Japan aims to attract “digital nomads” as part of growth efforts

14 comments

1. Good luck with that

2. Don’t see the point? Digital nomads rarely pay any fucking tax.

3. Unless they actually offer a visa for digital nomads, it’s kind of a moot point.

4. Can I come

5. I’m just curious what these efforts entail. I don’t even know how many of us there are currently.

6. Right now foreign workers on business management visas require an office regardless if their work is online or not. They need to remove that stupid clause for this to work. Very few remote workers are going to move to japan just to rent a 70000 yen office that they don’t need.

7. Ahh I can picture it now.

   A group of nerdy looking 20-somethings from a south east asian country rock up to a “dijiho”.

   “Hey so how do we connect to the wifi?”*Oyaji scrambles through his manual, finds a printout of a guide written in all Japanese with step by step screenshots of internet explorer*

8. Wouldn’t this type of visa basically be something like the stupendously wealthy tourist visa, but with permission to work tacked on?

   I wonder how health insurance, banking, etc might work? Banking seems like a bit of a fucker for new *actual* residents these days, it’s probably even more difficult for working visitors.

   Presumably they simply won’t be paying residence tax or income tax, as they’ll only be staying for a few months.

9. They might be able to attract freelancers with existing income streams, but the whole digital nomad visa thing Bali’s been doing for example has been a big tax break with the hope that their spending boosts the economy. I have a strong feeling Japan is looking for a way to finance their social welfare system and fund the ageing population so they would need serious, tax paying business minded people not wanna be Instagrammers.

10. I am a digital nomad living in Japan. I had experience here and knew I could find a nice apartment out in Nagano for cheaper than I was paying to live in Beijing.

    I do freelance work for Chinese clients, get paid in RMB and change that to Yen and send it to my Japanese bank account. I make around 500,000 yen a month, and spend around 30-40% of that.

    I know for a fact I’m helping the economy here. My rent, food, etc are all direct injections.

    I had to get a bit sneaky with the Visa and am here on a not so real student visa, and after two years I’ll have to figure something else out.

    I pay my health insurance but don’t have to pay into the pension fund until I’m no longer a “student”.

    The only country that should be angry at me is China as I’m taking money directly out of China, and spending it all here.

    China has strict monetary regulations to try and prevent this, but as with any system if you are familiar enough with it, you can find ways around it.

11. Under a tourist visa?

    Or a brand new all you can eat digital nomad visa?

    Could become an easy entry into résidence

12. This would make my company very happy. I currently am the only employee based in Japan, but for that reason they need to rent space in a shared office each year. I work from home the whole time.

    It’s not too expensive, but still.

13. This is a pretty jumbled plan. Digital nomads themselves can work here on a travel visa for up to 3 months, but likely won’t be employed by Japanese companies thus they also won’t contribute to industry growth/development, and will likely mostly spend tourist money and not much more.

    So, like, nomading in Japan is nice for nomads, but unless there’s a *real* big influx of them, as well as more venues/accommodations that suit their needs in the trad hospitality market, they won’t do much for Japan.

    The problem here is that Japan Inc. picks up on buzz words but not on their meaning, and by extension also not on their application to domestic matters.

    If they facilitated the incorporation of domestic businesses by foreign nationals in border towns skirting the major metro areas, then that might be interesting. That would bring in tax dollars, foreign talent, new ideas, and if done correctly probably have quite the pool to draw from and a positive effect on the revitalization effort that has heretofore been a total failure.

14. The country with the most red tape I’ve ever seen want to attract “digital nomads” oh yeh… great,