Howdy, folks; if it's been a while it's because I've been on a strange journey through halls of paperwork.
Early last month I signed a contract to work at a fine company I'll write more about later. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to start work yet due to my visa situation in the country.
Visas work a bit differently in every country, and Japanese visas are quite different from what you'd expect in America. For one thing, what's generally thought of as a visa - the stamp in your passport - counts primarily as a landing permit and is not strictly related to your Status of Residence, which determines what you're allowed to do in the country (like work, own property, or vote). Thus, since I'm already in Japan, getting a visa isn't actually important - I want a change of my Status of Residence. Unfortunately, this requires special circumstances if you're inside the country.
The normal procedure for getting a Status of Residence that allows work is to apply for a Certificate of Eligibility from outside Japan and come in on a visa (landing permit) appropriate to your desired Status of Residence. It's not officially documented, but a Certificate of Eligibility may be used in lieu of special circumstances to apply for a change of Status of Residence inside the country - this is not some crazy loophole, it's just standard operating procedure at Immigration, despite not being mentioned on their site or in relevant laws (so far as I know).
The downside to this is that the application for the Certificate of Eligibility involves a background check to verify you have a four year degree appropriate to your field and that you are not a felon, which means it takes roughly six weeks for it to be issued, during which period your visa is not automatically extended.
What all this means for me is I get to be funemployed until the middle of Novemeber and I have to figure out a way to extend my current Status of Residence (short stay - tourist) before Halloween. Shouldn't be hard, and should actually result in a nice vacation, but three months is a long time to be unemployed.
Most of the information in this post I gleaned from this thread at the Gaijinpot forums; lots of the links to forms and laws are dead, but the correct ones aren't hard to find. A lot of this isn't documented outside government sources in Japanese because, well, Japanese people don't have to worry about Japanese visas.
In the meantime, since I'm done with paperwork for at least a month, hopefully I'll manage to be productive in any case. Watch this space for updates. Ψ