About Japanese Toolkit
What is this site?
Japanese Toolkit is a growing knowledge base about Japan, written for people who have to deal with it in practice — visitors working out how to pay for a train, and in time students, workers and residents dealing with everything else. Each subject gets a page of its own rather than a paragraph inside a longer article. Everything is free to read and carries no advertising, affiliate links, or paid placement.
Why we built it
Most writing about Japan is organised around an itinerary. The questions that actually cost people time and money are duller and more specific: which card works on which train, what happens if you tap out in the wrong region, whether your phone can hold a transit card at all. Those questions have precise answers that rarely change, and they are worth one clear page each rather than a paragraph inside a listicle.
What you can read
- Trains — How Japan's railways work: JR and private operators, local versus express services, reserved seats, and reading a network that spans dozens of companies.
- Flights — When flying beats the bullet train in Japan, the main domestic airlines and airports, baggage rules, and how to get from the airport into the city.
- Buses — How Japanese buses work: paying on city routes, overnight highway buses between cities, and reaching the rural places trains do not go.
- Driving — What visitors need to drive in Japan: the international permit requirement, renting a car, expressway tolls, parking, and where driving genuinely beats the train.
- Taxis — Using taxis in Japan: what they cost, how to hail or book one, paying by card or IC card, and the conventions that surprise first-time visitors.
- Ferries — Travelling Japan by sea: island ferries, long-distance overnight routes, cabin classes, and how boats reach places the rail network cannot.
- Bicycles — Getting around Japan by bicycle: renting and share schemes, the parking rules that catch visitors out, and the long-distance routes worth planning a trip around.
- Tickets & Passes — What to buy before you travel in Japan: transit IC cards, regional and nationwide rail passes, and working out which of them is worth the money.
- Converters — Convert between romaji, hiragana and katakana in your browser. Free, instant, and nothing you type leaves your device.
- Text — Analyse Japanese text in your browser: count characters by script, and see how much of a passage is kanji, kana or Latin.
- Calendar — Convert between Japanese imperial era years (和暦) and Western years, including the years that span two eras.
- IC Cards — How Suica, PASMO, ICOCA and the rest work — where they are accepted, and where they are not.
- Romaji to Hiragana — Type Japanese in the Latin alphabet and get hiragana back instantly, in your browser.
- Hiragana to Katakana — Turn hiragana into katakana instantly, in your browser.
- Katakana to Hiragana — Turn katakana into hiragana instantly, in your browser.
- Full-width & Half-width — Fix text a Japanese form rejects: convert between full-width and half-width characters.
- Character Counter — Count Japanese text by script — hiragana, katakana, kanji, Latin and digits.
- Era Converter — Convert between Japanese imperial era years (和暦) and Western years, both directions.
How it is written
Each page concentrates on rules and systems that stay true across years rather than prices and timetables that change monthly, and shows the date it was last updated. Where something does change often, the page says so and points at the operator instead of quoting a number that will age badly.
Privacy first
The site runs no analytics and sets no tracking cookies, and anything it remembers for you stays in your own browser. Read the full Privacy Policy for details.