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A large number of Airbnb hosts were using this Business Manager Visa as a way to stay in Japan. People in China realized they could just buy/lease a guesthouse

A large number of Airbnb hosts were using this Business Manager Visa as a way to stay in Japan. People in China realized they could just buy/lease a guesthouse in Osaka / any tourist hotspot, and rent it out on Airbnb. Then they become a "business manager" and get a Japanese resident visa within 3 months. All you needed is to invest 5million yen, which is like 31k USD, which isn't much. People wrote entire online guides on how to do this. They even had brokers/agents helping people with the process [0]. Approximately half of all business manager visas went to Chinese nationals. In Osaka, 41% of all short-term rentals were operated by Chinese individuals [1]. The visa practically turned into an Airbnb host visa. It's not surprising at all that Japan made the rules stricter. [0] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/06/05/japan/immigration-business-visas/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/06/05/japan/immigrati... [1] https://chinatravelnews.com/article/186285/ https://chinatravelnews.com/article/186285/

beefmumbai 4mo ago
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missingdays 4mo ago
A guesthouse in Osaka is 31k USD?
- Reubachi 4mo ago
  The visa requires licensing/registrations and token investments, all aside from the cost of purchasing a home in Osaka.
  - cucumber3732842 4mo ago
    >all aside from the cost of purchasing a home in Osaka Which they were almost certainly divvying up. A bunch of people invest $32k each. Some management company buys the home, pays them all a cut of airBNB proceeds, etc. You don't "do" anything beyond put up $32k for your $31k piece of paper.
    - mytailorisrich 4mo ago
      > Which they were almost certainly divvying up If I had to guess, I'd say probably not in most cases. A lot of Chinese are cash rich (perhaps not on average but with 1.3 billion people the absolute number is large compared to other countries) and want to invest abroad, and are buying properties all over the place. Another piece of evidence is the huge number of Chinese students in UK universities (from my experience) although the tuition fee alone is about £35k ($46k) a year.
- tristanj 4mo ago
  5 million yen is the company capital requirement. They would form a company, invest 5 million yen into it, then the company would lease an apartment and rent it out on Airbnb. Rent would cost ¥60,000–120,000/month, they would list it on Airbnb for ¥20,000/night, then assuming 50% occupancy the return is ~¥200,000/month. It was very profitable. The payback period for the ¥5 million was 1.5 - 2 years.
  - decimalenough 4mo ago
    Also, the capital stays with the company! Wind down the company and (if it was profitable) you get your capital back.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- whizzter 4mo ago
  Iirc there's a scrap-n-build culture in Japan, houses are not really valued compared to land (due earthquake, quality, culture,etc).
fc417fc802 4mo ago
I feel like letting people buy their way in to visas is actually a pretty good system from a strictly pragmatic standpoint but 5 million yen seems far too low.
- torben-friis 4mo ago
  >I feel like letting people buy their way in to visas is actually a pretty good system That depends of what you're hoping to prevent. If you want to filter out people who can't sustain themselves, petty crime or the like, it works. But it can open the door to a lot of unwanted effects. A foreign national that just extracts capital by capturing real state and collecting rent is a great example, this person is a large net loss for the country.
  - rwmj 4mo ago
    > A [person] that just extracts capital by capturing real state and collecting rent is a great example, this person is a large net loss for the country. Even to their home country.
    - junon 4mo ago
      Genuine question: how so? I'm not familiar with the economics of this.
      - embedding-shape 4mo ago
        The general feedback loop is "have lots of money === easier to make more money", and doing so via passive approaches like "own property, rent it out" basically spirals out of control to a few owning a lot, unless you try to restrict it somehow. Add in that "vacation rentals" is hugely interesting for real estate owners as you get so much more per owned property, and suddenly local residents are even harder hit by property not being available even for long-term rent anymore. Final drop being that the real estate owner doesn't even live, work or spend their money in the country of the property itself, and suddenly it's basically all downside for the country and the people living there.
shevy-java 4mo ago
It's not just business related though - Japan has gotten more hostile to foreigners. And no, it is not restricted only to chinese foreigners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGAmKqTWjxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGAmKqTWjxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXLOsYTfl7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXLOsYTfl7k (These two videos are quite recent at the time of writing this here.) Don't get fooled by the deliberate (but misleading) title(s). This is a narration of more and more restrictions coming. So the article here also taps into this 1:1. In some ways it reminds me of Nigel Farage in the UK, though in Japan it is not quite as tied to an individual person.
hirako2000 4mo ago
And how are they not managerial, entrepreneur, doing business ? Is there something illegitimate in doing an activity that yield profit when the national is Chinese ? Or when it's a short term let ? Or when it is something that doesn't directly contributed to innovation benefiting the nation ?
- embedding-shape 4mo ago
  I don't think it's "illegitimate" as such, just parasitic behaviour the world probably needs less of. They buy up real estate, then rent it out, living in another country, basically just extracting wealth, and while it's legal, it's still lazy and kind of despicable behaviour from a "we're all humans on this planet" perspective. From the perspective of Japanese people, you see foreigners coming to where you live and strictly making things worse, not better. But of course if we limit our perspective to an economic one, then it seems like a wise and sound approach to "escaping the hamster wheel" for the average Chinese person, easy money right? I think people in Japan probably don't have that perspective though, but instead look at the tail-effects of allowing that sort of behavior. That's why they changed the rules probably.
  - hirako2000 4mo ago
    I don't disagree with certain occupations being more parasitic than others, but most jobs can be deemed parasitic. In a fair market "lazy" jobs can't exist or someone else would do it at a better price. Short term let entrepreneurs are just doing arbitrage, because there is a need for it. What you see as making things worse for some which is true, is also making things better for many others. Fix the system, rather than cracking down on foreigners doing what you may then tolerate locals to do.
- bombcar 4mo ago
  It’s the difference between setting up a system to encourage investment and hoping for a factory, or at least a large department store, and instead getting a DataCenter that employs 30 people total.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
timr 4mo ago
Yep. There was also a proliferation of Indian restaurants in the major cities, for the same basic reason. (Though I have to say that seems like a much harder road than operating a guesthouse for people from your own country, which is what I presume was the Chinese approach.) Since you can bring in relatives on this kind of visa, I’ve heard the expression “One curry pot equals three people”. There have been stories in the Japanese press about long-time restauranteurs being shut down by the new rules.
- rayiner 4mo ago
  > Since you can bring in relatives on this kind of visa, I’ve heard the expression “One curry pot equals three people”. Family reunification is a gaping loophole in any skilled immigration law and developed countries need to seriously limit it. The New York Times did a good podcast on how uncapped family reunification ended up being a loophole that totally overturned all the limits and compromises in the 1965 immigration reform laws in the U.S.: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/election-immigration.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...
  - modo_mario 4mo ago
    Same in belgium. It's almost if not the biggest source of migration.
  - timr 4mo ago
    > Family reunification is a gaping loophole in any skilled immigration law and developed countries need to seriously limit it. I don’t know if I’d go that far. I tend to think it’s kind of cruel to separate families indefinitely in the name of labor, but I do see that restrictions are necessary to prevent abuse. There’s an entire spectrum of reasonable debate here.
    - rayiner 4mo ago
      It's not about "abuse." It's that family reunification undermines the filters that are at the heart of every immigration law. My dad came over from Bangladesh on an H1 and he's the guy you put on the brochure when you market skilled visa programs to voters. He's a public health expert who had a job in-hand in the U.S. And he moved his kids to a neighborhood without any other Bangladeshis and raised us without any foreign attachments or sympathies. Because that's the kind of person who self-selects into leaving everything behind to undertake an arduous immigration process. But none of those filters apply to family reunification. You don't need skills, you don't need a job. You're making much less of a sacrifice in terms of leaving your family behind, since by definition you already have family in the U.S. You can move into an enclave with people from your country and live your life and raise your kids the same way you were doing back home. You just enjoy the benefits of living in a richer country. The result of all that is you end up with this bizarre system where you apply intensive screening to select 65,000 H1Bs, 19,000 O-1s, etc. But then you hand out hundreds of thousands of greencards to people who meet no criteria other than having family who is already here.

beefmumbai 4mo ago

[dead]

missingdays 4mo ago

A guesthouse in Osaka is 31k USD?

Reubachi 4mo ago
The visa requires licensing/registrations and token investments, all aside from the cost of purchasing a home in Osaka.
- cucumber3732842 4mo ago
  >all aside from the cost of purchasing a home in Osaka Which they were almost certainly divvying up. A bunch of people invest $32k each. Some management company buys the home, pays them all a cut of airBNB proceeds, etc. You don't "do" anything beyond put up $32k for your $31k piece of paper.
  - mytailorisrich 4mo ago
    > Which they were almost certainly divvying up If I had to guess, I'd say probably not in most cases. A lot of Chinese are cash rich (perhaps not on average but with 1.3 billion people the absolute number is large compared to other countries) and want to invest abroad, and are buying properties all over the place. Another piece of evidence is the huge number of Chinese students in UK universities (from my experience) although the tuition fee alone is about £35k ($46k) a year.
tristanj 4mo ago
5 million yen is the company capital requirement. They would form a company, invest 5 million yen into it, then the company would lease an apartment and rent it out on Airbnb. Rent would cost ¥60,000–120,000/month, they would list it on Airbnb for ¥20,000/night, then assuming 50% occupancy the return is ~¥200,000/month. It was very profitable. The payback period for the ¥5 million was 1.5 - 2 years.
- decimalenough 4mo ago
  Also, the capital stays with the company! Wind down the company and (if it was profitable) you get your capital back.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
whizzter 4mo ago
Iirc there's a scrap-n-build culture in Japan, houses are not really valued compared to land (due earthquake, quality, culture,etc).

fc417fc802 4mo ago

I feel like letting people buy their way in to visas is actually a pretty good system from a strictly pragmatic standpoint but 5 million yen seems far too low.

torben-friis 4mo ago
>I feel like letting people buy their way in to visas is actually a pretty good system That depends of what you're hoping to prevent. If you want to filter out people who can't sustain themselves, petty crime or the like, it works. But it can open the door to a lot of unwanted effects. A foreign national that just extracts capital by capturing real state and collecting rent is a great example, this person is a large net loss for the country.
- rwmj 4mo ago
  > A [person] that just extracts capital by capturing real state and collecting rent is a great example, this person is a large net loss for the country. Even to their home country.
  - junon 4mo ago
    Genuine question: how so? I'm not familiar with the economics of this.
    - embedding-shape 4mo ago
      The general feedback loop is "have lots of money === easier to make more money", and doing so via passive approaches like "own property, rent it out" basically spirals out of control to a few owning a lot, unless you try to restrict it somehow. Add in that "vacation rentals" is hugely interesting for real estate owners as you get so much more per owned property, and suddenly local residents are even harder hit by property not being available even for long-term rent anymore. Final drop being that the real estate owner doesn't even live, work or spend their money in the country of the property itself, and suddenly it's basically all downside for the country and the people living there.

shevy-java 4mo ago

It's not just business related though - Japan has gotten more hostile to foreigners. And no, it is not restricted only to chinese foreigners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGAmKqTWjxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGAmKqTWjxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXLOsYTfl7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXLOsYTfl7k (These two videos are quite recent at the time of writing this here.) Don't get fooled by the deliberate (but misleading) title(s). This is a narration of more and more restrictions coming. So the article here also taps into this 1:1. In some ways it reminds me of Nigel Farage in the UK, though in Japan it is not quite as tied to an individual person.

hirako2000 4mo ago

And how are they not managerial, entrepreneur, doing business ? Is there something illegitimate in doing an activity that yield profit when the national is Chinese ? Or when it's a short term let ? Or when it is something that doesn't directly contributed to innovation benefiting the nation ?

embedding-shape 4mo ago
I don't think it's "illegitimate" as such, just parasitic behaviour the world probably needs less of. They buy up real estate, then rent it out, living in another country, basically just extracting wealth, and while it's legal, it's still lazy and kind of despicable behaviour from a "we're all humans on this planet" perspective. From the perspective of Japanese people, you see foreigners coming to where you live and strictly making things worse, not better. But of course if we limit our perspective to an economic one, then it seems like a wise and sound approach to "escaping the hamster wheel" for the average Chinese person, easy money right? I think people in Japan probably don't have that perspective though, but instead look at the tail-effects of allowing that sort of behavior. That's why they changed the rules probably.
- hirako2000 4mo ago
  I don't disagree with certain occupations being more parasitic than others, but most jobs can be deemed parasitic. In a fair market "lazy" jobs can't exist or someone else would do it at a better price. Short term let entrepreneurs are just doing arbitrage, because there is a need for it. What you see as making things worse for some which is true, is also making things better for many others. Fix the system, rather than cracking down on foreigners doing what you may then tolerate locals to do.
bombcar 4mo ago
It’s the difference between setting up a system to encourage investment and hoping for a factory, or at least a large department store, and instead getting a DataCenter that employs 30 people total.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

timr 4mo ago

Yep. There was also a proliferation of Indian restaurants in the major cities, for the same basic reason. (Though I have to say that seems like a much harder road than operating a guesthouse for people from your own country, which is what I presume was the Chinese approach.) Since you can bring in relatives on this kind of visa, I’ve heard the expression “One curry pot equals three people”. There have been stories in the Japanese press about long-time restauranteurs being shut down by the new rules.

rayiner 4mo ago
> Since you can bring in relatives on this kind of visa, I’ve heard the expression “One curry pot equals three people”. Family reunification is a gaping loophole in any skilled immigration law and developed countries need to seriously limit it. The New York Times did a good podcast on how uncapped family reunification ended up being a loophole that totally overturned all the limits and compromises in the 1965 immigration reform laws in the U.S.: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/election-immigration.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...
- modo_mario 4mo ago
  Same in belgium. It's almost if not the biggest source of migration.
- timr 4mo ago
  > Family reunification is a gaping loophole in any skilled immigration law and developed countries need to seriously limit it. I don’t know if I’d go that far. I tend to think it’s kind of cruel to separate families indefinitely in the name of labor, but I do see that restrictions are necessary to prevent abuse. There’s an entire spectrum of reasonable debate here.
  - rayiner 4mo ago
    It's not about "abuse." It's that family reunification undermines the filters that are at the heart of every immigration law. My dad came over from Bangladesh on an H1 and he's the guy you put on the brochure when you market skilled visa programs to voters. He's a public health expert who had a job in-hand in the U.S. And he moved his kids to a neighborhood without any other Bangladeshis and raised us without any foreign attachments or sympathies. Because that's the kind of person who self-selects into leaving everything behind to undertake an arduous immigration process. But none of those filters apply to family reunification. You don't need skills, you don't need a job. You're making much less of a sacrifice in terms of leaving your family behind, since by definition you already have family in the U.S. You can move into an enclave with people from your country and live your life and raise your kids the same way you were doing back home. You just enjoy the benefits of living in a richer country. The result of all that is you end up with this bizarre system where you apply intensive screening to select 65,000 H1Bs, 19,000 O-1s, etc. But then you hand out hundreds of thousands of greencards to people who meet no criteria other than having family who is already here.