Blog - David Helkowski

Personal Japan travel guide

 In light of the potential destruction of the IT industry by AI, or at least the reduction of it to the point that competition for jobs will drop salary of it, I have been been considering alternative ways to make a living recently.

A few weeks ago I came up with what I believed was a brilliant idea. The idea? To become a personal Japan travel guide.

You see, I've travelled around Japan with my wife extensively, both on vacations yearly before we moved to live here, and also even more in the last several years of living in Japan. Generally I prefer to drive us everywhere, so that we can get anywhere we want to go and aren't limited to locations that can be easily reached by public transportation.

I've also taken an absurd number of pictures of places in Japan. Over 50,000. My pictures of just a handful of places posted to Google Maps have over 100,000 views.

So, while I only know a small amount of Japanese, I feel that I know great places to vist, and would be very capable of guiding tourists around.

My idea was/is to charge something minimal at first, say $300 a day ( plus expenses and payment of my stay everywhere gone ). For that, I would do a number of things:

My rough understanding is this would be an extremely cheap offering rate for what I would be providing, and that I could easily probably book my time solid guiding people around Japan year round, or at least nearly so.

Then I began researching what it would take to accomplish this. I thought to myself "No problem. I have a car. I have knowledge. I'm willing to do it. I can build the website and payment systems. My wife can help with reservations at hotels that don't speak any english. I can do this!"

Then reality. First the simple things. I realistically would need to form a Japanese GK ( Japan equivalent of a US LLC ). The main reason is to reduce cash movement issues making hotel reservations for guests. Easier to have the money go into a Japanese company then back out within country rather than trying to deal with constant repeating international transfers.

I would also then likely need to register as a travel guide company of sorts, as I was sure there are probably some rules and agreements in order to do that. A pile of paperwork I assume, but still doable.

Then I looked into whether I need a special license to drive people around. Yes, I need to at least get a class 2 Japanese drivers license. It is at least available to do in English, so that is possible.

But there is a further complexity that nearly ruins my idea. It is illegal for an individual to drive people around for pay using their own car. Nothing like Uber is allowed to exist in Japan. To drive people for pay I would have to form a Japanese taxi company, have a garage, have a fleet of 5 vehicles ( and drivers for that matter ).

So, essentially, Japanese law prevents me from engaging in my business idea that I could realistically do. It's just not allowed.

It doesn't totally ruin my idea, people could stay pay me to be their personal guide for Japan and to photograph them while they travel around, but they'd have to drive themselves or pay taxis, or worse use public transportation.

Public transportation is great in Japan and that can work, especially for travelling in big cities like Tokyo, but it isn't good for seeing the beautiful countryside of Japan, which is what I much prefer. I want to be able to guide people towards the wonderful part of Japan, which is not Tokyo imo. Tokyo has tons of interesting things, but I would not call Tokyo relaxing. More like chaotic and all too busy.

So, if you would like to hire me as a personal tour guide, contact me. Would be happy to assist. Unfortunately my complete custom business idea isn't really viable. Perhaps when I have sufficient capital to get a garage, 5 cars, drivers, and do all the various paperwork and stuff. Right now though it isn't a business plan I can make into a full reality. Not giving up of course, but my happy notion of "I can begin doing this immediately!" is shot.

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