Most Japanese businesses default to a Japanese-only website. Understandable — most customers are Japanese. But for any business that touches inbound tourism, foreign residents, exports, or international partnerships, an English website is one of the highest-leverage things you can add.
Who actually benefits from an English version?
- Anyone serving tourists. Restaurants, ryokan, clinics, tours, retail in tourist areas, transport services. Inbound tourism to Japan has rebounded past pre-2020 levels; an English page can be the only reason you appear in a search.
- Anyone with foreign-resident customers. Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kyoto and Fukuoka all have meaningful foreign populations. Many of them never get past the language barrier on a Japanese-only site.
- Anyone doing business with overseas companies. Importers, exporters, manufacturers, B2B services. International procurement teams skip suppliers without an English presence.
- Anyone hiring international talent. An English careers page is often the difference between finding someone and not.
What "good" looks like
A real English website is not Google Translate over the Japanese one. The pages that actually work tend to share a few traits:
- Written by a native speaker who understands the business. Translation alone isn't enough; rewriting for an English-reading audience is the actual work.
- Different content where it should be different. Some pages translate directly. Others (e.g. ordering process for international customers, English customer service hours, shipping outside Japan) need different content.
- Visible language switcher on every page — not buried in a footer.
- Proper hreflang setup so Google serves the right language to the right audience.
- An English-readable contact route. Form, email, ideally a phone number where someone answers in English at predictable hours.
- Honest about what's available in English and what isn't. Trying to hide gaps ends in disappointed customers.
The mistakes most Japanese businesses make
- A translated homepage with everything else still in Japanese — looks worse than no English at all.
- Auto-translation widgets that produce odd English and signal "we couldn't be bothered."
- English content that's months out of date while Japanese content stays current.
- Pricing visible in Japanese, hidden in English.
- A contact form in English that only accepts Japanese-format inputs (postcode, phone, address).
How much does it really cost?
For most existing Japanese small business sites, adding a professional English version costs roughly the same as 30–50% of the original site cost. Translation is a meaningful slice of that and shouldn't be underspent. A site with bad English is worse for your reputation than no English at all.
Where to go from here
The pillar guide, doing business online in Japan, covers the wider landscape. The companion piece, LINE or website? How Japanese customers actually find local businesses, is worth reading too. If you'd like to talk about a bilingual setup, our contact page is in both English and Japanese.