The AI partner built for foreign companies operating in Japan
Plenty of firms will sell you AI. Almost none of them work the way an international business in Japan actually needs: briefed in English, delivered in Japanese, met with in person, and priced in yen. That gap is exactly what we built Yes AI Japan to fill.
The problem with the alternatives
If you run an international company in Tokyo or Osaka, you already know the two bad options. Option one: a US or European AI vendor with a slick dashboard, a support desk sixteen hours behind you, and voice agents that speak Japanese the way a translation app speaks Japanese — technically words, socially wrong. Option two: a domestic Japanese vendor whose product, contracts and support are entirely in Japanese, which puts the very language barrier you were trying to remove right back in the middle of the relationship.
Yes AI Japan is the option that shouldn't be rare but is: an English-first, full-stack AI automation firm that serves foreign companies in Japan and actually operates here. That white space is ours, and we intend to own it.
Four things you won't get anywhere else together
1 · English in, Japanese out
You brief, configure and report in English. Your customers and staff experience natural, honorific-correct Japanese. The bilingual bridge runs in the software, not in your team's overtime.
2 · A real local partner
Led by an Australian based in Osaka who speaks the language and knows the market. You get a person to meet — not a US SaaS dashboard and a ticket queue in another time zone.
3 · One partner, the whole stack
Voice agents, dashboards, systems integration and workflow automation from a single team. No stitching together five vendors who don't talk to each other — or to you, in your language.
4 · Built for how Japan buys
Priced in JPY with consumption tax stated, decided over local meetings, APPI-aware, and pilot-first — so the value is proven before you commit.
The detail most AI tools get wrong
Japanese honorific language — keigo — is not decoration. Using the wrong register with a customer, a supplier or a senior contact reads as careless at best and rude at worst. It is precisely the thing a generic overseas voice bot fumbles, because it was never tuned for it.
We treat keigo as a first-class engineering requirement, tuned locally and reviewed by people who live here. It is a concrete, demonstrable advantage — and we're happy to prove it on a live call before you sign anything.
- Correct honorific register for customers, partners and staff.
- Tuned and reviewed locally — not left to raw machine translation.
- Seamless English fallback when the caller prefers it.
- Demonstrable on your own use case, before you commit.
Proven engineering, local delivery
Yes AI is an Australian AI automation firm that runs production voice and automation systems for Australian businesses every day. That engineering team builds and supports what you deploy, so Japan gets a proven capability rather than an experiment.
Colin Steen — bilingual, robotics and AI expert, and a long-established entrepreneur based in Osaka — is your single point of contact on the ground. You brief a local partner in your own language; the delivery is handled by a team with a track record.
- Production AI systems already running for Australian businesses.
- Local point of contact in Kansai, fluent in both languages.
- Meetings in Tokyo and Osaka, not just video calls.
Honest about where your data lives
We won't tell you your data never leaves Japan, because that isn't how our current stack works — and we'd rather earn your trust with an honest answer than a marketing one. What we do commit to is APPI-aware handling, a data-processing agreement under Japanese law, and minimal retention: we hold only what a job needs, for only as long as it needs it.
- APPI-aware handling of personal information.
- Data-processing agreement under Japanese law.
- Minimal retention — only what the work requires.
- No lock-in: cancel with 30 days' notice.
See whether it fits
Start with a free AI audit and a live demo on your own use case. Priced in JPY, pilot-first, no lock-in. English and Japanese enquiries welcome.
Book a consultation