Reshito

What Nobody Tells You About Running a Tech Company in Japan as a Foreigner

I didn’t plan to start a company in Japan. BenStay began as a side project — a guesthouse, then two, then a handful of properties managed with spreadsheets and late-night WhatsApp messages. At some point the side project became a registered LLC, and somewhere after that I realised I was actually running a technology company in a country where the business infrastructure operates mostly in a language I had to study at a kitchen table.

Five years in, here’s what I actually wish someone had told me.

Reshito: Why We Built an AI Receipt Scanner for Japan's Freelancers

If you’ve ever filed a 確定申告 (tax return) in Japan as a freelancer, you know the drill. A shoebox full of receipts. A spreadsheet you swore you’d update weekly but haven’t touched since July. And the looming March deadline that somehow always catches you off guard.

That’s exactly the problem we kept running into at BenStay. We manage multiple properties, track expenses across different projects, and deal with the full spectrum of Japanese receipts — from handwritten ryokan invoices to konbini thermal paper that fades before tax season.

So we built Reshito.