Moving to Japan From the UK: Visas, Money and Buying

Moving to Japan from the UK: the short answer

Two files run in parallel and never touch: immigration and property. Japan places no restriction on foreign ownership, so you can buy freehold land and a building on exactly the same terms as a Japanese national, remotely, with no permit and no residence card. What no amount of property will buy you is the right to stay: there is no investor visa, no residency by investment, no golden visa. Run the two files in the wrong order and you end up either paying for a move you cannot sustain, or holding the keys to a house you can only visit 90 days at a time.

Here is the honest map of what a UK passport actually opens.

Route	Who it fits	Maximum stay	Paid work in Japan	Can buy a house
Visa waiver, then extension	Any UK passport holder	90 days, extendable to 6 months	No	Yes
Working holiday	18 to 30 years old	1 year	Yes, incidental	Yes
Work visa (engineer, specialist in humanities)	Hired by a Japanese employer	1, 3 or 5 years, renewable	Yes	Yes
Spouse of a Japanese national	Married to a Japanese citizen	1 to 5 years, renewable	Yes	Yes
Business manager	Running a real Japanese company	1 to 5 years, renewable	Yes	Yes
Digital nomad	Remote worker above the income floor	6 months, not renewable	Foreign clients only	Yes
No status at all	Non resident owner	90 days per trip	No	Yes

The order that costs the least is almost always the same: pick the residence route first, move the money while you are still a UK tax resident, then buy. Our complete guide to buying a house in Japan covers the transaction itself step by step, and you can see what your budget really reaches in the akiya and Japanese houses currently for sale.

The six month window most nationalities do not get

A UK passport holder lands in Japan with a tanki taizai (tanki滞在, temporary visitor status) of 90 days, granted automatically at the border, no application, no fee. That much is shared with dozens of countries. What is not shared is the next step: nationals of Austria, Germany, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Mexico, Switzerland and the United Kingdom may apply to a regional bureau of the Immigration Services Agency to extend that stay to a total of six months. The application has to be filed before the initial 90 days expire, and it is a decision, not a right: expect to show funds, a return ticket and a credible reason to stay.

Why this is the best house hunting tool a Briton has

Two things break remote purchases: not having seen the property, and not being present at the settlement. Six months on the ground solves both. It is enough time to spend a month in three or four candidate regions, to work out what a 30 minute commute to a station really looks like in winter, to view twenty houses instead of three, and to be physically present at the kessai (kessai, completion and settlement meeting) where the deed is registered. If you have never lived in Japan, this window is worth more than any amount of online research: our article on where to live in Japan as a foreigner is a starting grid, not a substitute for a season on site.

What the six months are not

A temporary visitor is not a resident. There is no zairyu kado (在留カード, residence card), no entry on a juminhyo (住民票, resident register), no national health insurance, no work of any kind, paid or unpaid for a Japanese employer. In practice it also means no Japanese bank account: nearly every bank asks for a residence card and a Japanese address, which is why our article on opening a Japanese bank account as a foreigner matters more to a buyer than it looks. A purchase can be settled without one, but the utility contracts and property tax bills that follow are far simpler with it.

One more practical point: the six months are counted from entry, not from the extension. Plan the application for around week ten, not week thirteen.

The residence routes actually open to a UK national

If you intend to live in Japan rather than visit it, you need a status of residence. Five are realistic for a Briton, and one of them was quietly transformed in 2024.

Working holiday: the quota that went from 1,000 to 6,000

Under the bilateral agreement announced in November 2023, the number of UK nationals able to use the Japanese working holiday programme rose from 1,000 to 6,000 places a year from 1 April 2024. Applicants must be 18 to 30, hold enough funds for the initial period, and the visa runs for one year with incidental work permitted. For a buyer, this is the single cheapest way to spend a full year in a region before committing to it, and it is now six times less of a lottery than it was.

Work, spouse and highly skilled professional

The ordinary route remains a job offer from a Japanese employer, which produces an gijutsu jinbun chishiki kokusai gyomu (技術人文知識国際業務, engineer, specialist in humanities and international services) status of one, three or five years. Marriage to a Japanese national gives a spouse status with no work restriction. The highly skilled professional points system speeds up permanent residence, which matters later: permanent residence in Japan is where the long game is played.

Business manager: no longer a shortcut

The keiei kanri (経営kanri, business manager) status is often presented to foreign investors as the way to buy a rental portfolio and get residence with it. Since the 2025 reform it demands a genuine company: capital of at least 30,000,000 yen (about 185,000 euros), a physical office, a full time employee and real trading activity. Passive letting does not meet that bar, as we explain in the business manager visa and Japanese property.

Digital nomad

The status created in 2024 allows a stay of six months, not renewable, for a remote worker paid by foreign clients, subject to an annual income requirement of around 10,000,000 yen (about 62,000 euros) and private health cover. It is a long look at the country rather than a move, and it is detailed in our article on the Japanese digital nomad visa.

What none of these are is a consequence of ownership. You can hold a house in Kyoto for twenty years and it will not add a single day to your permitted stay, a point we set out in buying a house in Japan as a foreigner without a visa.

The overview that applies whatever your nationality is gathered in our guide on how to move to Japan: the seven routes, the moving budget in yen and a realistic end to end timeline.

What a British passport does not change about buying

This is the reassuring half of the file. Japanese property law is nationality blind, and it has been since the post war reforms. A UK national buys with the same rights as a Japanese buyer:

• Freehold, land included. You own the land (tochi, tochi) and the building (tatemono, building) outright and permanently. There is no leasehold trap of the English kind, no ground rent, no lease running down.
• No permit, no approval, no local partner. Nothing to file with a ministry, no minimum investment, no residence condition.
• Registration in your own name at the toki bo (tōki簿, land register), by a shiho shoshi (shihō shoshi, judicial scrivener who handles the transfer), the closest thing Japan has to a conveyancer.
• Remote completion is normal. With a power of attorney and a signature certificate from a Japanese consulate, you never have to be in the room.
• Purchase costs stay at or below 6 percent of the price, agency commission included, which is far less than English purchase costs once stamp duty is in play. The full breakdown is in the real cost of buying property in Japan.

Two things do change, and both cost money rather than rights. The first is credit: a Japanese mortgage is in practice reserved for people who both live in Japan and draw a Japanese salary, as mortgages in Japan for foreigners explains in detail. A Briton buying before the move buys in cash. The second is currency, which is the subject of the next section and the line where UK buyers quietly lose the most.

Turning pounds into yen without losing a deposit

A cash purchase means one large transfer, and the exchange rate you get is negotiable in a way most buyers never realise. The headline fee is rarely the cost: the margin sits inside the rate itself.

Channel	Typical all in cost	Speed	Note
SWIFT transfer from a UK high street bank	1.5 to 3 percent: FX margin plus fixed charges	2 to 5 working days	Simplest and dearest; the margin is hidden in the rate
FX broker or specialist payments firm	0.3 to 0.8 percent	1 to 3 working days	Check the transfer ceiling and that the settlement office accepts it
Convert first, hold yen, wire later	Variable	Variable	Lets you lock the rate once the completion date is fixed

On a 20,000,000 yen house (about 123,500 euros), the gap between 3 percent and 0.5 percent is roughly 500,000 yen, about 3,100 euros. That is more than the judicial scrivener, the stamp duty and the land registration tax combined. No fee schedule will ever show it to you.

The report your Japanese bank files, and why it is harmless

Any transfer above one million yen, in or out, triggers a kokugai sokin to chosho (国外送金等調書, overseas remittance report) filed automatically by the Japanese bank with the tax office. It carries no suspicion: it is a matching record. What it does mean is that you should be able to explain where the funds came from, which brings you straight to the timing question.

The timing trap: move the money before you become a Japanese tax resident

A foreign national who has lived in Japan for five years or less out of the last ten is a hi eijusha (非永住者, non permanent resident) for tax purposes. That status taxes Japan sourced income in full, plus any foreign sourced income that is paid into or remitted to Japan in the same year. Wire a large sum from a UK account in a year when you also received UK dividends, rent or a bonus, and you can drag that foreign income into the Japanese tax base without ever intending to. The safe pattern is simple: send the purchase money before you take up residence, or keep the purchase year clean of other foreign income. This is the same trap American buyers meet, and we walk through it in moving to Japan from the US.

What HMRC still wants after you land

Leaving the UK does not end your relationship with HMRC on the day the plane takes off. Three moments matter: the year you leave, the years you are non resident, and the year you come back.

The year you leave: split year treatment

UK residence is decided by the statutory residence test, and the tax year can be split so that only the UK part of it is taxed on your worldwide income. Split year treatment is not automatic and not optional: you either meet one of the cases or you do not. Until the split, you remain taxable in the UK on worldwide income, Japanese rent included.

While you are UK resident: Japanese rent is UK income too

Rental income from a Japanese property is foreign income for HMRC. It goes on the foreign pages of the self assessment return, the 1,000 pound property allowance may cover a very small letting, and tax already paid in Japan is normally relieved through foreign tax credit relief. The underlying rule comes from the double taxation convention between the UK and Japan: income from immovable property is taxable first in the country where the property sits. Japan therefore taxes it, and the UK gives credit rather than taxing it twice. The Japanese side of that equation, including the 20.42 percent withholding that applies when the tenant is a company, is set out in rental income tax in Japan for non residents.

Item	Japan	UK while you are UK resident	UK once you are non resident
Rent from the Japanese house	Taxed, filing through a tax agent	Declared, foreign tax credit relief	Not taxed in the UK
Annual property taxes	1.4 percent plus up to 0.3 percent of assessed value	Deductible against the Japanese rent	Not applicable
Gain on sale	About 39.63 percent under 5 years, about 20.315 percent beyond	Capital gains tax with credit for Japanese tax	Generally outside UK capital gains tax
UK State Pension	Paid into a Japanese account if you wish	Taxed as usual	Paid but not uprated

Selling: two tax systems, one gain

Japan taxes the gain heavily in the first five calendar years and much more lightly afterwards, and a non resident seller normally suffers a 10.21 percent withholding on the price, later reconciled. The detail is in capital gains tax on Japanese property. On the UK side, residential property gains are taxed at 18 percent within the basic rate band and 24 percent above it, with an annual exempt amount of 3,000 pounds for 2026 to 2027. If you are UK resident when you sell, both systems look at the same gain and the treaty decides who credits whom.

The year you come back

Since 6 April 2025 the old remittance basis is gone, replaced by a four year regime for foreign income and gains: someone who becomes UK resident after at least ten consecutive tax years of non residence pays no UK tax on foreign income and gains for their first four tax years back, whether or not the money is brought into the UK. For a Briton who spends a decade in Japan and then returns, that window is the single most valuable thing in this article: it is often the moment to sell the Japanese house, or to repatriate accumulated rent.

Two things pensioners should check now

The UK State Pension is paid to residents of Japan, but it is not uprated: the annual increase applies only in countries covered by an agreement providing for it, and the UK and Japan social security agreement covers contributions, not indexation. Freeze at the rate on the day you leave and the erosion compounds for twenty years. Second, that same agreement usually prevents paying into both systems at once, and voluntary National Insurance contributions can often be paid from abroad to protect the record: worth a call to HMRC before you go. Our article on retiring in Japan puts the numbers together.

One long term point, easy to forget at 35 and expensive at 65: a long stay can extend Japanese inheritance tax to your worldwide estate depending on your status of residence and how long you have lived there. Read inheritance tax on Japanese property before you pass the ten year mark, and take advice from a zeirishi (zeirishi, licensed tax accountant).

Worked example: a 20,000,000 yen house bought from the UK

A couple from Bristol, both in their forties, one of them with a job offer in Okayama. They buy a 1998 detached house with a garden, 20,000,000 yen (about 123,500 euros), 25 minutes on foot from a local station. Here is the whole bill, with an assessed value of about 10,000,000 yen, which is typical for that kind of property.

Item	Rule	Amount
Agency commission	3 percent plus 60,000 yen, plus 10 percent consumption tax	726,000 yen (about 4,480 euros)
Acquisition tax	3 percent of assessed value, residential land base halved	about 167,000 yen (about 1,030 euros)
Registration tax	Percentage of assessed value, land and building	about 140,000 yen (about 860 euros)
Judicial scrivener	Fixed fee	about 120,000 yen (about 740 euros)
Stamp duty	Contract between 10 and 50 million yen	10,000 yen (about 60 euros)
Property tax apportionment	From completion to 31 December	about 30,000 yen (about 190 euros)
Total costs		about 1,193,000 yen (about 7,360 euros), 6.0 percent

Add the currency conversion. Through a specialist at 0.5 percent, about 106,000 yen. Through the high street bank at 3 percent, about 636,000 yen. The whole purchase therefore lands between 21,299,000 and 21,829,000 yen, roughly 131,500 to 134,700 euros, and the only variable the buyer controlled was the transfer channel.

What it costs to hold, every year

• Property taxes: 1.4 percent plus up to 0.3 percent of the assessed value, so about 170,000 yen (about 1,050 euros) a year on this house.
• Fire and earthquake insurance: budget 50,000 to 90,000 yen (about 310 to 560 euros) depending on the hazard map, more on a timber house near a river.
• Maintenance provision: on a 1998 build, 1 percent of the replacement cost a year is a sober figure, and roof and drainage come first.

The acquisition tax deserves its own warning: the bill arrives by post three to six months after completion, long after the buyer has stopped thinking about the purchase. It is the single most forgotten line in a foreign buyer's budget. Run your own figures through the yield and running cost simulator before you make an offer, and compare what the same money buys across regions in Japanese houses under 100,000 euros.

The mistakes that cost British buyers the most

• Wiring the money after landing. The non permanent resident rule can pull unrelated UK income into the Japanese tax base in the year of a large remittance. Move the funds while you are still outside the Japanese net.
• Assuming the house helps the visa. It does not, in any direction: ownership is not counted for permanent residence either.
• Budgeting for a mortgage. Without Japanese residence and a Japanese salary there is no loan, so a purchase before the move is a cash purchase, full stop.
• Sending yen through the current account. Two and a half percent of the price, invisible, on the single largest transfer of your life.
• Forgetting the acquisition tax. It lands three to six months later, when the money has been spent.
• Buying the house and not the location. A cheap house 45 minutes from the nearest station and 20 from a supermarket is cheap for a reason. Distance to a station and to shops is the first filter to apply in our listings, before price.
• Ignoring the return trip. If you come back to the UK one day, the timing of the sale interacts with the four year foreign income and gains window. Decide it in advance, not in the removal van.
• Letting the 90 days run out. The extension is applied for before day 90, not after, and there is no retroactive fix.

In short: the order that costs the least

Moving to Japan from the UK is not a single decision but a sequence, and the sequence has an optimal order. Secure the residence route first, because no house will ever provide it. Use the six month window that a British passport uniquely allows to see the regions properly rather than buying from photographs. Move the purchase money before you become a Japanese tax resident, through a channel that does not take 3 percent of it. Budget the purchase costs at 6 percent of the price, plus an acquisition tax that will land a quarter later. And keep an eye on the return leg, because the four year regime waiting for you back in the UK can be worth more than any negotiation on the price.

When you are ready to put figures on a specific house, start with the houses currently for sale, and if you would rather have the search, the checks and the completion handled from the first viewing to the keys, that is what our end to end buying service is for.

Frequently asked questions

Can a UK citizen buy a house in Japan?

Yes. There is no nationality restriction and no prior approval: a British buyer acquires the land and the building freehold on the same terms as a Japanese national, remotely if needed, and with no visa or residence card.

Do I need a visa to buy property in Japan?

No. You can buy as a tourist or without ever setting foot in Japan. The reverse is also true: owning a Japanese house gives you no right of residence and counts for nothing towards permanent residence.

Can a British citizen stay in Japan for six months?

Yes, in two steps. UK passport holders receive 90 days visa free on arrival and may apply to a regional immigration bureau, before those 90 days expire, to extend the stay to six months in total. Only a handful of nationalities have that option.

Can I get a Japanese mortgage as a UK buyer?

In practice, no, unless you already live in Japan and draw a Japanese salary, usually with permanent residence or a Japanese spouse. Buyers arriving from the UK pay cash and finance the purchase at home if they need to.

Do I pay UK tax on rental income from a Japanese property?

While you are UK resident, yes: it is foreign income and goes on the foreign pages of your self assessment return, with foreign tax credit relief for the tax already paid in Japan. Once you are non UK resident, the UK stops taxing it.

How much does it cost to buy a house in Japan from the UK?

Purchase costs stay at or below 6 percent of the price, so about 1,193,000 yen on a 20,000,000 yen house, plus the currency conversion, which ranges from 0.5 to 3 percent depending on the channel you use.

Is the working holiday visa a realistic way to move to Japan from the UK?

For anyone aged 18 to 30, it is now the easiest route: the annual quota for UK nationals rose from 1,000 to 6,000 places in April 2024. It grants one year with incidental work, which is enough time to test a region before buying.

Is the UK State Pension increased each year if I live in Japan?

No. The pension is paid in Japan but not uprated, because the UK and Japan social security agreement covers contributions rather than annual indexation. Over a long retirement the loss compounds, so factor it into the budget.