Daruma: Moving to Japan Guide

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  Daruma’s App Store story: scan Japanese letters, track legal deadlines, prepare for city hall, ask the AI coach, and plan ahead.

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  The Wabi-Sabi AI Coach offers starting questions for ward registration, insurance, banking, My Number and other common tasks.

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  The AI Coach explains a hanko in plain English, with follow-up questions and save/report controls for practical next steps.

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  The document vault turns a Japanese health-insurance notice into an English summary and keeps it ready to reopen or rescan.

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  The Today dashboard surfaces an urgent insurance task, relocation progress and the user’s local ward office in one calm view.

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  Camera-first scanning lets users capture Japanese official mail or import a photo, then extract meaning and deadlines.

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  Three visual themes—Wabi-Sabi Stationery, Konbini Pop and Ginza Editorial—preserve the same information hierarchy.

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  Ginza Editorial presents the AI Coach as a calm concierge, translating concepts such as hanko into practical guidance.

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  The Ginza home view combines the statutory countdown, today’s next task, relocation progress and local ward-office context.

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  Ginza’s scanner frames official documents clearly and supports both camera capture and photo-library import.

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  The private Ginza archive stores scanned documents on-device and shows bill type, amount and due date at a glance.

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  The Ginza Chronicle turns critical arrival requirements into a numbered plan with explanations and 14-day deadlines.

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  Daruma prioritizes critical milestones—pension, ward registration and health insurance—with bilingual urgency labels.

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  Onboarding makes the risk concrete: 14-day deadlines, Japanese-only forms and hours lost at city hall.

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  Daruma’s 1024×1024 app icon: a hand-drawn mascot that makes a stressful administrative journey feel approachable.

Why I made Daruma

I’ve moved to Japan twice. I still kept finding out about rules after I needed to know them.

Japan’s rules for foreign residents have changed a lot. I was tired of searching through websites, piecing things together, and wondering what I’d missed.

I wanted a planner that knew my situation. Something that could tell me what to do, what to bring, and when it was due.

So I started building Daruma.

It helps people handle the paperwork of living in Japan. It tracks deadlines, scans Japanese letters, provides phrases for the counter, and has an AI coach for questions along the way.

How I built it

I started in January. Then I stopped.

This is my first app, and I’m building it alone. I got stuck on onboarding screens, character designs, and small details that ate whole weekends. There was always something else to fix before I felt ready.

Shipaton changed that. The competition gave me a deadline. The big launch party in Tokyo gave me another reason to get it done. I stopped polishing things nobody had seen and focused on getting the app into people’s hands.

Daruma went live on the App Store on 20 August. I didn’t find out until a few days later. So much for the big launch moment.

Without Shipaton, I might still be adjusting the onboarding.

What was hard

The paperwork itself is complicated. What you need depends on your visa, your city, and your circumstances. Rules change. Advice goes out of date.

The challenge was to make that easier to navigate without pretending there was one answer for everyone.

That also meant setting limits on AI and narrowing its scope to give better answers. Daruma helps people get organized. It does not replace an immigration office or a qualified adviser.

What I learned

I learned more from putting the app in front of people than from another round of polishing it alone.

After launch, I asked my friends to review it thoroughly. Their feedback led to several updates: more pricing tiers to make it accessible, AI usage limits, tighter scope for answers, themes, and smaller fixes.

I also learned that a release does not have to be the finished version of everything I imagined. It has to be useful enough to start helping someone.

What’s next

Daruma is live, and several updates have already shipped. I’ll keep improving it based on what people need and where they get stuck.

The reason for building it hasn’t changed. I want people to spend less time figuring out the paperwork and more time enjoying their life in Japan.

Built With

• claude
• expo.io
• gemini
• native
• react
• revenuecat
• sentry
• supabase
• typescript
• vitest