TLDR: was granted a designated activities visa as a foreigner because I'm gay married to a Japanese dude.
I've seen a few examples posted where both parties are foreigners, and one where I think one partner was a Zainichi Korean/Japanese, but I haven't seen an example yet of a plain old Japanese with a plain old foreigner. As nothing has been officially coded into law yet there seems to be some confusion.
After Andrew and Kohei went through the courts over the last few years, whilst they didn't get everything they were looking for, it did at least push the judiciary to instruct immigration to start issuing designated activities visas for same sex married couples where one partner is Japanese.
Our timeline:
I moved to Japan in 2015, met my fella and got married at an embassy in Tokyo in 2019, then moved to Europe until this year.
I arrived back here on a tourist visa, then two weeks before it was set to expire, our application was submitted. Got the usual 2 month extension, but the application was approved fairly quickly, it took one month and a few days.
We went through a scrivener, nothing in the application was especially difficult, but as it's new territory we hunted down a company that's had experience with them before, I believe we were the 7th couple he's successfully worked with for this.
I won't include their details, I don't wanna get stung for advertising or something, but if you want to chat to them you can DM me and I'll send along the details. Pricing was 50K up front, and 50K once successful, plus some optional smaller fees.
The application itself was fairly simple, and largely followed the same format as a standard marriage visa. In our case it was pretty easy, we had a lot of evidence over the decade we've been together, and both our families were at our wedding.
Quite a few of the questions were about family members knowing about, and being involved, which was fine for us, but struck me as tricky for couples where one or both are closeted.
Finances were also looked at, my husband makes only 3.7 mil per year, but we own a house outright in the countryside, so our expenses are also small.
I received a one year zairyu card/residency, we also applied for the 28 hours work permission stuff at the same time which was also granted.
All in all it was a surprisingly painless procedure. Whilst it's not a good long term solution, (no path to PR and restricted to part time hours), it works for us in the short term, and I can confirm that it is absolutely possible to do. At least for now.
by m0mbi