Says he wants to go home, but the police are holding onto him for now.
At around 7 o’clock in the evening last Saturday, a 36-year-old American man walked into the police station in the town of Izumi in Kagoshima Prefecture. He was hoping to get some help, and he may still end up getting it, but first he got arrested.
The man said that he had been traveling around Japan, but ran out of money and had no place to stay. The police asked him to show his passport, and when they examined its contents they saw that he had entered Japan on a short-term travel visa, which allows tourists from the U.S. to stay in the country for up to 90 days. They also saw that his date of entry into Japan, via Saga Airport, had been October 15.
But wait, you might be thinking, last Saturday was October 10, so how was the man already in Kagoshima then if he arrived in Japan on October 15? Because he arrived in Japan on October 15, 2025, almost exactly one year before he walked into the Izumi police station. That also meant that his visa had expired nearly nine months ago, on January 13, and since he hadn’t applied for any sort of renewal, he was in Japan illegally.
The man told the police that he was aware he had overstayed his visa, and that as he had run out of money, he now wanted to go home to America. It’s not clear what he expected to happen next, but what did happen is that he was immediately placed under arrest for the visa violation.
The situation presents a good opportunity to take stock of the current social climate in Japan regarding immigration/visa law. If someone has overstayed their tourist visa and wants to leave Japan anyway, it might seem like they’ll have no real consequences to face when turning themselves in to the police. If the authorities deport them, that gets them home all the same, right?
▼ A deportation flight is still a departure flight.
However, Japan is in the process of tightening up a number of visa regulations, and recent high-profile crimes involving both foreign tourists and residents are leading to increased calls from the public to see foreign nationals stand trial and be punished for breaking the law, as opposed to the swift, quiet deportations that were common for many years. While it’s unlikely that prosecutors would seek a lengthy prison term for a visa violation (it would run counter to the idea of “You’re not supposed to be here anymore,” after all), waiting in custody for a court date can be very unpleasant in Japan, especially if the man is found to have been in violation of any other regulations during the year he’s spent in the country.
Legitimate hotels in Japan are required to examine and retain a copy of foreign guests’ passports, so it’s unclear how the man bypassed this or what other form of lodgings he’d been using, and the police are still investigating his activities since arriving in Japan.
Obviously, the smart thing to do is to not overstay your visa in the first place. Should you end up in that situation, though, the wisest place to go looking for assistance is at your home country’s embassy or consulate, since even if you need help, you’ve still committed a crime, which is something the police tend to frown on.
Source: TBS News Dig, Minami Nippon Shimbun
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert image: Pakutaso
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