I lived and worked in Japan for quite some time, with an apartment, car and job, on a tourist visa. My work had me travelling outside the country at least every 90 days, so there were no issues. Although once I had to do a quick weekend trip to Korea for the weekend just as my visa was about to expire.

kurukuru wrote:

My work visa was actually a three year one, but I came back after two years. I assume the visa was ended with my job though.

Your visa is not tied to your job. It is a visa that allows you to work in the area of the visa (specialist of Humaninties I'm assuming) anywhere that you can find employment. Do you have a reentry permit? If you do then there is no reason that you cannot come on that visa if it is still valid.

I guess in a way you are right because you will have to have sponsorship. That is probably what they were talking about. But, no, your visa is yours and they can't do anything with it but you would have to have another employer that would sponsor you since it is a work visa you have to have a job in order to be in Japan on that visa. It sounds like maybe they were pissed that you were quitting and wanted to kind of intimidate you a bit so they said you would have to leave Japan within a month. You are probably allowed a month (I don't know the exact time frame) to find a new job before your visa would be invalid for not working not because you quit that specific company. But I guess in the end you have probably been without a job for too long on that work visa anyway so it ends up being a non issue. Sorry about that. I wrote a bunch of stuff but the end result ended up being the same

Last edited by thistime (2013 January 06, 5:11 pm)

tokyostyle wrote:

kurukuru wrote:

My work visa was actually a three year one, but I came back after two years. I assume the visa was ended with my job though.

If you didn't get a reentry permit before you left then you'll want to get that all taken care of before you arrive in Japan.  Did you relinquish your 外国人登録証明書 when you left?

Re-entry permits don't exist anymore.

@kurukuru - Even if you don't have to apply for it ahead of time, your 90-day stay is facilitated by a tourist visa.  It's just that people from certain countries (including the US) can get tourist visas upon arrival.

yudantaiteki wrote:

Re-entry permits don't exist anymore.

They do still exist, but they are only required when leaving Japan for over a year.  If leaving for less than a year, you have to indicate the みなし再入国許可 option on your embarcation form.

In the past, if someone left without a reentry permit and came back, even with a valid visa still in effect, they would have to get a tourist visa and apply for their visa all over again.  It's plausible that that could happen to someone who left without using みなし再入国許可 or who left before that policy went into effect, but I wouldn't know.

At any rate, I don't think kurukuru needs to worry too much about being able to get a tourist visa.

Last edited by JimmySeal (2013 January 08, 1:38 pm)

Tourist visa's still exist. But you still need a return plane ticket to get one. I have heard that some people have been able to get into Japan on a single one way ticket but far, far more people are caught off guard when the airport says they need a return flight for their current visa status and won't clear them for flight till they buy one.

A tourist visa is put in your passport at immigration, when you land in Japan.

Yeah; the government website talks about this. As tokyostyle says, the legal thing you need to be in Japan is the landing permission; you can get one of those by being a tourist from a set of countries with visa exemptions. If you're from a non-exempt country or not going for a short tourist stay, then the set of required conditions to get a landing permission includes having a valid visa (and the visa evaporates once it's done its job of getting you the landing permission, unless it's a multiple-entry one).