Our Man in Japan: Building an Accessible Travel Community
Hey everyone, my name is Josh. I have cerebral palsy and use a power wheelchair to get around my house, my city, and the world. Though I grew up on a farm outside a small Canadian town, I’m writing this today from Tokyo. My first visits to Japan were during my university days, and I loved the country so much that I eventually made it my home. In fact, I even became a Japanese citizen — which now means I need a visa to go back and visit my family in Canada!
Moving across the world with a disability isn’t something you can do alone. I needed the community I had in Canada — people who encouraged me when frustrations piled up, and care attendants who even traveled with me at the start. I also needed a community in Japan — friends who looked up information for me (this was before Facebook made it easier), and who helped me navigate housing, paperwork, and the maze of local care services. Without community, my dream would have remained out of reach. With community, it became a reality.
Once I was settled, I felt strongly about giving something back. In 2015, while planning a vacation of my own, I noticed that many hotels and attractions listed accessibility information in Japanese, but rarely on their English websites. So I launched Accessible Japan. The idea was to show the world that Japan is, in fact, an accessible destination, and to provide the practical details that turn anxiety about accessibility into excitement for an adventure.
As the site grew, I received questions from people with disabilities whose needs were different from mine, and it quickly became clear that no single website could possibly reflect the incredible variety of lived experiences out there. That’s when I realized the real power lies in community once again. Out of that realization came tabifolk — “tabi” means journey in Japanese — a place for travelers to ask the kinds of detailed questions that don’t always make it into guidebooks, but that can make all the difference to someone’s trip. Like The World Is Accessible’s Facebook group, it’s a space where people can share knowledge, stories, frustrations, or even a laugh with others who understand.
What I love most about the community is that it’s never just one thing. We’re all part of many communities — school, work, sports, music, and more — and they overlap in ways that make us stronger. That’s why I’ve been so excited to connect with The World Is Accessible. By bringing our communities together, we can amplify each other’s strengths and make the world easier to explore for everyone.
I’m constantly looking to grow my own community, and I’m grateful to have found this one. My hope is that as our groups continue to expand, we’ll keep proving something simple but profound: it is through community that The World Is Accessible.
Note: If you would like to download the accessible travel app, tabifolk, you can do so by heading to either the Google Play Store of the App Store on your, and searching for ‘tabifolk’ (or click the hyperlinks included in this note).
TWIA
Although all hotel and vacation rental information on this site is thoroughly vetted, we recommend calling ahead to ensure your needs are met.
2 Responses
Thank you so much for this. It made me cry. I have late onset MS and spent a few years in Japan as a teenager in Tokyo making ceramics and a university placement in Osaka digging up kofuns and reconstructing Yayoi pottery. this gives me some hope that I may be able to get there one more time and around there in the future. I do hope so. It gave me profound joy to have experienced so much joy. Good luck to you and all you do. Beautiful people and a beautiful country I feel very privileged to have been welcomed by so many wonderful.people. ❤️
You did a wonderful job