Category: English speaking lawyer in Japan

If you or your children ride bicycles in Japan, and if you bump into a pedestrian, you may have to pay big amount of compensation.

There was a case which a child hit an old lady with his bicycle, and the lady was injured badly. The child and his parents were sentenced to pay almost a hundred million yen (1 oku yen). Same accident can happen any time.

If you and your family ride bicycles, and if you are not insured yet, we suggest you to buy insurance as soon as you can. Some insurance companies pro
vide English documents.

Our law office will be closed for the New Year holidays, from December28th  to January 5th. We will be open at 9:00 on January 6th.

During the holidays, we cannot answer the phone. If you have inquiries, please send email to us. Please note that we may not be able to respond until 6th January.

Hope you all have happy holidays.

It is little known that Japanese “Road Traffic Act” has changed on 1st December 2013.

There are some topics, such as penalties for driving cars without license are strengthened.

Maybe the most important change for good citizens like you and your family is the new rule for riding bicycles.

From now on, you should note that when you ride your bicycle, you have to be on the LEFT side of the road. If you ride the bicycle on the RIGHT side of the road, you may be stopped by the police officer, and you may be penalized.

The penalty for riding the bicycle on the wrong side of the road is,

“Imprisonment up to 3 months”
or
“Criminal Fine up to 50,000yen”

As you see, the penalties are not very light.

Many people riding bicycles think that they are very free and there are no enforceable rules for bicycles, but don’t forget that the Road Traffic Act is also applicable to bicycles.

Also, when you get involved in an accident while riding bicycle on the RIGHT (wrong) side of the road, your fault percentage may be evaluated higher. So it is also important to follow the rule from the perspective of civil law problems.

If you want to start a business (such as exporting used cars from Japan) and make a new company in Japan as the director, the general process is like follows. (This is about the case when you don’t have your permanent visa.)

1. Come to Japan by short-term visa.
2. Find your home and office in Japan (it may be the same place if permitted by the landlord).
3. Establish your company and hire people.
4. Get your investor/business manager visa (you need to at least invest 5,000,000yen to your company).
5. Make the necessary report to the tax office; police office etc. (depends on what business you start).

These procedures are very complicated for people who don’t speak or understand Japanese language, so it is suggestible to find a business partner in Japan (Japanese or someone with permanent residence visa), to make the procedure easier.

If you don’t have a partner in Japan, or if you want to do the business all by yourself, we suggest you to hire lawyers.

We can support you about establishing company in Japan and getting investor/business manager visa.

Cost for establishing the company in general cases

• Actual cost (registering fee etc.): about 200,000 yen
• Lawyer’s fee: between 105,000 yen to 315,000 yen for small companies.

Cost for getting the investor/business manager visa in general cases

• Lawyer’s fee: around 210,000 yen in most cases.

After establishing the company, you will have to consider about tax problems in Japan.
We can introduce you to a tax accountant who can speak English, if needed.

Assume that you were involved in a traffic accident in Japan.

In Japan, when you claim damage to the bad driver, you will have to pay your attorney’s fee by yourself. Even if you go through a lawsuit, the court will only grant 10% of the total damage as the attorney’s fee.

For example, if the court says you have right to be paid 2 million yen as the damage, you can only get 0.2 million yen as the attorney’s fee. In most cases, the actual attorney’s fee is much more than 0.2 million yen, so you’ll have to pay the rest.

Another example. If your damage was just a hundred thousand yen, you can’t even pay the attorney’s fee from the amount you can get. So in many cases, you may have to forget about using the legal procedures.

Of course, in theory, you can go through the legal procedure without hiring an attorney. But if you are not good at Japanese language, it should be very difficult for you to do all the paper works by yourself. If you think of the time you have to spend, it may be almost impossible.

So, to protect your right in these situations, we strongly suggest you to buy liability insurance, which covers attorney’s fee.

There are some insurance agents who can speak English. If you’re interested, please contact.

Please note that it is very important to have an English speaking insurance agent, because when you are involved in a trouble, you can ask them for help.

See also “About Legal Expense Insurance (Car and non-Car)”