Daruma
For people moving to Japan
You have 14 days to register at city hall. Renewal applications open 90 days before your card expires. Pension and insurance records now affect permanent residency — and, from 2027, visa renewals. Daruma turns all of it into a plan built around your visa, your city and your arrival date.
Get notified at launchiOS first. One email when it's live — nothing else, ever.
Tell it your visa, nationality, destination city and arrival date. Someone landing on a work visa with a job lined up gets a different list from someone moving wards after three years, or someone bringing a partner and children.
Move-in registration is a legal 14-day deadline, and Daruma marks what's required by law differently from what's merely a good idea. Reminders start when your renewal window opens — 90 days out — because collecting documents is the slow part, not filing them.
Save any deadline to your phone's calendar in one tap, so it sits alongside everything else in your life rather than inside an app you might forget to open.
Residence card, visa paperwork, contracts. Scan them once and they're there at the counter, instead of scrolling your camera roll while a queue forms behind you.
The counter problem
Knowing the procedure isn't the hard part. The hard part is the moment someone asks you a question in Japanese and you have thirty seconds to answer.
Every errand carries the phrases for that specific counter — city hall, health insurance, the pension office, the bank — in Japanese, romaji and English. Tap to hear it read aloud, or just turn the screen around and point.
Works offline-first for the things you'll need at a counter, because ward offices have famously terrible signal.
The coach
An AI coach that answers questions about visas, city hall procedures, housing and daily life in plain English — and knows where you are in your move, so you're not re-explaining your situation every time.
Speak it or type it. "What's a guarantor and why does everyone want one?" is a perfectly good question, and you shouldn't have to ask a stranger on Reddit.
It can be wrong, and it says so. Anything consequential still gets confirmed with the actual office.
Who's behind it
Daruma is made by a long-term resident of Japan who has been through the ward office queues, the guarantor conversations, the renewal panic, and the specific indignity of realising a form needed a stamp you didn't own.
Japanese rules change, and they changed twice in 2026 alone — the residence card requirement for permanent residency in February, the Specified Residence Card in June. Every guide in the app carries a "last reviewed" date, so you can see how current it is rather than trusting that it was right whenever it was written.
Bureaucracy is grim enough without an app that feels like a tax form. Daruma is a small red character who reacts to how your move is going — pleased when you clear a deadline, visibly stressed when a receipt total surprises you, asleep when you should be too. He is not a productivity streak and he will not guilt you.
Daruma is an organisational tool, not legal or immigration advice. Rules change, and different municipalities apply them differently. We tell you what's in force, flag what's only been proposed, and date everything — but always confirm anything consequential with your ward office, the Immigration Services Agency, or a qualified professional.
We don't estimate your eligibility for anything. A wrong number on a permanent residency application isn't our risk to take with your life.
One email when Daruma hits the App Store. Nothing else.
Meanwhile, the guides are free and need no account.