The Office Requirement Is Stricter Than You Think

People spend months on the capital requirement and treat the office as an afterthought. Then the application stalls on the office.

The 2025 changes got all the attention because the capital figure moved so dramatically. But the office condition did not go away, and it has always been assessed more strictly than newcomers expect.

What immigration is actually testing

Not "do you have an address". They are testing whether there is a real, independent, continuously available place of business in Japan. The underlying question is whether an actual enterprise exists, or whether the company is a piece of paper.

That framing explains every specific rule that follows.

What does not work

Virtual offices and mail-forwarding addresses. Straightforwardly not sufficient. This is the most common and most expensive mistake, because the services marketing them to foreigners are not always careful about what they imply.

Hot desks and open co-working seats. Generally not sufficient. There is no exclusive space, no lockable door, and typically a contract that can be cancelled monthly. Some co-working providers offer a dedicated private room on a proper lease, and that can work, but you need to check what your contract actually grants rather than what the website says.

Your apartment, as-is. This one is nuanced rather than absolutely barred, and in practice it usually fails. To have any chance you would need: the landlord's explicit written permission for business use, a space that is genuinely separated from the living area with its own entrance or at least clear physical division, and the lease itself permitting commercial use. Most residential leases in Japan prohibit business use outright. Signing one and then using the flat as your registered office puts you in breach of the lease and weak on the visa.

A short-term or easily cancelled lease. Continuity is part of what is being assessed. A three-month arrangement does not demonstrate an ongoing business.

What does work

A conventional commercial lease, in the company's name, for a space the company exclusively occupies. Boring, and it is boring because it is unambiguous.

Immigration will want to see the lease agreement, and often photographs: the exterior of the building, the entrance, the nameplate with your company name on it, and the interior showing desks, equipment and a space that plausibly hosts work.

That nameplate detail is not a joke. Put your company name on the door and on the building's directory. It is a small thing that materially supports the case, and its absence is noticeable.

The costs nobody budgets for

Japanese commercial leases carry upfront costs that are alien to people from most other markets:

• Deposit (敷金), frequently six to twelve months of rent for commercial space. Not the one or two months a residential tenant might expect.
• Key money (礼金), a non-refundable gift to the landlord, often one to two months.
• Agency fee, typically one month.
• Guarantor company fee, because a new company with no trading history and a foreign director will usually be required to use a guarantee company.
• Fit-out and restoration. Commercial leases commonly require you to return the space to its original condition at the end, and that is a real liability you sign up for on day one.

It is entirely possible for the upfront cost of a modest Tokyo office to run to a year of rent before you have sat down in it. Budget it alongside your capital, not after.

The order to do this in

Sign the lease before you file the visa application, because the lease is evidence in the application. But be careful about signing an expensive long lease before you have any confidence in the rest of the case.

The way through that tension is to get everything else lined up first — capital, employee, business plan, professional review — and treat the lease as the last piece you put in place, immediately before filing. Talk to your 行政書士 about timing specifically. They will have a view on how long a gap is acceptable in your locality.

A word on landlords

Some Japanese landlords will decline to rent commercial space to a newly formed company with a foreign representative. This is not universal, and it is common enough that you should assume you will need to see more properties than you expect.

Working with an agent who has done this before for foreign companies is worth the fee. They know which buildings will say yes, and that knowledge is not available any other way.