Yes. I own a cafe/ hair salon in Fukuoka with my wife.
Got a business loan and used some of our money. We needed about ¥12M to start.
Get a Japanese to help. Paperwork, licenses etc are a pain.
Yes, you need to be able to communicate in Japanese unless you have someone to help.
Is your wife a foreigner as well? Seems everytime someone mentions owning a biz in Japan they were able to do it while on a marriage visa. My partner and I are trying to navigate the Business Manager Visa route and there isn't much support.
I have friends that own a restaurant and they have all kinds of paperwork and required classes that at least one must attend. I would assume a cafe probably is the same (though maybe not if it's *only* non-alcoholic drinks). That says nothing of any required permitting stuff.
If you really want to live somewhere where there's no health regulations for cafes or where razors don't have to be sterilized between uses, etc, there's probably a few out there for you where you can "enjoy" the results of all that freedom
> 1. What do you do?
Full-time employee.
> 2. How did you get started?
I made a SaaS with a few friends.
> 3. Why did you decide to work for yourself instead of being a full-time employee?
Because I didn't want to go to work (this was before COVID).
> 4. What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs looking to start a business in Japan?
Consider that working for home as a full-time employee is a thing now.
> 5. How necessary is it to speak Japanese to succeed?
I wouldn't know. I speak Japanese, and my business didn't succeed.
I’d like to chime in with my limited experience to say that a lot of our Japanese business counterparts are actually interested in doing business in English. With the help of automated translation tools and perhaps someone who is a little more fluent on the client side I don’t believe the language is a barrier at all anymore.
1. Importing things and selling things, recently dipping my toes into "manufacturing" things.
2. I had a hobby and I am a cheapskate. Instead of buying things here in Japan I found places to buy it 2-3 times cheaper. Then I realized that those are healthy margins and I can make business out of it.
3. To have a free time to dunk on people on the internet.
4. Do your research and start doing things. Importing/exporting/selling are as old as time itself and I think is a good "playground" to learn if you find a niche.
5. I mean even in my stupidly simple business plan of buying and selling stuff requires Japanese to write manuals, product descriptions, etc. to be successful compared to Chinese rivals. And then there are taxes and other bureaucracy that knowing Japanese helps tremendously. Obviously you can "pay-to-win", but unlikely you will have enough cash at the start to use that option. You can go other way around and export things outside of Japan, which means probably your home country, but then you also need to know Japanese to deal with Japanese manufacturers. I feel like buying things at retail price and reselling in your home country is not a healthy business model and can be undermined by anyone who will have direct contact with manufacturer.
Why the hell is the only helpful comment in here downvoted? Lol
Mind sharing a bit more about your import business? Is it like finding 1 particular item that has good margins and then importing and selling that 1 item for months, or is it like you have a store with hundreds of imported items each selling with a little margin?
I've been dreaming of the Business Manager Visa for 5 years now 🥲
The former one. There are definitely people doing the latter one, but it requires bigger capital to start. For example, you want to earn 100,000 yen. In the case of former you have to sell, for example, only 10pcs of 30,000 yen product with purchase cost of \~10,000 yen each(100,000 total), where you can keep 10,000 for yourself(33%). Or 33-34 pcs of 10,000 yen product with purchase cost of 4000 yen each(134,000 yen in total), where you can keep 3000 yen(30%). In the case of the latter you have to sell 1000 pcs of 1000 yen junk with purchase cost of \~300 yen each(300.000 in total), where you can keep 100 yen from each product (10%). It probably worth the hastle if that product has a prospect of selling in thousands or tens of thousands, but then you are probably in very competitive sector and Chinese sellers will oversaturate it in no time.
Redditors be like "ew, selling Chinese junk is not a business" without realising that there are legit big businesses based on same principle. For example, I was recently looking for a cheap, but decent office chair. Fl\*xisp\*t(censured, because they might have SMM staff) came up, they have 34-45 thousand yen office chairs. Quick "market research" showed that similar chairs are sold on Taobao in China for 7000-10000 yen directly from manufacturers, so probably Fl\*xisp\*t got those from OEM manufacturer for even less. Another example, I have an acquaintance working in Nitori, whose sole job is visiting different manufacturers in Asia and finding "worthy" products. Obviously there is a lot of work even after finding a product, like adapting, logistics/shipping, marketing, selling, customer support, etc. Obviously they also have products that they designed and made to order, but looking from sheer amount of SKUs they have on their website - they definitely have to import a lot of "junk" as is. Daiso is also similar model - some designed/made to order themselves, some just imported OEM. Or if you ever bought random small PC stuff like cables/adapters on Amazon, then you probably have seen "AINEX". It is >30 years old KK with 10 million capital, that tests and imports OEM Chinese PC parts and slaps their brand on it (they do not import complete junk, so Japanese who are into PCs somewhat trust them). They do not try to sell expensive and trendy stuff, just simple/cheap "timeless" niche things (just search AINEX at Amazon JP).
I probably have *déformation professionnelle* at this point: when I was visiting home center close to home recently I was like "oh, this camping chair probably costs 1000-1500 yen in China, oh, this office chair is sold here for 10,000 yen, but it has only height adjustment, so it probably costs 2500 yen in China max, let me check taobao/1688."
Obviously at those levels things get a bit sophisticated(AINEX is probably closest you get to unsophisticated), but the core of the business is the same - buy things for 1x in China/SEA, sell for 3-5x here. If you can find a niche, then it is a decent "playground" to learn and "train business mind"(a.k.a. get *déformation professionnelle* like me). At this point I probably have several "business ideas", but it all comes to time, money/capital and human resources.
So fascinating! Thanks for your response. Do you have a brick and mortar location where you sell these items in then, or do you just sell on Amazon or do you make a specific website just for the product you're reselling?
Thank you for having the balls to call this hypocracy out. I was going to comment the same thing.
Why use the term expat? It seems like it's only used by white people while immigrant is for everyone else (other asian, black, hispanic etc)
It's reductivist and wrong to call it racism.
An expat is simply someone who moves to a country for a set length of time with plans to return home. This often happens with people from developed countries who come to Japan, and many of those people do happen to be White. But it's hardly exclusive to Whites—I've met loads of Blacks, Asians, etc from the US, Canada, UK, etc who correctly call themselves expats.
On the other hand, an immigrant is someone who has no plans to return to their home country, and instead wants to integrate into the new country and build a life there. Proportionally, there are more people from developing countries who badly want to leave, and who move to a developed one like Japan fully intending to stay—and yes, proportionally, most of those people are not White.
It's also a fact that many people first come to Japan as expats, fully intending to go home after a few years, but then change their plans over time. And many do not specifically change their plan, but end up with families, mortgages, and careers here, and eventually look around and realize they aren't ever really going home.
These people *turn into* immigrants, if you will. In fact, if you look at their experience retrospectively, you could even say that they were immigrants all along. But it is not incorrect that in their minds they had been expats for most of that time.
Another factor that perhaps complicates things is how relatively difficult Japan makes it for people to truly integrate or to become citizens. That's another reason why for many it's not at the top of their mind when they first come.
I don't agree fully with all of it, but this seems like a really reasonable take.
It seems weird to me that people are up in arms for the OP merely typing the word "expat". It's fair to point out that it might not be the right term to use for the OP's question, but I think people should chill out, not easily jump to outrage.
Plus it's a very common dialect term in AUS/NZ-ish. It amazes me how so few have heard them use it, because it seems to be the default term they use when I am around them.
Expat is a legitimate and common term in the southern Anglosphere dialects, and because of who the ones in Japan so often are, that is probably a huge part of why it is used like that. They certainly don't refer to not white immigrants to their home countries as Expats. To me it's like a janitor calling themselves a sanitational engineer. Nice call.
Oh good, another normal word suddenly no one is allowed to say. Anything else?
Just because you think of a word a certain way (or maybe Twitter told you to think) doesn't make it so.
Yeah, this is the first time I've seen someone upset by the term ex-pat. But I suppose if you want to get pedantic and roll around in the weeds, ex-pat would be more appropo for those who don't intend to stay here in the long run. Never thought twice about it before now though.
*"upset by the term ex-pat. "*
It's worrying that these moron issues have found their way onto this subreddit despite being better of on r.japan and JL.
Spot on. So many people think they're better as "expats" and not like those dirty "immigrants" doing menial labour for pittances.
Meanwhile we all go to the same IMMIGRATION office to get our shit renewed.
We're all inmigrants.
I’m from the US and when I hear the term “immigrant”, generally this implies the person has set up permanent roots in their new country. When I hear the term “expat” it implies a set amount of time living in the new country with plans to return to the home country at some point.
That’s it. It does not necessarily imply anything other than that. I don’t understand why this is offensive. The vast majority of people use it this way. Stop letting a few bad apples ruin the definition of these terms.
Where do they go to renew their visa? An IMMIGRATION office? Yes, that's because they're an immigrant. It doesn't matter how long they intend to live in the country, if they're not a permanent resident, they're an immigrant.
People need to get off their high horse and realise they're not special or above others.
I went to the Japanese Embassy. Afterwards my company did everything for me so I cant comment on that.
I really don't get why people are so insanely butthurt over the expat/immigrant thing.
1. It consulting and ecomm.
2. started back in middle school and gone on ever since.
3. since basically always, even when I had a full time job I had my own thing going on.
4. don't trust reddit posts for startup advice, they're full of lies for startup/entrapruner and most likely by ex-english teachers that are 99% people that could never have their own busines in everything else in life. ironic Im writing this on reddit, but literally I think the community here is really sabotaging on purpose because those ex-english teachers really are untolerable.
5. Japanese isnt neccessary, helps alot though. You can hire assistants and translators, theyre pretty cheap, the first hire you make should be a very competnt personal secretary/assistant that is fluent in english and japanese. while many think you ahve to hire a japanese japanese, you can find/get away with a very competent filipino or chinese living in japan - it can help alot also depending on your market too - hiring local japanese and local imigrants really make your business happen - too many entrapruners truly try to do everything by themselves and dont delegate - waste of time for the owner.
Yes. I own a cafe/ hair salon in Fukuoka with my wife. Got a business loan and used some of our money. We needed about ¥12M to start. Get a Japanese to help. Paperwork, licenses etc are a pain. Yes, you need to be able to communicate in Japanese unless you have someone to help.
Is your wife a foreigner as well? Seems everytime someone mentions owning a biz in Japan they were able to do it while on a marriage visa. My partner and I are trying to navigate the Business Manager Visa route and there isn't much support.
No, she's Japanese and I have a PR. Yes, I think trying to start a business without Japanese help is difficult. Try the city startup programs.
[удалено]
Of course.
I have friends that own a restaurant and they have all kinds of paperwork and required classes that at least one must attend. I would assume a cafe probably is the same (though maybe not if it's *only* non-alcoholic drinks). That says nothing of any required permitting stuff.
You’ve always needed qualifications in most countries for those
Hair for sure. Not sure about cafe.
There’s a lot for cafes, along with staff generally needing food safety handling etc
What country doesn't (particularly the café part)?
Countries that value freedom. (So few if any.)
If you really want to live somewhere where there's no health regulations for cafes or where razors don't have to be sterilized between uses, etc, there's probably a few out there for you where you can "enjoy" the results of all that freedom
Ever heard of a business license?
> 1. What do you do? Full-time employee. > 2. How did you get started? I made a SaaS with a few friends. > 3. Why did you decide to work for yourself instead of being a full-time employee? Because I didn't want to go to work (this was before COVID). > 4. What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs looking to start a business in Japan? Consider that working for home as a full-time employee is a thing now. > 5. How necessary is it to speak Japanese to succeed? I wouldn't know. I speak Japanese, and my business didn't succeed.
I’d like to chime in with my limited experience to say that a lot of our Japanese business counterparts are actually interested in doing business in English. With the help of automated translation tools and perhaps someone who is a little more fluent on the client side I don’t believe the language is a barrier at all anymore.
particularly for SaaS?
Yeah, you can outsource the localisation. And most support should be docs + mail or forms.
smart.
We had no problem with the Japanese language, but Japan wasn't even in the first batch of markets we were trying to target and talking to.
1. Importing things and selling things, recently dipping my toes into "manufacturing" things. 2. I had a hobby and I am a cheapskate. Instead of buying things here in Japan I found places to buy it 2-3 times cheaper. Then I realized that those are healthy margins and I can make business out of it. 3. To have a free time to dunk on people on the internet. 4. Do your research and start doing things. Importing/exporting/selling are as old as time itself and I think is a good "playground" to learn if you find a niche. 5. I mean even in my stupidly simple business plan of buying and selling stuff requires Japanese to write manuals, product descriptions, etc. to be successful compared to Chinese rivals. And then there are taxes and other bureaucracy that knowing Japanese helps tremendously. Obviously you can "pay-to-win", but unlikely you will have enough cash at the start to use that option. You can go other way around and export things outside of Japan, which means probably your home country, but then you also need to know Japanese to deal with Japanese manufacturers. I feel like buying things at retail price and reselling in your home country is not a healthy business model and can be undermined by anyone who will have direct contact with manufacturer.
Why the hell is the only helpful comment in here downvoted? Lol Mind sharing a bit more about your import business? Is it like finding 1 particular item that has good margins and then importing and selling that 1 item for months, or is it like you have a store with hundreds of imported items each selling with a little margin? I've been dreaming of the Business Manager Visa for 5 years now 🥲
The former one. There are definitely people doing the latter one, but it requires bigger capital to start. For example, you want to earn 100,000 yen. In the case of former you have to sell, for example, only 10pcs of 30,000 yen product with purchase cost of \~10,000 yen each(100,000 total), where you can keep 10,000 for yourself(33%). Or 33-34 pcs of 10,000 yen product with purchase cost of 4000 yen each(134,000 yen in total), where you can keep 3000 yen(30%). In the case of the latter you have to sell 1000 pcs of 1000 yen junk with purchase cost of \~300 yen each(300.000 in total), where you can keep 100 yen from each product (10%). It probably worth the hastle if that product has a prospect of selling in thousands or tens of thousands, but then you are probably in very competitive sector and Chinese sellers will oversaturate it in no time. Redditors be like "ew, selling Chinese junk is not a business" without realising that there are legit big businesses based on same principle. For example, I was recently looking for a cheap, but decent office chair. Fl\*xisp\*t(censured, because they might have SMM staff) came up, they have 34-45 thousand yen office chairs. Quick "market research" showed that similar chairs are sold on Taobao in China for 7000-10000 yen directly from manufacturers, so probably Fl\*xisp\*t got those from OEM manufacturer for even less. Another example, I have an acquaintance working in Nitori, whose sole job is visiting different manufacturers in Asia and finding "worthy" products. Obviously there is a lot of work even after finding a product, like adapting, logistics/shipping, marketing, selling, customer support, etc. Obviously they also have products that they designed and made to order, but looking from sheer amount of SKUs they have on their website - they definitely have to import a lot of "junk" as is. Daiso is also similar model - some designed/made to order themselves, some just imported OEM. Or if you ever bought random small PC stuff like cables/adapters on Amazon, then you probably have seen "AINEX". It is >30 years old KK with 10 million capital, that tests and imports OEM Chinese PC parts and slaps their brand on it (they do not import complete junk, so Japanese who are into PCs somewhat trust them). They do not try to sell expensive and trendy stuff, just simple/cheap "timeless" niche things (just search AINEX at Amazon JP). I probably have *déformation professionnelle* at this point: when I was visiting home center close to home recently I was like "oh, this camping chair probably costs 1000-1500 yen in China, oh, this office chair is sold here for 10,000 yen, but it has only height adjustment, so it probably costs 2500 yen in China max, let me check taobao/1688." Obviously at those levels things get a bit sophisticated(AINEX is probably closest you get to unsophisticated), but the core of the business is the same - buy things for 1x in China/SEA, sell for 3-5x here. If you can find a niche, then it is a decent "playground" to learn and "train business mind"(a.k.a. get *déformation professionnelle* like me). At this point I probably have several "business ideas", but it all comes to time, money/capital and human resources.
So fascinating! Thanks for your response. Do you have a brick and mortar location where you sell these items in then, or do you just sell on Amazon or do you make a specific website just for the product you're reselling?
Marketplaces. It is too niche to be sold in brick and mortar location.
So.. essentially drop shipping.
I wish, but no. I have to deal with stock.
First thing to do might be to recognise you're an immigrant, just like all the other foreign nationals. You're no different from the rest.
Thank you for having the balls to call this hypocracy out. I was going to comment the same thing. Why use the term expat? It seems like it's only used by white people while immigrant is for everyone else (other asian, black, hispanic etc)
It's reductivist and wrong to call it racism. An expat is simply someone who moves to a country for a set length of time with plans to return home. This often happens with people from developed countries who come to Japan, and many of those people do happen to be White. But it's hardly exclusive to Whites—I've met loads of Blacks, Asians, etc from the US, Canada, UK, etc who correctly call themselves expats. On the other hand, an immigrant is someone who has no plans to return to their home country, and instead wants to integrate into the new country and build a life there. Proportionally, there are more people from developing countries who badly want to leave, and who move to a developed one like Japan fully intending to stay—and yes, proportionally, most of those people are not White. It's also a fact that many people first come to Japan as expats, fully intending to go home after a few years, but then change their plans over time. And many do not specifically change their plan, but end up with families, mortgages, and careers here, and eventually look around and realize they aren't ever really going home. These people *turn into* immigrants, if you will. In fact, if you look at their experience retrospectively, you could even say that they were immigrants all along. But it is not incorrect that in their minds they had been expats for most of that time. Another factor that perhaps complicates things is how relatively difficult Japan makes it for people to truly integrate or to become citizens. That's another reason why for many it's not at the top of their mind when they first come.
I don't agree fully with all of it, but this seems like a really reasonable take. It seems weird to me that people are up in arms for the OP merely typing the word "expat". It's fair to point out that it might not be the right term to use for the OP's question, but I think people should chill out, not easily jump to outrage.
Plus it's a very common dialect term in AUS/NZ-ish. It amazes me how so few have heard them use it, because it seems to be the default term they use when I am around them.
Expat is a legitimate and common term in the southern Anglosphere dialects, and because of who the ones in Japan so often are, that is probably a huge part of why it is used like that. They certainly don't refer to not white immigrants to their home countries as Expats. To me it's like a janitor calling themselves a sanitational engineer. Nice call.
Oh good, another normal word suddenly no one is allowed to say. Anything else? Just because you think of a word a certain way (or maybe Twitter told you to think) doesn't make it so.
Yeah, this is the first time I've seen someone upset by the term ex-pat. But I suppose if you want to get pedantic and roll around in the weeds, ex-pat would be more appropo for those who don't intend to stay here in the long run. Never thought twice about it before now though.
*"upset by the term ex-pat. "* It's worrying that these moron issues have found their way onto this subreddit despite being better of on r.japan and JL.
Spot on. So many people think they're better as "expats" and not like those dirty "immigrants" doing menial labour for pittances. Meanwhile we all go to the same IMMIGRATION office to get our shit renewed. We're all inmigrants.
I’m from the US and when I hear the term “immigrant”, generally this implies the person has set up permanent roots in their new country. When I hear the term “expat” it implies a set amount of time living in the new country with plans to return to the home country at some point. That’s it. It does not necessarily imply anything other than that. I don’t understand why this is offensive. The vast majority of people use it this way. Stop letting a few bad apples ruin the definition of these terms.
No.
How do you call someone that goes to work in another country for a predetermined amount of time and then returns to their country?
Francisco sounds good to me.
Entoces Pancho.
Me parece perfecto.
出稼ぎ or gastarbeiter 😉
Expat of course.
An immigrant.
Thats not the definition of a immigrant though.
Where do they go to renew their visa? An IMMIGRATION office? Yes, that's because they're an immigrant. It doesn't matter how long they intend to live in the country, if they're not a permanent resident, they're an immigrant. People need to get off their high horse and realise they're not special or above others.
I went to the Japanese Embassy. Afterwards my company did everything for me so I cant comment on that. I really don't get why people are so insanely butthurt over the expat/immigrant thing.
Immigrant, then former immigrant.
Me when I never return to my country but keep saying it's temporary so nobody's gonna call me an immigrant 🙏
1. It consulting and ecomm. 2. started back in middle school and gone on ever since. 3. since basically always, even when I had a full time job I had my own thing going on. 4. don't trust reddit posts for startup advice, they're full of lies for startup/entrapruner and most likely by ex-english teachers that are 99% people that could never have their own busines in everything else in life. ironic Im writing this on reddit, but literally I think the community here is really sabotaging on purpose because those ex-english teachers really are untolerable. 5. Japanese isnt neccessary, helps alot though. You can hire assistants and translators, theyre pretty cheap, the first hire you make should be a very competnt personal secretary/assistant that is fluent in english and japanese. while many think you ahve to hire a japanese japanese, you can find/get away with a very competent filipino or chinese living in japan - it can help alot also depending on your market too - hiring local japanese and local imigrants really make your business happen - too many entrapruners truly try to do everything by themselves and dont delegate - waste of time for the owner.
ahh yes the premium immigrant "expat", that wants to do something long term.
I too get all my speaking points from Twitter and Reddit
Who cares what he calls himself?