🍽️ In April, Japan stopped admitting new foreign workers into its restaurant industry under the visa built for the sector, because it was about to hit its cap. Six months on, restaurants are competing for the workers who are already in the country, and the cities are winning. Of the restaurant-visa holders who accepted job offers in July, 46.4% were moving from elsewhere into one of six prefectures: Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Aichi and Osaka, according to Mynavi Global, a Tokyo firm that places foreign workers. In March, before the freeze, that share was 31.9%.

A 50,000 cap, and a door that shut early

The visa in question is the Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) status, a residence category Japan created in 2019 for industries that cannot find enough staff. It has two tiers. Tier 1 holders can stay up to five years in total and cannot bring family. Tier 2 has no cap on length of stay and allows family.

Each industry has a ceiling on how many Tier 1 workers it can take in. For restaurants and food service, the ceiling is 50,000 through the end of fiscal 2028 (March 2029). By the end of February 2026 there were about 46,000, and the Immigration Services Agency projected the cap would be hit in May. From April 13, 2026, new applications have in principle been refused. The agency's own timeline lists the restart date as undecided. We covered that decision when it was announced.

SSW is often confused with Japan's older Technical Intern Training program. Technical interns generally cannot change employers. SSW workers can, as long as they stay in the same sector.

New arrivals stopped. Job changes did not.

In an update posted on September 10, the Immigration Services Agency said applications to switch employers within the restaurant sector are all being processed as usual. A job change does not add anyone to the total. Applications to bring workers from abroad, by contrast, were being worked through only up to those filed by January 31.

Apart from narrow exceptions, such as interns finishing a hospital and care-facility catering program whose applications came in by August 31, that leaves a restaurant with one realistic way to add a foreign employee: hire someone who already works at another restaurant. After the freeze, job postings aimed at SSW holders already living in Japan rose 2.8 times, according to a private survey cited by Jiji Press.

In that contest, cities start ahead. SSW employers must pay at least what a Japanese worker would earn, so pay follows local wage levels, and those differ by region. Under the minimum wages set for fiscal 2026, taking effect between October 1 and December 2, Tokyo's is 1,280 yen ($8.09) an hour. Miyazaki, the lowest, is at 1,085 yen ($6.86). That is a gap of 195 yen ($1.23) every hour. (Dollar figures use 158.2 yen to the dollar, as of October 8, 2026.)

Regional employers felt it early. Two months into the freeze, the Ryukyu Shimpo reported that hotels in Okinawa had given up running at full capacity and were dealing with staff being poached from outside the prefecture. The Japan Foodservice Association, which has about 400 member companies, had warned in May of revised opening plans and shorter hours.

Why workers move

Pay is only part of it. Jiji Press spoke with a man from Myanmar who in July landed a job moving from a regional sushi restaurant to one in Tokyo. He had mostly worked the floor. In the new job he will cook too, and his monthly pay goes up roughly 10,000 to 20,000 yen ($63 to $126). His reason was simple: he wants to cook. He told Jiji he expects to grow quickly there and feels he can push harder toward Tier 2.

The president of Mynavi Global made a similar point. A fair number of people move, he told Jiji, because they see no chance of reaching Tier 2 where they are. Tier 2 requires, among other things, two years of supervisory experience. It is also what lets a worker bring family and stay without a time limit.

The concern was there from the start

The basic policy written when the system launched in 2019 says the government will try to keep workers from concentrating excessively in big metropolitan areas. Yet the cap is a single number for the whole country, and concentration was already visible. Preliminary figures for the end of 2025, reported by Nikkei Business, put Tier 1 restaurant workers most numerous in Tokyo, followed by Osaka, Kanagawa, Aichi and Saitama.

A national cap controls how many people come. It does not decide where they end up working. And the pull of the cities goes beyond restaurants: Tokyo's population grew by 75,018 in 2025, and 62,478 of those were foreign residents, 83% of the increase, as we reported in September.

Proposals pull in different directions. In a June column, a chief economist at the Japan Research Institute argued against raising the cap casually, called for early warnings to industries as quotas fill, and suggested that the next review, for the period starting April 2029, consider regional numbers. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, which oversees the restaurant industry, said in May it was debatable whether companies had done everything they could to find workers in Japan, and asked them to try harder. On July 15 the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry asked the government for a way to revise caps quickly once they are hit. A senior researcher at the same institute, speaking to Jiji, suggested giving people who keep working outside the big cities easier or faster paths to permanent residency, so that staying becomes the rational choice.

Korea drew lines on the map

South Korea's Employment Permit System, which lets small firms hire foreign workers with a government permit, also caps numbers. Its quota for E-9 workers is 80,000 for 2026. But Korea added a second rule that Japan's SSW system does not have. E-9 workers who arrived from September 2023 can only switch jobs within their own region, such as the capital area, Chungcheong or Jeolla-Jeju. The government said the aim was to respond to regional decline driven by workers moving toward the capital area. Figures cited when the change was announced showed that 31.5% of workers had left their first workplace within a year.

The rule is still contested. Labor groups say the limits leave workers stuck with abusive employers and want them scrapped. Employers warn that loosening them would mean more departures and worse shortages. In July, reports said a proposal on the table would cut the period during which job changes are limited from three years to 18 months, while keeping the regional limits.

Germany splits the question by route. Its Western Balkans regulation lets citizens of six countries in the region work without proof of formal qualifications, at 50,000 a year. The government plans to halve that to 25,000 from 2027, pointing to rising unemployment at home. The regulation sits apart from the route under the Skilled Immigration Act, where workers come in after their qualifications are recognized.

Japan has, in fact, already written a rule like Korea's, just not for SSW. Under Employment for Skill Development, the system replacing technical intern training from April 1, 2027, an employer in a big-city area may fill no more than one-sixth of its trainee workforce with people who transfer in by choice from the regions. The regions are defined as everywhere outside Tokyo, Osaka, Aichi, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Kyoto and Hyogo, plus some designated areas within those eight.

That leaves Japan giving two answers at once. SSW sets one national number per industry and leaves movement inside it free, and for now the cities are absorbing those workers. The newer system caps how many can move to the cities, at the cost of narrowing workers' choices, as Korea does.

Does your country limit foreign workers by headcount, by qualifications, or by where they are allowed to work? And if workers there could choose freely, where would they go?

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