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A rejected visa application and a frantic, 30-day scramble to pack up and leave the country.

That’s the harsh reality for scores of foreign business owners, some of whom have spent the majority of their lives in Japan, under stricter rules for the business manager visa.

Japan has been cracking down on misuse of the business manager visa by significantly tightening criteria for the status. The Immigration Services Agency (ISA) has said that some visa holders have been creating shell companies in order to obtain the visa.

The stricter rules — which have driven applications down 96% — require at least ¥30 million (about $189,000) in capital, one full-time employee and at least N2 on the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test. Before the revision, the minimum capital requirement was ¥5 million, with no criteria for a full-time employee or Japanese proficiency.

With the new criteria, screening periods can now take up to six months. Applicants’ visas, therefore, tend to expire before the ISA comes to a decision, leaving them with limited time to decide what to do next when their application is rejected.

The ISA said a 30-day grace period, granted for those whose applications were denied after their most recent visa expired, remains unchanged before and after the revision. Those whose visas haven’t expired yet can stay in Japan until they expire.

But immigration lawyers say they believe rules are now enforced more strictly than before: Applicants who were previously granted a two-month grace period to remain in Japan and reapply are now being ordered to leave within 30 days, even those who were raised in the country.

“It’s unbelievable compared with how things were handled before,” said Ryoji Tanishima, CEO of Tanishima Legal.

Tanishima said one of his clients, who grew up in Japan with a dependent visa, recently applied for a business manager visa. After the application was denied, the client was instructed to leave Japan within 30 days.

“This is not an isolated case — I’ve heard similar accounts from other immigration lawyers as well,” Tanishima said. “The system has shifted to one that no longer allows reapplications. From what I’m hearing, the business manager visa is being singled out.”

Tanishima is advising such foreign residents to apply for another visa category. Restaurant operators, for example, may qualify for a skilled labor visa, while business owners seeking to remain company executives may be eligible for the white-collared workers’ visa, including engineers, business consultants and interpreters.

“I’ve had clients who no longer qualified for the business manager visa but were able to renew their residence status under a different category this year,” he said.

A last resort option would be to apply for Special Permission to Stay, which may be granted to foreign nationals who are otherwise subject to deportation.

“But this puts clients at risk because they would be applying while they are overstaying their visas and technically preparing for deportation,” Tanishima said. “They’re being told to leave Japan within 30 days, but some say they simply cannot do so because it would mean leaving their children behind.”

In some cases, children can remain in Japan under the dependent residential status until their visas expire while parents must depart within 30 days. Families therefore rush to reapply and seek special permission to stay in order to avoid deportation. If the application is rejected, they face deportation and a five-year reentry ban.

The stricter rules have forced some foreign business owners — especially those of small restaurants run by Indians, Nepalese and South Koreans — to close up shop or transfer ownership.

As of 2024, Chinese nationals held just over half of the 41,615 valid business manager visas issued, at 21,740. The visas had also been issued to 2,830 Nepalese, 2,741 South Koreans and 2,587 Vietnamese.

Desperate appeals from foreign restaurant owners and their Japanese customers, among others, have fueled an online petition that has so far gathered more than 65,000 signatures.

The petition’s organizer, Taro Tsurugashima, 50, submitted it to two ISA officials on May 13, when it had about 53,000 signatures. He launched the campaign after a local Indian restaurant owner, Manish Kumar, had his business manager visa application rejected, forcing him to close his restaurant after 18 years in business. Aware that the petition alone may not lead to policy changes, Tsurugashima and other supporters are consulting lawyers and considering filing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of affected business owners.

Identifying potential plaintiffs has proven difficult, however, as many fear filing a lawsuit would affect their visa applications or lead to harassment from anti-immigration hate groups.

Lawmakers have also questioned how the ISA justified raising the required capital for business manager visas sixfold — from ¥5 million to ¥30 million.

During a Lower House Legal Affairs Committee session on May 8, an agency official said ¥30 million was deemed appropriate because profit-making companies outnumber loss-making firms among corporations with capital between ¥20 million and ¥50 million.

In the same session, however, an Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry official said only 8.7% of Japanese businesses have capital of ¥30 million or more. The ISA further acknowledged that just 4% of business manager visa holders met that threshold as of the end of 2024.

The ISA defended the revision, noting it went through due process, including a consultation with the Immigration Policy Advisory Panel and a 30-day public comment period last August.

How much the ¥5 million capital requirement should be raised was one of the main points of discussion in the advisory panel meeting ahead of the revision.

Midori Okabe, a law professor at Sophia University and one of the panel members, said during the meeting that Japan’s capital requirement for the visa should be raised to the same level of Western countries.

In the United States, applicants for the E-2 Investor Visa must demonstrate ownership of at least 50% of the investment enterprise and show that a substantial investment has been made in — or is actively being made toward — a U.S.-based business. In practice, the required investment is generally considered to be at least $100,000 to $200,000.

South Korea, meanwhile, requires investments of 100 million won (about ¥10 million) for the D-8 corporate investor visa and 300 million won (about ¥30 million) for the D-9 trade management visa.

Okabe had said raising Japan’s threshold merely to match South Korea’s standards would still be insufficient.

Facing rising costs for their own necessities such as rent, groceries, transportation, and home utilities, many consumers are becoming much more sensitive to the value they’re getting with the reduced amount of money they have left over for discretionary spending, and izakaya are looking a lot less appealing to many people than they used to. In particular, Tokyo Shoko Research points out that izakaya offers that include a full meal’s worth of food plus unlimited drinks for a period of time (usually 90 or 120 minutes), traditionally some of their most attractive deals, have gotten more expensive and now often cost more than 5,000 yen, a price point that many diners are balking at.

The study also highlights recent changes in dining/drinking patterns in Japan. Traditionally, izakaya have gotten much of their business from groups of coworkers coming in together. However, those gatherings largely went away during the pandemic, and while many izakaya weathered that economic storm due to financial support from the government, the custom of coworkers going to drink together hasn’t rebounded to its previous level.

Tokyo Shoko Research says that izakaya aren’t drawing in foreign tourists to the same extent that other restaurants in Japan are. The report doesn’t offer any theories as to why this is, but it likely has something to do with international foodies’ passion for Japanese food being strongly focused on specific dishes. While many izakaya do have tasty food, their broad menu makes them a little less likely to hook a traveler’s attention.

Japan's fisheries agency said Tuesday it will launch the world's first sales to the public of eels hatched and fully raised on farms, at a time of global concern about depleted eel populations in the wild.

An online store run by major retailer Aeon Group will carry the product on a trial basis from May 29, charging around 5,000 yen ($31) apiece.

Most eels consumed in Japan are caught at sea early in their life cycle and raised at fish farms. But as the sustainability of wild stocks faces increasing pressure, efforts are underway to commercialize the production of eels using eggs taken from farmed eels.

Fish feed and personnel costs weighed heavily on the venture, but improvements through technological advances have helped reduce production costs drastically.

From a farming cost of roughly 40,000 yen per eel during fiscal 2016, the figure has dropped to about 1,800 yen today, according to the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency. The goal is now to reduce it to around 800 yen, as the current cost is still three to four times higher than farming naturally caught eels.

Amid concerns about the sustainability of eel populations, the government plans to shift the production method so that by 2050, all eels in distribution will be artificially hatched from eggs and raised at fish farms.

Japan's average monthly rice consumption per person fell 6.1 percent to a seven-year low of 4,435 grams in the year ended March 2026, reflecting consumers shifting away from the country's staple food after supply shortages sparked a price surge in recent years, according to rice association data.

The figure was the lowest since fiscal 2018 when the average stood at 4,426 grams, with the decline from the 4,722 grams in fiscal 2024 equivalent to 4.4 bowls of rice, recent data by Rice Stable Supply Support Organization showed.

Among households, comprising 66 percent of the total, consumption fell 8.2 percent to 2,929 grams. The latest results show there is no sign of an end to the downtrend in rice consumption seen in the past decade.

Rice prices began surging around summer in 2024 after extreme summer heat reduced the previous season's harvest, with the average price spiking to over 4,000 yen ($26) per 5 kilograms from around 2,000 yen before the supply shortages.

The price surge pushed consumers to look for alternatives such as noodles, pasta and bread, industry observers said.

Rice prices have since declined as rice production increased in 2025 and are expected to fall further when the 2026 harvest hits store shelves.

"As prices of other food items are rising, it is hard to imagine that consumer interest would rise in purchasing rice (only)," a wholesaler official said.

I think it’s a huge improvement!

Fujinomiya mayor wants people hiking unopened trails to think about someone other than just themselves.

The climbing season for Mt. Fuji runs from early July to early September, but unfortunately the Mt. Fuji hiker rescue season ends up being longer. Every year, a number of hikers ignore the warnings and take to the trails when they’re still officially closed, then end up needing rescue teams or other emergency services to help them get home from
Japan’s tallest mountain. The most recent incident occurred earlier this month when a Chinese tourist fell down on embankment next to the Fujinomiya Trail and suffered injuries to his hand and leg, eventually requiring an ambulance to come and pick him up.

Fujinomiya isn’t just the name of one of the Mt. Fuji hiking trails. It’s also the name of one of the cities at the foot of the mountain, and Fujinomiya mayor Hidetada Sudo isn’t at all happy about hikers who are too impatient to wait for the trail to open. During a press conference on May 11, Sudo called out hikers who break the rules and pointed out that they’re not the only ones whose lives they may be putting in danger with out-of-season hiking, and admonished them for their inability or unwillingness to look at their actions from a sufficiently wide perspective, saying
“[Out-of-season hikers] are not taking responsibly for their actions. The attitude of ‘If I need to be rescued, someone will come save me’ is ridiculous.”

Manufacturers of cash register systems used by supermarkets, convenience stores and other retailers have told the bipartisan national council on social security, which is discussing consumption tax cuts and other issues, that modifications to allow a zero-tax rate on food would take about a year.

This technical roadblock has cast serious doubt on the feasibility of implementing the temporary tax rate within fiscal 2026 as Takaichi has sought. However, if the rate was reduced to a level such as 1%, the modification period could be shortened to about three to six months, the manufacturers said.

Japan's leading potato chip maker Calbee Inc. will start selling some of its potato chip products in black-and-white packaging due to a tighter supply of oil-derived naphtha stemming from the Middle East conflict, sources familiar with the matter said Monday.

Naphtha is commonly used as a printing ink solvent. The company has already notified retailers of the change, other sources in the retail industry said.

The bicolor packaging will be used for its main products, including Potato Chips Lightly Salted and Consomme Punch, to be shipped from late May, the sources said.

Top destinations for inbound tourists are heavily concentrated in just seven of Japan's 47 prefectures, including Kyoto and Hokkaido, which collectively accounted for 72 of the country's top 100 spots, a survey showed Saturday.

Twenty-five prefectures, including some along the Sea of Japan coast, saw none of their locations rank in the top 100, as foreign visitors flocked to internationally recognized destinations such as Kyoto's historic temples and Hokkaido's ski resorts, according to a joint survey on people's movements in 2025 by data analysis firm Unerry Inc. and Kyodo News.

As Japan enjoys an inbound tourism boom amid a weak yen, the outcome underscores that economic benefits are unevenly distributed across regions while concerns are growing that overtourism in heavily visited areas could strain natural and cultural assets and disrupt the lives of local people.

"It is an urgent task to intensify regional dispersion of foreign visitors," an official of the Japan Association of Travel Agents said.

The survey used smartphone app location data to examine foreign visitor traffic across about 25,000 districts nationwide, excluding areas around airports.

The 100 spots were dispersed across 22 prefectures. Kyoto had the highest number of top 100 spots at 17, followed by Hokkaido at 16 and Kanagawa at 11.

Yamanashi, Osaka, Okinawa and Tokyo had between six and eight spots each.