After my company was established, you would think that I deserved a break from paperwork for a while. Oh no, no such thing. The next goal was to apply for a new visa, one with which I am actually allowed to work for my company…
So, again, I needed to produce yet more paper. Have I already mentioned that the Japanese love paper and paperwork? The more paperwork you’ll give to the authorities, the more sincere they believe you to be… In this vein, I collected a copious amount of documents, the obvious ones like Curriculum Vitae and university degrees, and the interesting ones like various photos of my office space and the nameplates on my door and mailbox as well as the rental contract for my apartment that had to state in writing – and with the hanko of my landlord in place – that I was allowed to use one room as an office for the company.
Slightly vexing was that I had to prove that the start capital of my company was indeed my own money – and how I got to have all that cash. Okay, I can see that if you are buying yourself a visa with that investment, it should be your own assets. Mind you though that it was not good enough that I had transferred the money from my own account back in December last year. First of all, because the magic timeframe for anything in Japan seems to be “within the last three months”, so December was too late – or too early? This is the reason why I needed that second Japanese bank account under my name, so that I could transfer the investment from one account with my name to yet another account with my name… To be fair, even Japanese citizens have to do that if they want to open a company. Anyway, that was not good enough. I still had to show where I got all that money from in the first place, which thankfully was easy.
Today I finished the last piece of paperwork: A business plan and a budget for the next two years. Interestingly, this is something that is only required for the visa application and not for the business establishment itself. I hate writing these sort of self-adulations and extensive accumulations of empty phrases and buzzwords, and to be honest, I have considerably procrastinated on this task. Thanks to a good friend of mine who has experience with running a small business, however, I could push myself over the finish line today.
Now I have some time to rest, and maybe even time to catch up with all my emails… The paperwork is now with my lawyer and he promised to have a look at it in the next few days. With a bit of luck the business plan with its seven pages of manifested blood sweat and tears is satisfactory and we can finally hand in all the collected documents to the immigration office. Let’s hope there will be fewer instances of the drama “fun with immigration” than last year…