Category: About Japan

As I have encountered difficulties (to put it mildly) in finding a job in Japan without speaking the language perfectly, I thought of exploring other options. As a kind of continuation from my job at university, where you are essentially working for yourself and are fully responsible for the outcome, being self employed does sound like a good fit. Unfortunately, information on how to do this in Japan is not easily obtained (though JETRO is quite a good site), and what you do find is at best incomplete, at worst contradictory. So, I took the opportunity of the free legal counselling at the Kyoto International Community House, went to the lawyer there and prodded him for explanations.

So, if you want to be self employed in Japan, and you need a visa go to with it, then you’ll have to do the following:

1. Find a Japanese business partner who sets up the business for/with you. If you don’t have a work or other visa that entitles you to do that yourself, he will have to all the work from doing all the paperwork (including research on how to set up a proper Japanese style business plan) to getting the right type of seals (no signatures in Japan), to opening a bank account and renting office space. Essentially he will have to deal with all sorts and levels of bureaucracy, which may take a while to begin with. Once the company is established, he will have to run the business – at least officially – and you must
2. Wait until the business has made profit – provably sufficient profit that it. At some point in between you’ll have to
3. Invest at least 5.000.000 YEN into the company (or employ at least two Japanese people full time). Again, you must prove that the money is yours – a transfer from a foreign account under your name is sufficient. Only with all that done, finished and proved with yet more paperwork – meaning it will take you at least a year after you’ve started – can you
4. Apply for an investor/business manager visa, which, once granted, allows you to finally come and run your own Japanese company from Japan itself.

Easy, eh? Well… there are a few things that are still in the shade. First of all I could not find out how much profit is deemed sufficient. Nor is it clear how much you must earn as the manager of your own business once you can come, except that it has to be “more than a Japanese person would earn in the same position”. I assume that depends on the type of business you’d want to open. The bigger problem, however, – for me at least – is at the beginning already Let’s assume for a moment that I actually have all that cash (actually, it’s not even that much, in the US you’d need half a million US$), there is nobody in Japan whom I’d trust with that much, not without any guarantees. Paper doesn’t blush doesn’t come out of nowhere, and for many people, the temptation threshold lies far below that amount…

Had I been better prepared for the interview, I could have counted the number of times the lawyer used the word impossible…

So, once again, I find myself back at square one: I need a job.

I like hot weather, always did. I start getting comfortable somewhere above 25°C, whereas everything below makes me reach for a sweater. Very fondly I recall my visits to the Egyptian desert – vast, empty, and hot. Or those two hours I spent in the blistering summer heat at Dante’s View, looking over Death Valley and writing on my travel diary.

Humidity is something entirely different though: When your body is constantly sweating and you’re sticky already ten minutes after showering… ugh. So, this week was trying, to say the least. Air temperature slowly converged towards body temperature, finally exceeding it today with 39°C, all the while with a humidity of at least 60%. People cope with the heat by staying indoors – a majority of the buildings here has airconditioning now – and go out only in the morning or early evening. House owners around here often wet the streets in front of their houses – which does provide some temporary relief at least, but unfortunately does not help with the humidity.

Me? I have changed some of my habits.

Firstly, am taking cold showers now. Cold meaning 37°C instead of my usual 42°. It helps insofar as I am not emerging from the shower giving off hot steam, so I believe it helps with the sweating for a short while.

Secondly, I have to say that I’m not enthousiastic of electric fans, and in fact I am quite happy that Ebisu’s doesn’t have airconditioning. However, when on Tuesday night at 10 pm the temperature was still up at 30°C, I reluctantly retrieved the fan for the first time to help me fall asleep that night, and I’ve been using it ever since. Of course, I keep the windows open now at all times, but unfortunately, as Kyoto is enclosed by mountains on three sides, there is not much of a cooling breeze coming up the hill here.

Finally, I have taken to flee the house in the afternoons. My room faces West, and while this offers perfect views of beautiful sunsets ranging from pale pink to flaming orange, it also means that the sun heats my room like a furnace from about 2 pm until the sun sets. I leave the house at around 2:30 to look for a cooler abode. The university, with its airconditioned lounge and library is only ten minutes away. However, in this weather I prefer to be outside, and thank goodness, just between the house and the university there is Yoshida shrine, dedicated to the university, by the way. Its numerous buildings are dotting the hillside and there are many trees and shadowy spots. It is quiet and comparatively cool, and I go there to read, write, and study until they close in the early evening. So far, nobody has minded me sitting there, and I think I’ll go there regularly as it the closest and most convenient spot.

I have told you about unwelcome house guests in my post of last Friday. Today’s post is of a similar vein, but this time the guests are much more tolerable, no, even cute.

Last night, when we were sitting and chatting with the window open, we suddenly noticed something moving across the screen. It turned out to be a small gecko, maybe 7 centimeters long. It was running up and down the screen hunting its dinner – probably all the mosquitoes that were attracted by the light in the room. It seemed very busy, so I hope it could diminish the local bug population considerably.

It was fascinating to watch; and I have to confess that I posess a soft spot in my heart for those little creatures. The type that lives here has a yellow, sand coloured body, a triangular head and a very intelligent look in its eyes. A few years ago a gecko got trapped in a kitchen cabinet of mine, and I had to catch it so I could put it outside again. I knew that they can run on vertical window panes, but only when I tried to pick this one up did I realize how much they actually stick to the surface – any surface that is. It took me a while of gentle pulling until I could finally lift it up, and with both an apology for the rough treatment and a “please don’t call again” I set it free again on my balcony.

I hope the little one who visited us yesterday will stick around for a while – and that he’ll get big and fat on all the mosquitoes he eats… I don’t really count on him to diminish the cockroach population, but maybe the lizards that live on the stairs outside of Ebisu’s can help with that?