Over the past few months, I've been building free web tools for foreigners living in or traveling to Japan. All static sites, all open source, all hosted on GitHub Pages — zero server costs.
Here's what I built and why.
The Problem
If you've ever moved to Japan or planned a trip there, you know the pain: information is scattered across blog posts, Reddit threads, and outdated government PDFs. I wanted to fix that by building focused, searchable tools.
The Tools
Daily Life
- Japan Tax Calculator — Input your salary, get your take-home pay with all deductions calculated (income tax, resident tax, social insurance)
- Japan Utility Setup Guide — Step-by-step guide for setting up electricity, gas, water, and internet
- Japan Size Converter — Convert clothing and shoe sizes between Japan, US, UK, EU, and AU systems
Money
- Money Transfer Japan — Compare international transfer services (fees, rates, speed) + scam checker
- NISA Investment Guide — Compare investment vehicles available in Japan (iDeCo, NISA, Tokutei)
- Japan Tech Salary — Salary ranges for 7 tech roles across 5 cities, broken down by experience
Travel & Safety
- Japan Emergency Phrases — 40 essential phrases for medical, police, disaster situations. Tap to copy.
- Japan Scam Checker — 20 documented scam schemes with warning patterns
- Wheelchair Accessibility Guide — 25 Tokyo locations with detailed accessibility ratings
Language & Education
- NihongoVS — 75-page site comparing confusing Japanese grammar pairs (ore vs watashi, wa vs ga, etc.)
- Japanese School Finder — Compare language schools by location, price, visa support
Shopping & Food
- Foreign Grocery Finder — Search 75+ hard-to-find ingredients and which Japanese stores carry them
Tech Stack
All sites follow the same simple pattern:
- HTML + Tailwind CSS CDN + Vanilla JS (no frameworks, no build step)
- Data in JS arrays (no database, no API)
- GitHub Pages (free hosting)
- Mobile-first (480px breakpoint, 44px tap targets)
Total hosting cost: $0/month for all 13 sites.
Free PDF Downloads
I also created printable cheat sheets from the data:
All free. All downloadable.
What I Learned
- Static sites are underrated. No server, no database, no maintenance. Just data + HTML.
- Data is the product. The code is trivial — finding, verifying, and structuring real data is the hard part.
- Solve one thing well. Each tool does exactly one thing. No feature creep.
What's Next
I'm adding more cities to the wheelchair guide, more schools to the school finder, and building tools based on what Reddit users actually ask for.
If you're living in Japan or planning to move, check them out. And if you have ideas for tools that don't exist yet, let me know.
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