Visa Question

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Zasso Nouka
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Re: Visa Question

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Great points from the others that certainly will help you clarify what you can and can't do.

As for purchasing property zoned as agricultural land you have to be very careful with that, in theory only registered farmers can own farmland but technically you can buy it if you 'intend' to become a farmer and in some areas buying over a certain amount will cause you to become a registered farmer. However it's not always so simple and other areas can place unreasonable conditions that you cannot fulfil before registering you as a farmer so you end up with land you have paid for but are legally forbidden from using. It happened to CYEK, one of our members here and he can't use his land.

If you are lucky enough to live in an area similar to Shizuman with a cooperative local authority then they will help you become a registered farmer and you can then buy farmland without any problems and be free to use it how you choose. As Gonbechan says Sanrin (mountain/forest) land comes with the least restrictions and quite a surprising amount of land can be classified as that rather than proper farmland.

I wouldn't totally rule out purchasing agricultural land but before committing you would need to speak with the local agricultural department and see if they are willing to get you registered or if you find they are unhelpful then move on to another location.

Unrelated to land zoning but useful if you are going to set up a new business venture, you might also want to sound out the local chamber of commerce. Our city has a really excellent one, membership is not expensive and they help with a lot of things. Our's negotiated a good deal on public liability insurance, which is a life saver if you are selling food. They also organise spots at big exhibition centres in Tokyo to display goods and services produced in our city and these are a great way to meet buyers for large companies and can open all sorts of doors for you. However some of the ones in neighbouring cities are pretty useless and seem to do the bare minimum work needed to still be able to draw a salary, they never go to the big expos and seem to little or nothing to help boost businesses in their city.

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