Stay, Go Home, or Keep Moving: What a Visa Crackdown Reveals About Starting Over in Japan
Day 1,042 of living in Japan.
A friend called me early in the morning and said she wanted to stop by and talk.
Before she even arrived, I already knew what was coming.
Since last October—when Japan began tightening how it enforces the Business Manager visa—the change has been impossible to miss. No matter how long someone has been here, how much money they have, or whether their business is thriving or barely alive, if they hold this visa, the conversation eventually circles back to the same question:
“Are you going to stay?”
A quiet visit, a heavy question
An hour later, my friend pushed open the door to my office, smiled, pulled up a small stool, and sat down next to me.
We exchanged a few polite words.
Then she got to it.
“QiDi… why do I feel like I’m starting to lose my nerve?”
I didn’t try to talk her out of it.
“Honestly,” I said, “this is exactly the right time to rethink your plan.”
She and her husband ran restaurants in a third- or fourth-tier city back in China for more than ten years. They weren’t “rich,” but they did well—steady business, good cash flow, a life with momentum.
Last year, she came to Osaka with their child. Not much research, not many backup plans. Just a one-way commitment. They’ve been here almost a year now.
Our kids go to the same school, so we see each other often. And lately, when I’ve had drinks with her husband, the same uncertainty keeps resurfacing: Do we really keep going, or do we cut our losses?
The ripple effects are everywhere
In our group chats, people have started selling off their lives.
First it was the car. Then the furniture. Then the apartment back home.
When you ask why, the answer is usually vague.
“Visa stuff.”
They don’t always say whether they were rejected… or whether they just couldn’t stand the pressure anymore.
Last week, someone told me their neighbor’s renewal was denied. At first it sounded unfair—until you heard the details: no real office lease, working a job under someone else’s company, almost two years in Japan and still unable to read basic hiragana.
This week, I ran into another neighbor—an older guy, a corporate employee sent from China to Japan. He told me he’d just lost his job. His contract ended, and on the afternoon before it expired, he was informed there would be no renewal.
Not because of performance.
Because of geopolitics.
The company was pausing its Japan business line. His work visa had three months left. His wife and kids had already been here more than three years. They had built a life. They didn’t want to go back.
There’s a saying in Chinese:
“A grain of sand from the times becomes a mountain on a person.”
People quote it constantly.
But you only understand it when the mountain lands on your own shoulders.
Three paths in front of us
Someone in the group joked:
“We’re not going back. But we don’t know where to go either. Maybe Malaysia or Thailand first… then somehow the U.S. Eventually. Like a real ‘wandering Earth.’”
It was a joke.
But not really.
For many immigrants in Japan right now, it feels like there are only three options:
- Stay and fight through it
- Go home
- Keep moving—somewhere else, anywhere else
Different people choose different paths, but the reality is the same: everyone eventually has to choose.
What matters most when you start over
I told my friend something I wrote years ago, back when I first left Beijing for Osaka.
I wrote that the most important thing in immigration isn’t money.
It isn’t even business.
It’s resolve.
If we hadn’t had a stubborn, irrational kind of determination back then, we never would have left behind everything we knew to restart life in Japan.
And if you don’t have that resolve, the moment life gets hard—and it always does—you start looking for exits.
These days there’s another word people like to use: “intention”—the idea that if you want something badly enough, the world rearranges itself around your will.
Call it intention, call it resolve, call it willpower.
Either way, it’s the core fuel of any life transition.
Like a seed.
If you plant it too close to the surface, a single gust of wind can blow it away.
The uncomfortable truth about immigration
In most countries that aren’t at war, the percentage of people who immigrate is actually low.
And that tells you something:
immigration is not designed for most people.
First-generation immigrants—rich or poor, in any country—carry a kind of difficulty that almost no one back home can fully imagine.
And when you don’t speak the language?
Everything becomes heavier.
Without a strong internal anchor, it’s hard to stay standing.
“So what should we do?”
That’s when my friend asked the question she really came for.
“QiDi… can you tell me what we should do?”
I answered immediately:
“No. I can’t do that.”
Every family is different. Every marriage, every child, every financial reality—unique. I can tell you what I’ve seen over the last three years. I can tell you the kinds of families who stayed, the kinds who left, and the reasons they gave themselves.
But that’s all it is:
reference material.
Only you and your husband can decide what your family can carry.
And also—this matters more than most people admit—happiness counts.
There are good lives built abroad.
There are good lives built back home.
Life is an experience, not a courtroom. In the question of staying or leaving, there isn’t a morally “correct” answer.
As we wrapped up, I had one last thought:
I think she already knew.
She didn’t come to me for a decision.
She came to hear her own decision out loud.
Here is the Chinese Version.
