We did it!!! We arrived in Japan in February, received a Startup Visa in June, incorporated our business in August, and hit the ground running all-day-every-day… culminating in a Business Manager Visa! It feels surreal, but like I keep saying: this process is complicated but not impossible! We’re just two people with big dreams, who want to live and raise our future family in rural Japan, and we’re just crazy enough to go all-in.
Of course, we have a lot of people to thank! We’ve been working closely with a team of Japanese professionals from the beginning, as well as many others:
- Shimizu-san (immigration lawyer) has guided us through both immigration processes, as well as play a major role in our business incorporation. It is certainly his detailed work on our application, with close to 30 supporting documents, that convinced immigration we could be successful here.
- Mizobuchi-san (business consultant) helped us create a compelling story and functional business plan, facilitated the Startup Visa progress meetings with Imabari City, and will continue to work closely with us until we feel comfortably successful.
- Sakai-sensei (tax accountant) is handling all of the complicated background tasks, including corporate taxes, personal taxes, and all kinds of interconnected contracts and paperwork. He’s an integral part of our professional team.
- Imabari City Employees and Tada-san (their business consultant) clearly made all of this possible, by helping to revise and strengthen our business plan prior to their recommendation, and maintaining communication throughout the six month timeframe. We are so thankful for their encouragement and support! It was so fun to have them out to visit our guesthouse for the final progress meeting.
- Kubo-sensei (judicial scrivener) facilitated the lengthy ‘minpaku’ short-term rental license.
- Ito-san (local bank manager) helped us navigate the personal and corporate bank account processes, which were surprisingly complicated. It may be his job, but we know he went above and beyond to help things go smoothly for us.
- Kan-sensei (local honeybee expert) has become a huge help to us. This nice man did not know us, but heard about us beekeeping on the island, and basically offered to take us under his wing. We purchased 9 of our 10 current honeybee colonies from him, and they’re continuing to live in his bee yard until spring, when we can safely relocate them to our own yard. I suspect we’ll continue to work together, and hope to build a mutually beneficial relationship.
- Junko-san (local resident and gardener) has offered the use of some of her land, for honeybees or farming. She is happy to have someone care for the land, and we are happy to have her as a friend.
- Nomoto-san (local realtor) was willing to work with us despite the added complications of working with foreigners and purchasing farmland. We’re so thankful he recommended the off-market akiya, which is now Benton Guesthouse!
- Tsuruoka-san (local contractor) was also willing to work with us despite the language barrier. We’re happy with his part of our akiya renovations, which helped us achieve our goal on the short Startup Visa timeframe.
- All of our new friends and neighbors have made us feel very welcome here.
Looking back at the past months, we’ve met many smaller milestones to get to this point:
- Purchased our first ‘akiya’ abandoned house, while we were on a tourist visa in Japan.
- Earned recommendation from Imabari City for the Startup Visa.
- Received ‘Change of Residency’ tourist-to-resident from within Japan.
- Many small things: registering our Japanese address, purchasing and registering our little kei truck, getting Japanese cell phones, and opening a personal bank account. None of which were possible prior to residency.
- Completely restored an abandoned house to a comfortable, livable condition.
- Opened our business Benton Homestead, now officially a ‘kabushiki-gaisha’ Japanese corporation.
- Received ‘minpaku’ short-term rental license for Benton Guesthouse. Now available on AirBnB!
- Purchased our second ‘akiya’ abandoned house, just around the corner.
- Now, received ‘Change of Residency’ from 6-month Startup visa to 1-year Business Manager visa!
^ Imabari City’s final Startup Visa Progress Meeting, at our guesthouse, where Evan served home-cooked local ‘inoshishi’ wild boar chili verde. The photos of Evan and Dani are from the day we received our Business Manager Visa for 1 year. Thumbs-up all around!
Obtaining the Business Manager Visa is a huge, huge milestone to celebrate, and it was one of the best possible Christmas gifts we could’ve received!!! But it’s also the beginning of the next chapter. Now we have to continue plugging along, working fast, and planning carefully, to achieve all of our first-year goals! We will of course have to go through the visa extension application process again next year, so it’s important we have at least a small profit margin, after paying the professionals and various business bills. We’ll still be under heavy scrutiny at next December’s renewal!
We’ve set some pretty high aspirations for ourselves, so we need to work hard to make this dream continue to be a reality. We’ll start the tedious process of restoring numerous abandoned plots of farmland to our honeybee apiaries, chicken yard, and organic farm. It will be a heck of a lot of work just to get the fields protected from ‘inoshishi’ wild boar, and to ensure the future chickens will be safe from ‘norainu’ street dogs! In addition to that, we’ll have to prep the land by cutting trees, building up the soil, and putting in kei truck access. Of course, my biggest side-quest is to help the street dogs too, so I hope to catch, spay and neuter, and find homes for, at least a handful of the dogs living around our home.
Lastly, a big thank you to y’all for coming along on this adventure with us! I get messages all the time from others looking for Startup visa or Business Manager visa guidance… and I do my best to answer questions, help in any way, or at least point them in the direction of professionals for more detailed guidance. Now that we can look back over the whole process, I’ll be taking the time to sit down and write out every little step, for a series of blog posts and videos that I hope will be helpful to many! Thank you again, and we look forward to what the next year brings.
Thanks for reading,
Dani & Evan Benton
P.S. If you’re reading this, I would assume you’re probably already subscribed to our YouTube channel. But please consider subscribing or sharing! We’re 63% of the way towards 1,000 subscribers, which is the threshold for monetizing. As part of our business plan, we plan to include educational aspects in our small farm and guesthouse business. In the future, that will mean in-person workshops and hands-on experience, but for now, YouTube is our best option. Please help us get to 1,000 subscribers!
P.P.S. Merry Christmas, and happy New Year!
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