Job Discussion Forums

[griffitp12]

Hey y'all. I was recently hired on relatively short notice (about a month before the job is to start) to work at a kindergarten outside of Utsunomiya. They were very clear during the hiring process that they probably wouldn't be able to get my work visa pushed through by the time I got there, so I should plan on picking up a tourist visa and switching it soon thereafter for my work visa. What they forgot to tell me was that when getting a tourist visa I was going to need a return airplane ticket. Having only bought my one way ticket to Tokyo, this came as a bit of a shock, at least potentially to my wallet.
So. Is this true? If so, is my best bet going to be to grab a cheap ticket to China (which seems like a cheaper option than Korea from some cursory research) and make sure it's fully refundable, and then just cancel it when my work visa comes through? Is there another option? Thanks for your help!

[slodziak]

I entered Japan the same way (i.e. on a holiday visa then switched to a working one) in 2006. I only had a one way ticket and no questions were asked. It is unusual to be asked to be shown a return ticket at immigration, unless you are from a country that requires a visa on entry.
If they do ask you can tell them that you are planning to make further travel arrangements while based in Japan.

It sounds very cheeky of the company to ask you to come early, not provide you with the correct legal status and then advise you buy a return ticket. I hope you've sounded them out properly!

Good luck - enjoy the trip.

[Glenski]

I agree that your employer is a bit flaky in hiring you so soon. Visa processing usually takes 4-8 weeks.

Immigration is not usually the problem as far as 1-way tickets go. Usually, it is your airline that won't let you board if you have such a ticket and no visa. (BTW, there is no such thing as a tourist visa for most nationalities. You are probably just coming on a passport, and that process is called a visa waiver. Whatever.)

You might get by your airline the way you describe. In fact, you probably will. The thing I would like to point out is that some employers who rush people to Japan are devious and may not actually have processed your visa application, but instead will keep you working illegally and telling you lies about "delays" or "mistakes" in visa processing. Meanwhile, you are almost not covered by any labor laws at all, and you are at the mercy of immigration. In these cases, the employer might fire you when you have overstayed your tourist time, and you have no legal recourse, yet you are in trouble with immigration. Be careful.

[feebleweiner]

I was in the same jam a few months ago before coming here and the same advice was given to me. Thankfully I got my visa sorted out before I came but I have seen first hand what it's like for those who've played the waiting game once arriving here sans visa. It's not fun. I just hope everything works out and you're not walking into shady company....

[griffitp12]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I trust the school that hired me - it's a small Kindergarten and I have spoken to several of the teachers at the school, including the one who is leaving early, necessitating my unusual hiring. She had some legitimate family reasons to leave at the end of November, so they wanted to get me in as soon as possible so I could in essence "train" under the leaving teacher. The Kindergarten was very apologetic that they hadn't told me about the visa issue. In any case, I'm much less worried about that situation than the one at the airport when I arrive. I'm flying Singapore Air out of Los Angeles - is there a consensus on whether I might need a return ticket? I've heard a lot of the world "probably" thrown around, and I don't want to end up in some room at Narita without windows.

[seklarwia]

I've flown in from the UK several times now both directly and via another country with 3 seperate airlines. And each time I've checked in, I've had my passport scrutinised to ensure I had a proper visa because I didn't have a return/onward journey ticket. And I've watched many others in line get asked to produce onward tickets if they didn't have a visa or a return with that airline.

That is what the airlines are supposed to do because they are held liable for the cost of flying you back and for heavy fines if you are denied entry to a country because they didn't check that had the right visa, status, etc.

Some people are lucky to get checked in by lax airline staff and get away with it. But if you don't, they might make you buy an onward journey ticket there at the airport before they will hand over your boarding card.

If you can get past your airline check in then you are normally fine as immigration don't normally ask if you have an onward ticket when you arrive. But on my return this summer after going through immigration, I then had a Japanese custom guy take one look at the amount of luggage I had, the suit carriers and the laptop bag complete with my talking Softbank dog hanging out of the pocket and asked me how long I was staying. When I said for the foreseeable future, he too asked me to show him a valid visa stamp in my passport (the other times I've only been asked whether I had anything to declare). I don't know whether he would have called my bluff and asked to see an onward ticket if I had given him a length of stay, but clearly he thought that my non-tourist looking luggage was reason to ask.

Personally, I wouldn't risk trying to fly in on a one-way ticket after seeing the checks airline staff do at UK airports, but perhaps you'll have better luck flying out of LA.
But even if I got on the flight on a one-way without a visa, with all the other air travel related drama that could and often have happened to me (and with the number of flights under my belt, I've had many far more memorable experiences than delayed flights; some including rooms with no windows), I'd rather have that refundable onward ticket in hand and have one less thing to worry about than having to worry about whether I was about to see yet another windowless room in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language fluently and didn't know my rights; all for the lack of a piece of paper.

[midnightpariah]

It depends on the airline. A Japanese airline will ask for proof of a return flight. My husband had that issue even though he had a CoE. He had to spend $500 for a return ticket at the airport. Fortunately we were able to get a refund, but it sucked! I would buy a cheap ticket to Korea or a ticket for the Beetle ship that travels between Japan and Korea.

[seklarwia]

[Great Teacher Umikun]

When I first flew into Japan (from South Korea, on Sunday, March 14, 2004), neither Northwest Airlines nor the Japanese migras gave me any grief about flying into Narita on a one-way ticket. It was originally a ticket from Incheon to Los Angeles with stopovers in Tokyo and Seattle, but then I got a job in Japan while still in Korea, so I truncated the portion from Tokyo onward. I�m a United States citizen. Could that have any bearing?

Now I�m leaving Turkey and headed back to Japan. Should I get a cheap refundable ticket to Seoul or Beijing to cover the requirement?

[Bread]

[Apsara]

[Great Teacher Umikun]

Oy vey!

I�m not Jewish, but oy vey anyway!

I called Qatar Airways and asked about boarding on a one-way to Japan without a visa, and they confirmed that I need an ongoing ticket or I won�t be let on in İstanbul. Next I tried H.I.S., homebased in Japan, since they were advertising flights for only �35,000 to New York. The actual price was more than twice that when I called them up! I thought about getting a cheap flight to Korea, but I decided it would be far safer to just get a ticket to my country of citizenship, the United States. So I just booked a flight from Narita to Kennedy for late April, before my impending visa-free grace period expires, via CheapoAir. It set me back $840, but it�s worth it knowing it�ll take me back to my loving family if the worst should happen.

In the meantime, I won�t be eating much. I probably won�t eat much when I get there either.

[Great Teacher Umikun]

24 hours and billions of security checks later, I finally made it back to Japan, and the following worries plagued me on the way:

1: The weight of my checked baggage, a minor worry. I had to chuck some stuff out at the airport and wear two jackets and two pairs of jeans on the trip to keep my bag under the weight limit. Luckily, I got the weight limit down well before I started looking like the Michelin Man.

2: My umbrella, a minor worry since I was willing to chuck it if need be. At Gaziantep, my departure point, the check-in clerk said the umbrella could be carry on, but the gate security guard said no and took me back to the check-in counter to check it in. After that, I was allowed to have it as carry-on all the way to Narita.

3: My one-way ticket and lack of a visa, a major worry. I had the printout for my onward ticket to the USA for some time in April, but there was only an em-dash under the ticket number slot, and that had me worried. The check-in clerk, however, just jotted down the date and times for the onward journey and sent me on my way.

4: Turkish immigration, minor since I had (and still have) my Turkish residence permit. I handed it with the page showing the renewal stamp good to early March of this year to prove that I wasn't overstaying. The officer stamped it and let me through.

5: Japanese immigration, also major. However, the officer never asked for my onward itinerary, just put a landing permission sticker in, took my photo and fingerprints (left and right index fingers) and welcomed me to Japan.

6: Getting in touch with my friends as soon as I got in. My only ケイタイ is a Turkcell phone, which doesn't work in Japan, and I just now got access to internet. I left Narita by train (not one of the expensive express trains but the good old Yokosuka-Sobu) and took it to an area I used to live in and am thus familiar with. I paid for an all-nighter at an internet cafe. However, my friend wrote back to me with his phone number. I just called him up.

Other problems involved my carry-on bag, an old canvas bag, getting ripped, but not in such a way that the contents were spilled.