What We Do

Japan News provides daily English-language news coverage focused on topics that matter to foreign residents living in Japan. We take official announcements from Japanese government agencies and rewrite them in plain English, covering immigration, taxation, healthcare, pensions, labor law, housing, and public policy.

Why We Exist

Living in Japan as a foreign resident means navigating complex systems in a language you may not fully understand. Important policy changes, new regulations, and legal updates often go unnoticed by the English-speaking community until it's too late.

Japan News bridges this gap by monitoring Japanese government announcements and delivering relevant information in clear, accessible English. We focus on practical, actionable news that directly impacts your daily life in Japan.

Our Editorial Approach

Official sources: We read announcements published by Japanese government agencies such as the Immigration Services Agency, the National Tax Agency, the Digital Agency, the Japan Pension Service, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the Japan Meteorological Agency, the Japan Tourism Agency, the Hokkaido Prefectural Government and e-Gov public comments. We reuse this content under the Public Data License 1.0 (Hokkaido: Creative Commons Attribution), credit the issuing body, and link every article to the original announcement.

Focus on relevance: We pick the announcements that affect foreign residents: visa policies, tax regulations, healthcare access, employment rights, and housing rules. We also run a lighter section, Weird & Wonderful Japan, for official announcements that are simply odd, delightful or fun, written with a lighter touch but from the same sources and with the same fact-checking.

Transparency: Every article names the issuing agency and links to the original announcement so you can verify information and dive deeper if needed.

How Articles Are Written

Articles are written by AI (Claude, by Anthropic) and are not reviewed by a person before publication. The AI sees only the titles and short summaries that government agencies publish in their feeds, not the full announcements.

• Each factual sentence has to cite a numbered source, shown as [1], [2]… and listed under the article.
• A second AI pass checks every sentence against those sources. Sentences it can't match are removed, and if too many fail the article isn't published.
• Articles are kept short when the sources are thin, instead of being padded.

AI can still get things wrong. Before acting on anything about visas, taxes, insurance or other official matters, check the linked sources and the relevant government office.

Who We Are

Japan News is created by Mike Sewell, a Canadian software developer and expat living in Japan. After years of struggling to keep up with policy changes that affected his residency, taxes, and daily life, he built this site to solve a problem he personally experienced.

The site uses AI (Claude by Anthropic) to rewrite Japanese government announcements in English daily, ensuring timely coverage without the overhead of a traditional newsroom.

Our Commitment

Accuracy: We work from official government announcements and link each one we use. If we make an error, we correct it promptly.

Independence and disclosure: Japan News is run by Mike Sewell, who also makes Jozu (an app that explains Japanese letters and paperwork) and Kantan Health (a directory of English-speaking doctors in Japan). We promote both on this site, always labelled “PR”. We also earn a commission if you sign up for Wise through our link. None of this affects which stories we cover or what articles say, and we don't accept payment from anyone for editorial coverage.

Privacy: We don't sell your data. Email subscriptions are used solely to deliver news digests. See our Privacy Policy for details.

Contact Us

Questions, feedback, or corrections? Reach us at hello@j.apan.news

For editorial corrections or to report an issue with an article, please use our contact form.