I dunno, I've heard pretty differing stories that lead me to think that it comes down to the immigrations officer dealing with it.
In my case it certainly was that way, one immigrations officer flat out denied my business visa, so I went to the office another day when he wasn't working and his coworker felt I was overqualified for it and accepted it on the spot right there.
It might help to mention I was sleepy and dressed very casually the first time but in a suit the second time.

If a company wants you there's nothing they can do if immigration decides you don't meet some obscure criteria.
If immigrations likes you for whatever reason then you'll have no problems staying in the country even with a part time job and crap salary below official requirements.

From experience, I was working part time at a crap English school making very little money on paper, supplementing my cost of living with a slew of private students. But on paper I was making about 12万円 a month. I kept trying with different officers until I found one that liked me and then got in no problems.

Over-stayers is a different problem, that's just stupidity and also disrespectful.
I meant lax in terms of who they let in.

At the ski resort I'm at we have a lot of foreign staff as such a large part of our market is from overseas. One year a new guy came in to head up immigration in Sapporo (who obviously hadn't heard much about Niseko) and obviously couldn't understand why so many foreigners needed jobs and basically denied nearly every work visa request sent in. So a group of business owners along with the Australian consul went and had a meeting to explain the need for foreign workers and thankfully most of the visa requests were then approved.

Anyway on topic, my wife has decided she wants to go back to live in Australia after this coming summer. Mostly due to wanting to have family support for our daughter and plus she's never been as keen as I am on the long, cold snowy winters we get here in Hokkaido. To say I'm devastated is an understatement. She has already chosen and put down a deposit on a house in Aus (with my reluctant approval). Anyway my living the dream here in Japan will unfortunately come to an end. I'm already dreading how much I will miss my life here! We will be moving to a little coastal town that has absolutely beautiful beaches which will be nice but I love the snow a hell of lot more than nice beaches. I'm currently setting up a new business though that will allow me to come back and forth quite often and spend a fair portion of the winters here so I won't be leaving it entirely...and I will have had nearly 8 years of living the life I really wanted. I guess the wife deserves her turn ;)

Good man. It's all about compromise.

One tip: multiple re-entry investor/business manager visa. I love it. It is as good as it gets without permanent resident.

What about other parts of Japan. I really miss the alps and the smaller towns too. I often watch NHK world to see things from all over Japan.

I miss Towada-ko and the drive up there.... it's gorgeous! But since I went there when there wasn't a thing called the internet or digital cameras, I hardly have any proof of it....

I also miss Hirosaki and walking around the castle grounds.... a very pretty little city....