If you look up “Are you allowed to work on a tourist visa in Japan?” you’ll get back a simple “No, you are not allowed to work in any paid or local job in Japan on a tourist visa.” However, the actual answer is more nuanced than this.
I previously spent more than 10 years working as an assistant at an administrative scrivener office in Japan, and I now run my own business providing immigration consulting services for questions such as these.
What you can and can’t do
In Japan, what many people refer to as a “tourist visa” is generally the Temporary Visitor status of residence. Besides sightseeing, it also covers activities such as visiting relatives or friends, attending conferences or meetings, and other similar short-term activities. The permitted period of stay is generally 15, 30, or 90 days.
For example, you might look for a job or attend interviews with Japanese companies while traveling in Japan. That’s generally not a problem, provided these activities are not the main purpose of your stay and you don’t receive remuneration. In fact, many people receive job offers while visiting Japan as tourists.
What happens if you receive a job offer as a Temporary Visitor?
However, receiving a full-time job offer does not mean you can start working immediately. You must first obtain the appropriate status of residence, such as Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services. Once your Certificate of Eligibility (COE) is issued, you can take the necessary steps to start working in Japan.
In principle, it is not permitted to change from Temporary Visitor status to a mid- or long-term status of residence unless there are special circumstances. However, there have been cases where people admitted as temporary visitors for 90 days did not need to leave Japan if their COE was issued during their stay.
Are you allowed to do an internship?
What if you’re not going to start working yet but rather engage in an internship? Can you do that while you’re here?
The answer is “It depends.” It may be acceptable if the internship is:
- Unpaid
- Only takes up a small part of your stay
- Remains incidental to the main purpose of your trip
For example, you might spend a single day at this internship, and still have plenty of time and energy to explore Japan afterward.
But if any of the points above are not fulfilled, then it becomes a problem. If you get paid, or if you spend most of your days at the unpaid internship and only do a little sightseeing when you have time left, it becomes much harder to say that tourism is still the main purpose of your stay.
In that case, you should consider applying for an appropriate status, such as Designated Activities for an internship, summer job, or international cultural exchange.
Can Japanese companies pay you to do any work?
You are enjoying your holiday in Japan when you unexpectedly get an opportunity to write an article for TokyoDev. You didn’t come to Japan planning to do this—it just happened to come up during your trip. Can you accept the payment?
How much is too much? There is no legal threshold for the amount of remuneration or the number of paid activities. Instead, the key question is whether the activities amount to carrying on a business, and whether there is continuity and repetition.
In my experience, administrative scriveners often treat a third occurrence as a practical indication of continuity and repetition. However, this also depends on the intention to continue and the nature of the activities.
How much work is too much?
This is one of those questions where Japanese immigration law does not give us a neat numerical answer.
Having spent years working on immigration matters in Japan, I have often been asked some version of the same question: “But what’s the actual answer? Is it yes or no?” Unfortunately, immigration law does not always work that way.
There is no published rule saying that you can work remotely a certain number of hours per week, attend a certain number of online meetings, or earn up to a certain amount while staying as a temporary visitor.
What about a very limited situation? Suppose you spend a month travelling in Japan and have one or two online meetings with colleagues back home during that time. In practice, that alone would be unlikely to turn your trip into a work-related stay.
But the number of meetings is not the only thing that matters. As discussed earlier, the nature of the activity also matters. Is it incidental to your trip, or are you effectively continuing your regular job from Japan? Is it occasional, or is there an intention and pattern of continuing the work?
That is why I would be cautious about giving a suggestion such as “One day of remote work per week is fine.” Even a single activity could look very different depending on what the person actually does. One or two incidental communications during a month-long holiday are a very different situation from routinely setting aside every Friday as a remote working day.
There is another reason why it is difficult to give a universal yes-or-no answer. Japanese immigration decisions can involve a significant degree of administrative discretion.
A well-known case that helps illustrate this broader principle is the McLean case, decided by the Supreme Court of Japan in 1978. In the context of an international resident’s application to extend a period of stay, the Supreme Court recognized broad discretion in assessing factors such as a foreign national’s conduct while in Japan, and whether continued residence was necessary and appropriate.
In other words, an activity that does not immediately result in deportation could still be considered in a future immigration decision.
On that note, here’s a case I encountered while working at an administrative scrivener’s office. A person originally came to Japan as a Temporary Visitor to visit relatives. However, they repeatedly visited suppliers to purchase Japanese goods for export overseas and also took photos in connection with those visits. These activities somehow came to the attention of immigration.
When that person later tried to enter Japan again, they were treated unfavorably because of the problems during their previous stay and subjected to the additional examination. They were questioned about why they had returned, the purpose of the new visit, and whether they would leave within the permitted period this time. In the end, they were allowed to enter Japan.
What is important about this case is that the issue was not simply how many times the person carried out a business activity or how many hours they spent doing it. It was that the repetitive nature of the activities and their impact on the people around them became obvious to external observers. That first raised the question, “What is this person actually doing here?” which in turn led to a more important question, “Are these activities really consistent with the stated purpose of their short-term visit?”
What activities does the “Business” entry reason cover?
If you are from a visa-exempt country or region, you don’t need to apply for a visa before traveling to Japan. Before arrival, you can use Visit Japan Web to complete the immigration procedures online.
As part of the process, you are asked to choose the purpose of your visit from Tourism, Business, Visiting relatives, or Other. You may see Business and think, “Perfect. I’m going to work remotely anyway,” and select it. But that’s not what it’s there for.
For example, suppose you work for an American software company that has an affiliated company in Japan. Your company sends you to Japan for a short business trip to discuss a software development project with the Japanese team. During your stay, you attend meetings, negotiate project details, and work through issues that are difficult to handle online. The purpose of your trip is to help move the project and the business relationship forward.
That’s the kind of situation that can generally fit within a short-term business visit, not simply doing your regular engineering work remotely from Japan. In practice, however, it is not uncommon for people to travel to Japan on business and also perform some of their regular duties while they are here. This has created a certain grey area between the typical activities contemplated by the system and the reality of international business travel.
How far can a short-term business visit go?
For Temporary Visitors, the line is not simply between doing and not doing actual work, or between manual and non-manual work. Short-term business visits can involve actual business activities, including meetings, business communications, inspections, and after-sales services. So when it comes to coding, code review, working at a client site, or working with robotics in a factory, what matters is the purpose and nature of the activity within the short-term business visit as a whole.
If you see someone coding or reviewing code on a laptop, it can be very difficult to tell from the outside whether they are doing something necessary for a short-term project with a Japanese client, or simply continuing the work they normally do for their overseas employer. This is why activities that do not clearly fit within a short-term business visit can be difficult to distinguish in practice, leaving a grey area for software engineers in particular.
Can I extend my stay as a Temporary Visitor?
It is possible to extend a Temporary Visitor stay in some rare cases. For example, the government has granted extensions when:
- A follow-up medical appointment fell after the permitted period of stay
- Illness prevented the original purpose of the visit from being completed
- Procedures related to a traffic accident had to be handled
- A mother needed to care for her daughter after childbirth
As a general rule, however, an extension requires unavoidable, humanitarian circumstances or equivalent special conditions. So for a software engineer, simply wanting to stay in Japan as a Temporary Visitor is not, by itself, a sufficient reason to extend a 90-day stay for another 90 days.
There is also a special exception for nationals of certain countries, such as Germany and Ireland. Under Japan’s visa exemption arrangements, they may apply for an extension of their period of stay at a regional immigration office in Japan, allowing them to stay for up to 180 days in total.
Working Remotely in Japan on a Digital Nomad Visa
After looking at all these different scenarios, you may start to see the bigger picture: a temporary visitor can do more than simply go sightseeing, but there are still limits, especially when work starts to become a significant part of the stay.
This is exactly where the Digital Nomad visa comes in.
Unlike the Temporary Visitor status, the Digital Nomad visa is specifically designed for people who want to stay in Japan while working remotely for an overseas employer or business. It is granted under the “Designated Activities” status of residence and allows eligible applicants to stay in Japan for up to six months. Importantly, this six-month period cannot be extended.
But there is one important catch. The Digital Nomad visa does not cover remote work under an employment contract with a Japanese company or organization.
Requirements for the Digital Nomad visa
To qualify, you must maintain medical insurance throughout the stay, with coverage of at least 10 million yen for medical expenses related to injury or illness. What’s more, if you want to apply for the Digital Nomad visa, you need to show that your annual income is at least 10 million yen.
If you want to know more, Christian Mack has written a detailed breakdown of how he received the Digital Nomad visa.
Can I get a residence card as a Digital Nomad?
When you finally come to Japan on the Digital Nomad visa, you might notice that many of your foreign friends have residence cards, but you don’t.
This also means that you cannot enroll in Japan’s National Health Insurance, and must instead maintain private medical insurance throughout your stay. In practice, not having a residence card can also make it difficult to open a bank account or rent an apartment.
What are the benefits of the Digital Nomad visa?
Citizens of Australia, Germany, Ireland, and a few other countries might look at this and say, “I can stay for six months on a Temporary Visitor status (if I apply for an additional extension), so why even bother with a Digital Nomad visa?” But remember, you aren’t supposed to be working under the former status.
The main benefit becomes even clearer for other nationals, who can see their length of stay doubled by applying for the Digital Nomad visa. In the case of nationals from Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, and Qatar, the Digital Nomad visa extends the initial stay from 15 or 30 days to up to six months—a drastic improvement!
The Digital Nomad visa also allows eligible spouses and children to accompany the principal applicant, with a separate dedicated visa application for each family member.
Other forms of partnership need to be handled on a case-by-case situation with the help of an administrative scrivener who is aware of and knows how to handle such cases. If you search for such a person in Japanese, you can include terms such as 同性パートナー (dousei pa-tona-, same-sex partner), 在留資格 (zairyuu shikaku, status of residence/visa), and 行政書士 (gyousei shoshi, administrative scrivener).
However, this accompaniment is also subject to restrictions based on the nationality of said spouse or child. Interestingly, the eligible countries and regions for accompanying family members are even broader than those for Digital Nomad visa applicants themselves. For example, a citizen of Argentina or Malta doesn’t qualify for a Digital Nomad visa, but may still qualify as an accompanying family member.
Conclusion
Japan does not generally allow you to work while staying as a temporary visitor. However, the fact that an unexpected or incidental work-related activity arises during your stay does not, by itself, mean that you have violated the conditions of your Temporary Visitor status. The nature of the activity, and if it is paid or unpaid, occasional or incidental, is only part of the overall assessment. Whether it becomes an issue depends on the nature and circumstances of the activity as a whole.
As working habits have changed globally, Japan identified a gap in its immigration framework and created a way for eligible people employed remotely by overseas businesses to work while staying in Japan: the Digital Nomad visa.