How do you get a 1 year Japanese visa without getting a job there?

What do you plan on doing there? Are you just going to be a year-long tourist or will you be a student? The purpose of your visit generally determines how you get a visa.

Just a long time tourist, I won’t be going to school there so I won’t be able to get a student visa.

Depends on where you’re from.

If you’re from any of the countries in this list, are under 25 (30 in some cases), then you can get a working holiday visa.

I don’t know about you but living somehwere for a year without working would drive me batty. I hope you like sudoku.

The trend now is to just go: Cross their border, find an employer that will hire you off the books while their police stand by and do nothing.

@MeinTeil – @Spines11 does not want to work in Japan.

I’d also go so far as to suggest that doing such a thing as working in a country illegally is a pretty stupid idea, regardless of how incompetent/complicit the police are.

You’d also be contributing to the erosion of wages and job security for foreign nationals in Japan. And please don’t teach English without a cert – it makes the real teachers look bad.

You can apply for a research visa. Go to your local embassy and explain that you are doing research for a project and you need to spend a year in Japan. I believe it’s called an educational visa.

@MeinTeil – well, breaking immigration law is a criminal offence, after all. It’s a pretty stupid idea if and only if you consider breaking the law in a foreign country to be a pretty stupid idea. I do; you don’t?

@YARNLADY – I think the research visa would require a sponsoring institution. The cultural activities visa would likely require a sponsor as well.