Machi City was founded by Yao Kai / YAOKAI as an original project built from the ground up.
In October 2019, Yao Kai came to Japan as an international student. Living in a new country and a new city, he quickly noticed a simple but real problem: the most useful information about everyday life is often scattered.
Housing, part-time jobs, secondhand items, local services, city procedures, transportation, events, safety tips, and real experiences are spread across group chats, social platforms, local websites, friends, and different language environments.
For someone arriving in a new city, finding accurate, useful, and trustworthy information is not always easy. For people already living there, sharing experiences, posting needs, and finding meaningful connections also lacks a clearer and more organized place.
Machi City began from that experience and observation.
Machi is not meant to be a cold information database, nor just another social product. It is built to organize the scattered pieces of city life by country, city, language, and content type — helping useful information, real experiences, needs, and connections be seen, found, and answered.
The name Machi comes from the Japanese word “街 / まち.” It is not just a city name on a map, but the place where people actually live, meet, search, and begin again.
Yao Kai’s idea is simple:
Make city information less scattered.
Make unfamiliar places easier to live in.
Help more people find the echoes of life in every city.