Japan 100 — Collect Japan
100 uniquely Japanese quests. Do them in real life, seal each one with a hanko stamp, and share your board.
japan100.app
Guidebooks tell you what to see in Japan. They almost never tell you what to do.
Think about what people actually retell when they get home. It's rarely "I saw the temple." It's "I slurped my ramen so loud the guy next to me nodded," or "I bowed to a deer in Nara and it bowed back," or "I got lost in Shinjuku station for forty minutes and came out a different person."
I wanted an app built around those. So I wrote down a hundred of them and shipped it. It's called Japan 100, it's on the App Store now, and this post is about what's in it and why.
The board
Open the app and you get one board with 100 quests. Everybody gets the same 100. There's no feed, no map, no recommendations engine. Just a grid of cards, each one a thing you can only do in Japan.
A few from the free tier to give you the flavor:
- Onigiri, Nori Intact. Unwrap a convenience-store onigiri without tearing the seaweed. Follow the 1-2-3 tabs exactly. One tear and it's a delicious failure.
- Tamago Kake Gohan. Crack a raw egg over hot rice. Yes, raw. Japanese eggs are graded for it.
- Station Stamp. Every big train station hides an ink stamp with its own design. Find the table, stamp your notebook.
- Make a Shrine Offering. Coin in, bell rung, two bows, two claps, one bow.
- Natural Onsen Soak. Look for 天然温泉 on the sign. Wash first. The small towel never touches the water.
Then it climbs. Pick Three Oden from the simmering pot. Escape the Shinjuku Dungeon via the Southeast Exit (not East, not South). Catch Nagashi Somen racing down a bamboo flume. Get a Deer to Bow Back. Time the tide so Itsukushima's great torii is standing fully in the sea when you arrive.
And at the deep end, eight gold-sealed legendaries: a hanami picnic under full bloom, one act of kabuki, a real matsuri, fugu from a licensed kitchen, the snow monkeys in their hot spring, sumo up close, a geisha performance, and climbing Mt. Fuji through the night to meet the sunrise.
Do it. Snap it. Seal it.
Here's the loop. Pick a quest. Do it in real life. Take a photo as proof.
Your photo becomes the card. Then a red hanko stamp slams down over it, the same kind of seal that makes paperwork official in Japan, and a few sakura petals fall. That moment is the whole app, honestly. Everything else exists to get you there.
Every quest comes with the etiquette
This is the part I care about most. Each quest has a short insider tip, and most of them are about doing the thing properly:
- Why slurping ramen is respect, not rudeness (it cools the noodles too).
- Why the ¥5 coin is the one you want for the offering box (its name puns on good fortune).
- Why you wash before you get into the onsen, and why you never photograph the bath. Photograph the noren curtain outside instead.
- Why the little appetizer you didn't order at the izakaya is the seat charge, and why you pour bottled beer into the small glasses.
- At a geisha performance, check the photo rule before the lights go down. If the stage bans photos, your ticket is the proof.
Tourism goes better for everyone when visitors know how to behave, and I treated that as a product requirement, not a nice-to-have.
The three tests every quest had to pass
Writing the list was most of the work. I had well over a hundred ideas, and dozens of them died against one of three rules:
- You can't do it outside Japan. "Eat sushi" fails. Conveyor-belt sushi, ordered from the tablet because it arrives fresher than what's circling, passes.
- It's an action you complete, not a sight you look at. "See Kinkaku-ji" fails. "Catch the Golden Pavilion doubled in its pond at the 9:00 opening, before the tour flags arrive" passes.
- It doesn't make tourists a nuisance to locals. Photographing strangers, bothering shrine staff, anything that treats a neighborhood as a theme park. Cut.
What survived tends to send people to small places: the neighborhood sento, the shotengai bakery, the six-seat ramen counter under the train tracks. Not one more body at the same five landmarks.
Commons, rares, legendaries
Rarity is curated by hand, not by position on the board.
- Common means you can simply decide to do it today.
- Rare takes real money, a booking, or some courage. A night at a ryokan. A kaiseki course. One shot of kyudo. Getting buried to the neck in hot sand at Ibusuki.
- Legendary needs a seasonal window, luck, or a once-in-a-trip commitment.
Three of the legendaries are season-locked (hanami, the snow monkeys actually in the bath, the Fuji climbing season). A literal 100/100 in a single trip is nearly impossible by design. Japan isn't finished with you yet.
Show it off
When you want to brag, the app exports your board as a share card: a 9:16 story or a 1:1 grid, with your photos, your stamps, and your count. Ready for Instagram or the group chat.
Your photos stay on your phone
No account. No sign-up. No servers. Your photos and your progress live on the device and are never uploaded anywhere. This started as an architecture decision and ended up as the headline on my landing page.
Pricing
The first 30 quests are free. One purchase ($19.99) unlocks all 100. No subscription.
I went with a one-time unlock because a Japan trip lasts a couple of weeks. A subscription would either churn the moment the flight home lands or feel like a tax on a vacation. Buy it for the trip, keep the board forever.
The 70 locked quests stay visible on the board as gold cards instead of hiding behind a menu. You scroll past what you're missing every day. That did more for the purchase than any paywall copy I wrote.
Under the hood, briefly
For the curious: React Native and Expo, TypeScript, SQLite for progress, RevenueCat for the single purchase. All 100 illustrations are original, drawn in three colors (indigo line, one vermilion accent, white) so the set reads as if it came off one woodblock. I'll write up the build separately if people want it. This post is about the app.
What's next
- Android (the purchase layer is already wired for it)
I would really appreciate any feedback you might have!
Try it
- App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/japan-100-collect-japan/id6787285358
- Site: https://japan100.app
If you've been to Japan, I'd love to hear which quest you'd add. If you're going, tell me how many you seal.
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