Fukuokaculture & etiquette

As a designated National Strategic Special Zone, Fukuoka City can grant a preparatory status of residence to foreign founders who do not yet meet the ordinary Business Manager visa requirements — the capital threshold and the physical office that normally block anyone starting from scratch. The city gives you a defined window to actually incorporate and meet them, with support in English through Startup Café Fukuoka, which is free. If you are coming to start something rather than to be employed, this changes the arithmetic completely, and it is close to unknown outside the city.

Japanese law requires you to register your address at the ward office covering it within fourteen days of moving in. Fukuoka has seven wards — Hakata, Chūō, Higashi, Nishi, Minami, Jōnan and Sawara — and it must be the one your address sits in. The registration produces the jūminhyō certificate and triggers your My Number, and without it you cannot enrol in health insurance, open most bank accounts, or complete a phone contract.

Deposit, key money, agency fee, guarantor company fee, fire insurance and the first month. Key money in particular is a gift to the landlord you never see again. Fukuoka is the gentlest of Japan's big cities on this — the large student population keeps a lot of zero-reikin stock in the market — but budget for the full package rather than the best case.

Jūminzei is calculated on your previous calendar year's income and billed from the following June. Your first year feels cheap and your second is expensive, and if you leave Japan you can still owe a full year's residence tax on income already spent. Anyone planning a departure should appoint a tax representative or settle it before going.

Fukuoka Airport is two subway stops from Hakata Station and five from Tenjin — the shortest airport-to-centre journey of any major city in Japan. The flip side is a strict height limit on buildings under the flight path, which is why central Fukuoka is low-rise where Osaka and Tokyo are not, and why the Tenjin Big Bang redevelopment needed a special relaxation of those rules to proceed at all.

Busan is roughly an hour by air or three by high-speed ferry from Hakata port; Seoul is a short flight. Tokyo is over 1,000 km away. Fukuoka's orientation is genuinely toward the continent rather than toward eastern Japan, which shows up in the food, the trade and how people spend long weekends.