This article is also available in Japanese: Read the Japanese version
Japan Guide is the YouTube channel of japan-guide.com, the English-language Japan travel guide.
If you have planned a trip to Japan, you may well have used it already.
So who is actually behind it? It is a fair question.
When we looked into it, the answer did not stop at one company. So in this article, we look at how the site is run, its 30-year history and what is in the videos, in that order.
All figures are values we measured through the YouTube API on October 31, 2026.
Japan Guide: The Profile
The first line of the channel description on YouTube reads:
“Covering Japan travel since 1996, now with 7 humans and 3 cats.”
In other words, they have been covering travel in Japan since 1996 and are now seven people and three cats.
It is an unusual way for a company to introduce itself, and we could not help laughing.
The channel opened on April 23, 2016. Its country setting is Japan, and as of October 31, 2026, it had 332,000 subscribers.
As of October 31, 2026, it had about 41.61 million total views and 295 public videos.
The oldest videos still available are six from May 26, 2017, which introduce places such as Tokyo, Kyoto and Hakone in a “Top 5 Things to do” format.
As for the website, japan-guide.com's Japanese-language site for advertisers, japan-guide.co.jp (in Japanese), gives 8 to 10 million page views and 1.8 to 2.3 million unique users a month.
The page does not say when those figures are from, so we could not tell how current they are, but they give a sense of the scale.
Who Runs It: japan-guide.com Co., Ltd. or Export Japan?
Now for the question we were most curious about: who runs it.
To give the conclusion first, two companies appear to be involved: the founder's company and an exclusive agent that handles advertising.
First, the founder's side. The October 2014 issue of Highlighting Japan, the government's English-language magazine, introduced the founder, Stefan Schauwecker, as “the representative director of japan-guide.com Co., Ltd.”
The same company name and title also appear in material from a Reconstruction Agency meeting (in Japanese, PDF).
Japan's National Tax Agency's Corporate Number Publication Site, a government register of companies, lists a company registered as ジャパンガイド株式会社 in Fujioka, Gunma Prefecture. As of October 31, 2026, the register shows no record of closure.
The other company is Export Japan Inc., headquartered in Osaka.
Its company history (in Japanese) says it became the exclusive agent in Japan for japan-guide.com in December 2002.
The site's own employment page also describes Export Japan as the “official advertising sales representative” of japan-guide.com.
What makes it confusing is that a post on the company's blog describes japan-guide.com as a site “that we operate” (in Japanese).
That may be why some Japanese articles found by search present Export Japan as the site's operator.
Still, at the risk of a slight anticlimax, some points remained that we could not fully confirm.
The About and terms pages of the official English site give no company name, and we found no source stating plainly that the Fujioka company runs the site today.
With both the company name and Gunma Prefecture lining up, we think it is natural to see it as the same company named in the 2014 and 2016 sources.
Nor do we know how the two companies are connected by capital or contract. The 2016 Reconstruction Agency material lists 高岡謙二 as a director of the founder's company, standing in for Schauwecker. That is the same name, written the same way, as Export Japan's representative director, but we could not confirm whether they are the same person.
1996: A Hobby Site Begun in Vancouver
It began not as a company but as one person's hobby.
Schauwecker grew up in Zurich, Switzerland, and became interested in Japan while studying in Vancouver, Canada.
According to the government magazine mentioned above, it started with the Japanese classmates he befriended at an English school there.
The official About page says: “This web site exists since July 2, 1996.”
So July 2, 2026, marked exactly 30 years. The Japanese-language site also ran a 30th-anniversary feature (in Japanese).
As the site grew, so did its advertising income, and after graduating and working in Canada for a year, Schauwecker decided to make running the site his full-time occupation.
In 2003 he and his wife moved to her hometown in Gunma Prefecture, and he moved the site's operation to Japan as well.
Given that the agency contract began the year before, perhaps the move to Japan was already in the works.
In 2008, he was appointed a Yokoso! Japan Ambassador, now called Visit Japan Ambassador, by the Japanese government.
He also reportedly keeps up “3.11 RECOVERY,” an annual series in which he visits Tohoku after the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011) and reports on it.
An Editorial Office Near Takasaki, with Cats
On where the team is based today, the employment page says:
“We are located near Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture, and have several office cats.”
So the office is near Takasaki City in Gunma Prefecture, and has several cats. The “3 cats” in the channel description was no joke after all.
In 2014, according to the government magazine, Schauwecker, his wife and three employees were keeping every prefecture of Japan up to date.
As of October 31, 2026, seven people are named on the official About page.
They are Schauwecker, the editor-in-chief; the writers Raina Ong, Matt Evans and Cassandra Lord; and the videographers Charles Sabas, Thomas Rönnlund and Aimee Gardner.
They come from Switzerland, Singapore, the UK, France, Sweden and Australia: quite a mix.
Cassandra Lord says in an interview that before joining she had pictured a big team, and that she was surprised by how small it is.
From the outside, you really would picture an editorial office of dozens.
The Most-Viewed Video Is for First-Time Visitors
As of October 31, 2026, the most-viewed video is “15 Tips for First-Time Travellers to Japan” from March 2019, with more than 5.59 million views.
It is aimed at people who land at Narita and head from Tokyo to Kyoto, and explains how to pick up rail passes and book bullet train tickets.
Where parts had gone out of date, notes on eSIM and IC cards were later added to the video description.
That feels very much like the work of a team that has kept its website up to date for years.
Its successor is “How to Plan Your First Trip to Japan - 2026 Edition” from January 2026.
According to an article on the Japanese-language site (in Japanese), the 2019 edition recommended the Golden Route, from Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka, as the classic itinerary.
The 2026 edition, it says, suggests routes that avoid the crowds, and no longer treats the Japan Rail Pass as a must but as something to work out by doing the math.
It is striking how much the advice for the same first trip to Japan has changed in seven years.
The Toyama Video Was an Advertising Case Study
The second most-viewed is “The Best Places in Toyama” from September 2017, with 2.39 million views as of October 31, 2026.
It takes in Kurobe Gorge, the gassho-zukuri farmhouses of Ainokura and the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, and the video description credits Raina Ong as host and Schauwecker as producer.
In fact, a case study by Export Japan (in Japanese) presents this video as a past example of video advertising, under the client name Toyama Prefecture.
It seems the local government commissions the video, and Japan Guide's staff do the reporting and make it.
Among the 2026 videos, too, at least four name a partner in the video description.
The partners are Fukui City, JR-West, Odakyu Electric Railway and Niigata City.
Meanwhile, the Japanese-language site (in Japanese) says that all its content is researched independently by non-Japanese writers who work exclusively for japan-guide.com, except for some sponsored articles.
Useful guidance for travelers and promotion for local areas, on the same channel: that is presumably where the agent comes in.
2026: A Sudden Jump in Short Videos
Counting the videos by year shows a big change in 2026.
In 2025, the channel published 26 videos; in 2026, through October 29, that rose to 117.
Of those, 100 are three minutes or less. In 2025, only five were.
By month, April (34) and March (20) stand out.
Among the videos published in 2026 through October 29, 34 have cherry blossom or autumn-color words in the title, and there is a run of short dispatches with the date right in the title, such as “Autumn colors in Nikko, October 08, 2026.”
The best viewing time changes within days, so these should be a real help to anyone watching just before a trip.
You could say the up-to-date guidance the site has always offered has simply moved into short videos.
A hobby page begun in Canada 30 years ago now sends out the autumn colors of the season from a small editorial office in Gunma.
