Tourist Visa Foxtrot

[Taro Toporific]

Simple question, oh wise and weathered gaijin: how many times can I enter and re-enter Japan on a tourist visa?

How much money do you have?
How many times can you repeat the procedure until you decide you need a real job? You can get tourist visa extentions if you claim you want to visit Kyoto, Nara, Hakaido, Bum-fvck Shima, etc. You'll get a 90 day landing (tourist) visa at immigration which you can extend for a further 90 days at any immigration office within Japan. Just tell them you want to travel more in Japan and do more siteseeing. They may want to see proof that you have enough funds to keep you going for another 90 days before they issuse your extension.

PLEASE NOTE: Japanese landlords and stores do not accept frequent flyer credits en lieu of yen.

What's the law?

Wrong idea.
Japan does not have visa "laws", only "guidelines".

More than two renewals is "basically prohibited", but your mileage may differ.
I have met people who have claimed to have worked in Japan for seven years on a tourist visa (press guys working out of Hongkong to take advantage of lower income taxes). The third and subsequent entries after a "visa foxtrot" to another country of a couple of days are suspicious from an immigration inspector's point of view and increase your chances of being denied entry.

Of course you could just call Immigration and ask...
http://www.moj.go.jp/ENGLISH/IB/ib-18.html
http://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/visa/index.html

[American Oyaji]

I have a friend that did this. He would go to Korea and back out of Misawa.
However he had a military spousal ID, but his wife was in Germany. He had ID and passport with SOFA stamp so no questions.

[Taro Toporific]

Basically, if a company isn't willing to sponsor your visa, they're not worth working for.

Problem is many big companies such as Hitachi do not sponsor visas*--they only hire aliens with a "Pet License" (spouse visa).


*In such large companies, it is the poor bucho who hires an FG who will be forced to do the sponsoring, not the company itself.

[kamome]

To do it legally and without hassle, you need a special re-entry permit, which cannot be obtained without a proper working visa. Using tourist visas for re-entry is risky business.

[Steve Bildermann]

[Steve Bildermann]

Undercover immigration officials display captured Australian salmon who overstayed their tourist visa.

[Taro Toporific]

Undercover immigration officials display captured Australian salmon who overstayed their tourist visa.

Nice Santas!
Hey, check out this flock-of-USO..

In Japan the presents are brought by 'Hoteiosho' who is very similar to Santa Claus.
Originally 'Hoteiosho' was a priest like St Nicholas. He is described as an old man with a big sack on his back as well. The legend says that 'Hoteiosho' has eyes in the back of his head - so he can keep a special eye on the behaviour of children...

See also...http://www.kaumudijalakam.com/WDANGLE/jan12/Santa1.jpg

[Taro Toporific]

See also...http://www.kaumudijalakam.com/WDANGLE/jan12/Santa1.jpg[/quote]

The collection of Asian faux-Santas is mega-kool on this the root of the above site; scroll down for the good pix:
http://www.kaumudijalakam.com/WDANGLE/jan12/album.htm

[Steve Bildermann]

No. You are detained until you leave. There are several immigration detention centers around the country.

It does not matter if you have a sponsor or even if you got married to a Japanese - you will be detained and you will have to leave.

It happens to Asians working in Japan all the time.

[Steve Bildermann]

I think you can guess what 'detained' means. However detained is a legal way to keep you as long as they want without formal 'arrest' TAIHO.

In effect it's the same thing and many say the conditions are worse because there is little public interest in immigration detention centers.

Here's a little light reading on the subject

http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/ar98/asa22.htm

When you leave Tokyo Detention Centre you are not a human being. If you have a dog in your house you don't treat it like this....They do terrible things - I will never forget what they did to me as long as I live," said an Egyptian man who spoke to Amnesty International after his release. He described how prison guards stripped him naked, kicked him hard in the abdomen and sexually assaulted him with a truncheon, while he was held in solitary confinement in 1994.

Zhou Bizhu, from China, was arrested on 3 March 1997 for holding an expired visa. She was seven weeks pregnant. In the following weeks, she complained repeatedly of abdominal pains related to her pregnancy, but was not given adequate medical attention. On 21 April, she was examined by a gynaecologist, who discovered that the foetus had died. Her foetus was aborted only on 26 April, after she had been granted two weeks' release on medical grounds. She is currently awaiting deportation to China.

and the strange case of GaijinNewbie who told reporters that he just wanted to find out what it was like to be detained after overstaying a tourist visa so he public announced he would do so on a popular forum called F*** Gaijin. Authorities refused coment on his horrendous injuries.