Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

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You can't start a side business on a regular work visa.

You know YC's question "How have you ever hacked a non-technical system?" This is my answer to it. You can start a side business on a regular work visa if the character of your business matches your status of residence and you don't intensify the business to the point where it is undeniable that it is a business as opposed to employment, e.g. by hiring full-time employees.

So, for example, if you were an engineer, and you happened to run a software company on the side, you could convince the Ministry of Justice to accept the argument that you were employed as an engineer by the 個人事業 (sole proprietorship) of you, which (since you have an engineering status of residence) doesn't require their pre-approval, and then (while establishing a record of e.g. tax paying and similar) bootstrap that into a renewal of your status of residence with yourself as the sponsor, and from there roll on to either a management/investor status of residence or one of the other more stable options.

For totally-not-a-lawyer gloss on this I'm happy to chat with anyone; you can make reasonable assumptions as to why I am fairly confident that the MoJ can be convinced to allow this.

For those who haven’t read it, Patrick’s article on Doing Business in Japan http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/ is a fascinating read; on immigration, it goes into about as much detail as the above, but providing much more cultural context.

> You can't start a side business on a regular work visa.

You can't do that on an H1-B either.

wait, as a non-citizen of Japan you are allowed to sponsor yourself for a work visa? That sounds, uhh, strange.

Yes. Essentially you prove you have the funds to do bootstrap and support yourself.

This is possible in Singapore too. It’s technically the business that is sponsoring you.

Do you know of anyone who has done this? I'd love to buy them coffee!

It's about ensuring you have money, not that you need an invite.

So if you're a freelancer with a bunch of active contracts they let you in.

Not let you in, but let you stay. Self-sponsoring only works on a renewal.

A friend who is freelance translator sponsored herself when renewing her work visa (previously she was a colleague of mine and our company sponsored her at that time, but since becoming freelance she's not employed by anybody but herself). She just had to produce proofs for each the recurrent contracts she's got so she can show that she's earning enough money. So yes, sponsoring yourself is possible, but it requires a lot of paperwork to prove you have the mean to live in the country.

I don't know how much difficult it is start your own business in Japan, for this Patrick is clearly the most knowledgeable person here, but once it's done, you just need to give yourself a salary to be able to renew your visa.

People get O-1's for themselves in the US.

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