I’m a YouTuber planning to come to Japan as a language school student — what should I do?

> Will this situation affect my student visa? If you work without permission or go beyond the limits it will *absolutely* affect your visa. Immigration doesn't screw around with the student visa. >I also stated that my income is from YouTube and provided everything I could while doing my application for my COE. The COE application is not the same thing as working permission. >I don’t think they expected that I would continue doing this work while I’m there. You're correct. The "employment" verification during the COE application is just to prove where your savings came from. >Right now I honestly have no idea how I should proceed First you need to be prepared to put YT on hold for at least a month, possibly more. The specific working permission I mentioned can only be applied for after you arrive in Japan, and it can take a month or more for the application to process. While it's processing you *cannot work*. No recording content. No posting content. No interacting with comments. Any interaction with your channel could be considered work, and until you have permission you're not allowed to work. You also need to be prepared for the possibility that you may not be allowed to do the YouTube thing *at all*. The special permission is not "must issue", which means that if there's any doubt about your time tracking or anything else immigration can (and likely will) reject your application.

My language school told me I couldn’t make money off of content creation or my art during the time I was there, regardless of the Permission to Engage in Activities Outside of Your Visa that I had for my student visa. Content creation and freelance artist work are not counted under that umbrella of what’s allowed because of how easy it is for people to lie about how much they’re working and how hard it is to prove either way. Some websites say you can work as a content creator if you have this permission stamp, others say you can’t. I found a lot of conflicting info, but for the ones that say that you can, they clarify that you have to report the hours you work and everything but it’s never stated HOW you’re supposed to do that. I’ve never been able to find answers. So I asked my school and that’s what I was told, even tho it conflicts with various websites that say otherwise, like this one: https://blog.gaijinpot.com/how-to-be-an-influencer-in-japan-visa-rules-side-gigs-and-stealth-ads/ There’s also this from the official gov website: “(1) Individual permission for activities outside the scope of your status of residence is required if you are engaging in activities where it is difficult to objectively verify your working hours, such as when working as a sole proprietor.” https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/applications/procedures/nyuukokukanri07_00003.html It doesn’t seem to say you CAN’T but again, it’s not clear HOW you’re supposed to report things and keep stuff in line. Many people who are content creators in Japan are on spousal or entertainment visas, or if they are on work or student visas, they’re… not claiming that to the government. To my understanding, you don’t have to claim income if it’s under a certain amount per year, so some can go under the radar that way. But if you make a lot off of it, that’s different, and a lot of them aren’t really up front with their audiences about what they’re doing or how, so it can be misleading. I’d also like to inform you that it’s not 28 hours PER week (where it “resets” on Monday and you start with a fresh slate), it’s 28 hours per ANY 7 DAYS within the month. There were several students that had their student visas revoked and were deported before I arrived at my language school for going over their hours because of this misunderstanding, so my school really hammered it in on orientation day but there was still one student I know of during my first year who ended up in the same situation because they didn’t understand. :( So the 28hr/week thing is super misleading, please be careful. It makes things so hard to track and also makes it VERY easy to accidentally go over your limit.