I've been dealing with setting up a corporation over the past few months and have some quick (5am) comments on a few of these points from the article. Hopefully

I've been dealing with setting up a corporation over the past few months and have some quick (5am) comments on a few of these points from the article. Hopefully this is helpful to anyone considering doing business in Japan. > Tokyo One-Stop Business Establishment Center (TOSBEC) This resource is great and underutilized in Tokyo in the international business scene from my experience. I've been doing my part to recommend it far and wide, as it is very helpful with solid English support. > Corporate bank account I finished setting up my corporation in Japan in April, and it is now essentially December and I do not have a corporate bank account yet. Getting denied many times from various banks, always being told that they cannot tell us the reason why due to "policy". also, it can take anywhere from three to five weeks to process your application. My accountant, lawyer, etc cannot quite figure it out for certain. It recently came down to a few potential factors around me not being on the business manager visa (on another work visa), even though we've seen success doing it as that before. Banking has been my biggest holdup thus far. > Private office to secure a visa from your own business, you need a private office. You must have a private door, with your company name listed on it. there are multiple businesses which support this around the city, but you will pay at least 600 USD per month for a shoebox office with no windows or AC control, if you want to be in a reasonable neighborhood. There is also a semi-requirement that your bank must be within 5 km of your headquarters, AKA your office. So if you will be going there frequently, which you probably will be since online banking here is practically useless, you will not want to be traveling far. So, you will be spending 600 USD per month on an office. You will also be spending 2,000 to 3,000 USD per year on an accountant to handle your corporate taxes. the standard rate for setting up a corporation, is around 4,500 USD to 5,500 USD. If you can't read Japanese kanji forms, which is all you are going to find that many banks and most government offices offer, you're going to need to pay a translator. If you are sponsoring your own visa, you need to deposit at least 50,000 USD into your bank account to support your visa. This money can be used elsewhere after it has been deposited, but is still a hurdle for some. You are looking at a minimum of 15,000 to 20,000 USD for setting up a corporation over your first year, assuming you follow the standard path (excluding the 50k deposit) I've been doing my best to document everything along the way during this process, and it is not over yet. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you have more questions or a curious about more details.