was flabbergasted that I sweet talked them into getting a business bank account for Starfighter.

Some things I wouldn't agree with: Personal bank accounts aren't challenging given a medium term status of residence. Wire transfers should be trivial for anyone capable of running a business; you just have to ask and not sound like a drug lord while doing so. Credit cards are easily available, including to foreigners (surprisingly so from some issuers), though corporate cards are much harder. Capital requirements functionally don't exist anymore; you can open a 合同会社 with 1 yen and you can convince large banks to open a business bank account with e.g. 10万 as an opening deposit.

(For anyone starting a company in Japan who wants to talk banking stuff I'd be more than happy to; this is very relevant to my professional interests these days.)

Sorry, Patrick, have to disagree with you on this one: 12 years of residency, started a Godo Gaisha, had to jump hoops even with my bank I'd had a personal account with all those years just to get a standard savings account.

Credit card was the same for me, although friends have had easier time. I owned a house, a car, registered a business - could not get a personal cc with company my family had been using for over 10 years without doing major banter and restrictions.

I can't imagine a foreigner coming over here with no spousal connections and setting up a company for a year.

There's a great deal of variance among Japanese banks regarding their policies on issuing credit cards to gaijin, all of which are (of course!) undocumented. A random list of cards that are supposedly easier to get:

http://wandertokyo.com/japanese-credit-cards/

Ha ha! And you have to do it yourself! It's the primary reason I made my wife CEO of our company -- although in hindsight it was a brilliant move on my part. She's Japanese and I can't tell you how useful it is to have someone who understands the nuances of Japanese culture managing your company.

But wrt to credit cards and foreign transfers: I remember when we asked the bank manager if we could get a credit card and he actually laughed. At the moment I'm funnelling all of our foreign money through a personal bank account -- which my accountant says is pretty common.

As an aside if anyone needs to receive foreign currency in Japan, take a look at the rates for personal accounts in Shinsei bank. Not connected with them except for being a happy customer. Would be delighted to move the corporate account there, but they said "No" :-)

It can be yes. The govt agencies have their downsides. We worked with jetro (skymind): https://www.jetro.go.jp/usa/topics/companies-chosen-global-i...

While it has not been too bad, the paperwork and initial startup was a bit of a hassle.

I would be careful around this route.

Wow, that is very cool. Congrats on getting through it.

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