About this app

A helper for getting around Japan and being understood. It lines up official help, trusted links and short Japanese you can show to staff — you decide, and you tap. It is free and needs no account.

What you type or photograph is translated by a machine, not a person, and it can be wrong. Cards for allergies, diets and medical needs use prepared phrases rather than free translation. For anything important, check with the official source or a member of staff.

It never books, orders, pays or applies for anything on your behalf — and it will never claim that it did. It does not diagnose illness. It does not give final answers on immigration, visas, customs or the law; those belong to the official body.

For an ambulance or fire, call 119. For police, call 110. The app shows you the number and the words to say — it does not handle the emergency for you.

Your language, saved phrases and notes stay on your device. Text you translate is sent to Google Cloud's translation service, and photos you take for translation to Google Cloud's text recognition. Passport, card and PIN numbers in your text are masked before anything leaves your phone. We never ask for your name, passport number or card number. Photos you take for translation are read and then discarded, not stored. To stop overuse, we count each day's requests per IP address; the counts live only in the server's memory and are wiped once the day turns at midnight Japan time. All traffic is encrypted (HTTPS).

We are not collecting usage statistics at the moment. If that changes, this page will say so — and even then it would count only the kind of help needed and the language, never who you are or anything you typed.

We have no affiliation with the services we link to, and we are not paid to list them. They are chosen because they are official or widely used. Anything sponsored is clearly labelled as PR.

Times, prices, rules and routes change, and this app does not always know. Nothing here is a guarantee. For anything that matters, the official page — or the person in front of you — has the final word.

Today’s weather tip is based on the Japan Meteorological Agency’s forecast for Tokyo (source: JMA website), which this app shortens into one line. The guide exchange rates are the European Central Bank’s euro reference rates (Taiwan dollar and Vietnamese dong: Frankfurter), converted to yen by this app. They are a rough guide only, not a rate you can actually exchange at.

This Tokyo edition uses the following datasets from the Tokyo Open Data Catalog (all CC BY).

Emergency medical covers Taito City and shelters cover Shinagawa City as a pilot; nothing is real-time. Content reflects survey dates; blanks are shown honestly as no data recorded.

This app tidies the original data for use (for example, it shortens the coordinates and leaves out Wi-Fi that works only in a disaster or only for a facility’s own users).

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