About Machi

Make a city easier to live in, one useful answer at a time.

Founded by Yao Kai in Tokyo, Machi organizes guides, housing, secondhand exchange, jobs, questions, local services, and community connections by city and language.

Why Machi exists

Answers are everywhere. The hard part is knowing which one still applies to you.

A clause that is easy to miss in a lease, the right order for local paperwork, what to check before accepting a job, furniture someone hopes to pass on before moving, or an event happening nearby this weekend: useful local information is specific to place, time, and language.

Today it is scattered across group chats, social platforms, local sites, and personal circles. Machi brings that experience back into the city where it happened, with enough context for someone else to find and judge it later.

A note from the founder

I'm Yao Kai.I built Machi because I started from zero in Japan myself.

I'm Yao Kai, the founder of Machi, and I've done the product, design, and development myself the whole way.

After living in Japan a while, I realized information is never what's missing. What's missing is answers that carry their source — where it happened, when, who actually went through it, and whether it still holds today.

A rental warning, the right order to do paperwork in, an interview story, an honest word about some shop — any of it can be where someone else stops taking the long way around.

But it all sits in group chats, social apps, local forums, and friends' memories, split apart by language on top of that. Newcomers can't tell what applies to them, and people who know the ropes have nowhere that keeps what they share around for long.

So Machi exists. Housing, jobs, secondhand, Q&A, local services, and community all come back to a specific city and language; information keeps its time, place, and source, and people can find each other when it matters.

The name comes from the Japanese word 街, or machi. To me it's the place where you slowly learn how to live, get to know people, and get your days running smoothly again.

I'd rather Machi be a plain, dependable part of city life than anything grand — a place that treats useful experience with care and doesn't leave newcomers to work everything out on their own.

Keep useful experience where it happened — and the people who come next take a few fewer wrong turns.

What we value

Information belongs somewhere

The same question can have a different answer in every country and city. Place is the first layer of context.

Experience needs a date and source

First-hand knowledge, clear origins, and recent updates help people decide whether advice still applies.

Language should not block daily life

Interface and content languages are chosen separately, so multilingual cities are not reduced to a single voice.

Design should aid understanding

Less distraction and fewer mechanics built only for attention; more clarity, trust, and practical use.

What makes up Machi

Guide

Starting in Japan, with practical help for daily procedures, study, careers, JLPT, school and company research, and useful services.

City channels

Housing, secondhand, jobs, hiring, events, Q&A, and local services, each with a clear city and topic.

Multilingual community

Ask questions, share experience, join groups, and discover local content in the languages that work for you.

Trusted local connection

Verification, risk prompts, reporting, blocking, and review create clearer boundaries between people and services.

How Machi will grow

NOW

Build Japan and Tokyo well

Keep improving daily-life, career, study, Guide, and city-community paths around the questions people ask most.

Open new cities when the need is real

We care less about filling a map than having the content, services, and community conditions to support a city properly.

LONG TERM

Build a sustainable local ecosystem

Create clear rules for residents, businesses, recruiters, housing-related services, and community organizations to participate with trust.

Machi today

We are still a small, focused team.

The iOS app is live on the App Store, the web app is live, and Android is in development. At this stage, we care about whether every path is clear, every language feels natural, and every public status is honest.

Starting in Tokyo, we want to build something that remains useful years from now: a place people return to when they need help, and contribute to when they have something worth passing on.

Get in touch

For partnerships, press, city suggestions, or early participation, write to hi@machicity.com.

hi@machicity.com

Why we built Machi

When you're new somewhere, answers are everywhere. The hard part is telling which ones still hold and which ones are about you.

Housing, paperwork, job-hunting, exams — the answers are scattered across dozens of group chats, countless posts, and other people's memories, the outdated mixed in with the useful.

Write down the traps you hit — and chances are, someone already wrote down yours.

How experience gets passed on

Someone writes it

It gets seen

It gets used

It helps the next person

A rental writeup that spells out exactly where the traps are.

A meetup where someone's grabbing dinner tonight.

A fridge someone wants to pass on before they move.

A step-by-step checklist left behind once the paperwork's done.

A small place only your Japanese friends know about.

A careful answer from a stranger in the same city.

Ask

Is this neighborhood good for living alone?

Look it up

Housing, paperwork, job-hunting, what to avoid.

Find leads

Hiring, secondhand, events, local services.

Someone just landed and can't decide whether to sort a phone plan or a bank account first. Someone else has been here five years and is happy to spell out the mistakes they made.

Some people are hunting for a place, a job, or a buyer for furniture they can't take with them. Others just want to know what's worth doing nearby this weekend.

Put it all together, and it's what decides whether someone can actually settle into a new country.

Machi gathers these scattered bits of experience and tags each one with when, where, and who wrote it, so it still works for the next person.

Everything you find comes with who went through it, when, and how it turned out — not one more flat, context-free line.

A place usually goes from strange to familiar the moment you can say, I know what to do now.