Dustin C wrote:

> Visa was applied for (by bank's attorneys) and subsequently rejected due to 
> lack of experience (I had letters substantiating about 98 of 120 months 
> experience).

Maybe I have been here too long, but the very thought of a Japanese 
attorney failing to get a visa approved says more to me about the 
attorney than you.

> Does one rejected application = a higher chance of another rejection (for 
> work visas and even holiday visas) in the future?

I have never been rejected, but I know people who have been.  There 
never seemed to be any sort of continuity to the process and it never 
/_seemed_/ as though filing the next application produced any sort of 
recognition that you've been there before.  The only one that counted 
was the record of jumped-through hoops in the current application.

> I know these are tough questions to provide answers on, (being that none of 
> you probably work at the immigration department! -if anyone knows anyone who 
> does that would be great)  alas I haven't had much luck getting any info 
> from immigration. 

My early years in Japan were spent working for the auto and motorcycle 
industry doing engineering and technical things that Immigration swore 
Japanese could do.  But my employers were never able to find one of 
these qualified people in the several minutes of diligent searching of 
their resumes on file.  They'd issue a letter saying a variance was 
necessary.  Then they'd give it to one of their personnel people who 
would go in to the local immigration office to confirm whether it would 
be difficult to get the visa they wanted.  If they didn't hear positive 
things, they'd call up their ad agency in Tokyo and ask them to hire an 
extra copywriter for their overseas sales account.  Then the ad agency 
would assign me to work at the factory to gain technical experience of 
the products.  Maybe something like that would work for you?

You probably won't get much helpful information from immigration unless 
you are in Japan and appear in person.  In the Tokyo office the advice 
desk is in a part of the building where the regular staff can't even see 
you and the people who work there are pretty good at thinking outside 
the box.

One of the former heads of Tokyo Immigration had graduated from the same 
law school as my father-in-law.  His advice was that if you got hassled 
by one officer, just ask for the dossier back so you can "make 
corrections" and then approach the desk again when a different officer 
was on.  Changing the order of the forms you had or making a few 
superficial changes to one of the pages would help prevent recognition 
too soon.  Sometimes that could also mean coming back another day.  In 
the early years of my marriage, I always kept a copy of his meishi in my 
card case, but never got the chance to pull it out.  By that time I had 
a track record and no one was looking closely any more.

CL