Investing options living in Japan

[chasingsun]

Hi all,
I'm new to the site and have read through a lot of the posts and articles here, but I have a few questions I'd like to ask.

I'm a Korean citizen and have been living in Japan for almost 12 years. I have maxed out my iDeco and Nisa contributions every month and so I have been trying to figure out a way to invest my money in the US stock market. I'm looking to invest in different areas such as gold, commodities, long and intermediate term bonds, ETFs, etc.

From what I've read, Interactive Brokers seems to be the only choice for non-US citizens living in Japan. My question is, is this really the only choice out there for people like me? Interactive Brokers requires Japanese residents to wire transfer money internationally into the account which costs about 4000 yen. It seems counterintuitive to start investing here if Im losing close to 50K a year on funding my account.

Is there any way around this funding method? or any other sites that I can use to make investing my money actually worth it?

Thank you in advance, any advice is appreciated.

[RetireJapan]

You can buy US stocks directly through most stockbrokers in Japan.

[adamu]

I have maxed out my iDeco and Nisa contributions every month and so I have been trying to figure out a way to invest my money in the US stock market.

RetireJapan is right, if you just want to buy stocks on the NYSE, you can do that easily from Japanese brokers.

But my question is why do you want to focus on the US for the remainder of your investments? There are many good Japanese-based mutual funds that are available, and they come without the currency conversion fees, trading fees, withholding taxes and exchange-rate risk of US securities.

[captainspoke]

...I'm a Korean citizen and have been living in Japan for almost 12 years. ...
From what I've read, Interactive Brokers seems to be the only choice for non-US citizens living in Japan. ...

I've seen interactive brokers (IB) ads on a reddit forum for korea--a promoted advertisement. From that I would guess that an IB account would also be usable in korea. If you ever plan to return, having an acct that is also good there could be an advantage.