Agree with all the points sdrothrock made. I lived in Japan for 5 years first via working holiday visa and then through a spousal visa after marrying my wife who is Japanese. After getting married, all I needed to do was take the marriage certificate to the immigration office and was pretty much instantly approved for a 3 year visa. I guess the train of thought is "Well, if one of our own approves of you, that's good enough for us."

Getting PR in Japan is pretty much just a matter of having lived there for 5 years and not have broken any laws.

Compare that to when my wife immigrated to Canada. Despite her speaking English, coming from an economically developed country, having a University degree and years of professional work experience we still needed to wait for over a year and it cost $2000 for everything involved.

If you want to work and live in Japan, legally speaking, it's incredibly easy. The difficulty of integrating into society is the tough part. Even with a fluent grasp of the language, you'll always be an outsider.

To say "Japan doesn't really want immigrants" is kind of accurate though. Japan relies on its closer culture to keep immigration low even though it may be more subconsciously and not a formal government policy.