Investor Visa – Questions about the requirements

Hello everyone!

I do have a questions regarding the Investor Visa. I was exploring the topic of moving to Japan as a freelance for some time, and yea.. basically no chance xD

But recently I've got a opportunity to speak with a collegue of mine who with his wife were in Japan for the last 13 months (they came back to home country now) – they were doing some shenanigans across tourist visa / language course etc… to extend it to that period.

Anyway, when speaking with him we started to talk about the Investor Visa (as basically the only way to go to Japan as a professional without begin hired by a Japanese company) and what he told me is in almost complete contradiction to what I can find about Investor Visa. He also wants to permanently go back to Japan and as he said he's trying to figure out if this will be freelance or they're thinking about setting up a café in Tokyo.

Basically what he stated is as follow (in accordance that freelance is possible on Investor Visa – he was not saying that the stuff on the internet are false – it was more of an that there are other ways with Investor Visa), where this two points are the most crucial:

1. You have to invest 10.000.000 JPY across a year (as for now I only read about 5.000.000 JPY). That invest money (if you'll want to have a freelance and work from home) can be part of the cost of renting, buying a car etc… so pretty much if you want to move permanently is not that big of a deal as at least some part of it can be covered for providing yourself a living in Japan.
2. That you don't have to hire any Japanese Nationals (???) -> this is only for gastronomy. So that you can set up 1 person company and go for it.

The others are the same as I found in the internet:

1. Provide business plan
2. Demonstrate experience
3. Show that you have sufficient finance

Does anyone knows if any of these two first points are true? -> I've looked up multiple times stuff about Japanese Visa and basically gave up on it so far 😛 – so I was extremely surprised when he was explaining this to me like that.