Japan Places API - 2.63M Japanese POIs with Derived Signals

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The free endpoints need no key and no registration. Replace the prefecture to change the query:

curl "https://japan-places.local-connect-design.trade/api/v1/poi/municipality?prefecture=tokyo"

That returns POI counts by category for Tokyo. Paid endpoints return 402 Payment Required with the exact price and a payment header before you pay anything.

The five derived signals

Municipality census

POI counts for all 47 prefectures across 16 categories, from 2,629,417 facility records.

FreeGET /api/v1/poi/municipality

Geocode quality

0–100 scores from coordinate plausibility, address completeness, and category resolution. Mean 84.9. Filter before you build.

FreeGET /api/v1/poi/quality

Station catchment

Facility count, category mix, and density within 500m of 1,917 rail stations. Top: Odawara (594 facilities).

$0.05/callGET /api/v1/poi/catchment

Chain detection

16,064 chain stores detected from 2.63M POIs with facility counts, prefecture coverage, and category breakdown.

$0.03/callGET /api/v1/poi/chains

Aliveness index

Open/closed probability 0–100 for all 2.63M POIs from source recency, category stability, and temporal signals.

$0.02/callGET /api/v1/poi/aliveness

Pricing

Plan	Price	Requests / month	Rate limit	Access to
BASIC	$0	1,000	60 req/min	municipality, quality
PRO	$25	250,000	600 req/min	+ aliveness, catchment, chains
ULTRA	$75	2,000,000	6,000 req/min	+ aliveness, catchment, chains
MEGA	$150	5,000,000	30,000 req/min	+ aliveness, catchment, chains (highest quota; automated SLA and a public status page)
x402 pay-as-you-go	$0.02–$0.05/call	—	1,000 req/min	paid datasets, derived signals and paid MCP tools, no account and no API key

Attribution is required on every response at every tier. The three paid datasets are unlocked by the RapidAPI feature "Premium Datasets" (Basic: off, Pro/Ultra/Mega: on). Pay-per-use over x402 is available for the three paid datasets. Support is documentation-first and fully self-service: the OpenAPI spec, llms.txt and every error response are the complete reference, and there is no human support. Refunds for RapidAPI subscriptions are handled by RapidAPI support.

Subscriptions are billed on RapidAPI. Micropayments are USDC on Base. No monthly minimum on the pay-as-you-go tier. RapidAPI takes a 25% marketplace fee, so a $150 MEGA plan pays out $112.50.

Pay per call with x402 (no account, no API key)

Call a paid endpoint. You get 402 with accepts[] describing the scheme, network, asset, amount, and pay-to address.
Sign a USDC (Base) transfer authorization for that amount.
Retry with the PAYMENT-SIGNATURE header. If the facilitator verifies it, you get the data.

Nothing is charged before step 2, and the amount is fixed in the 402 response.

For AI agents (MCP + x402)

Streamable HTTP MCP endpoint at /mcp with the same five signals. Paid tools return a payment_required result that includes the PAYMENT-REQUIRED header, so an agent can sign and pay in one round trip.

claude mcp add --transport http japan-places https://japan-places.local-connect-design.trade/mcp

Bundled offline server (data inside the package, no network required):

npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-japan-places

Machines: /llms.txt is the machine-readable API description.

License: easier than the free alternatives

Free tier is CC BY 4.0. Commercial use, storage, caching, modification, and redistribution are all permitted.
Unlike some map/place APIs, you may keep the results in your own database.
Keep the per-record licenses and attributions arrays when you store records, and display the attribution link on any surface showing the data.
Paid tier is the same data and the same permissions, with higher limits and payment.

Full chain of upstream licenses (Overture Maps, 81 municipal datasets, MLIT, e-Stat, Japan Post) with what we changed: attribution.

What this cannot tell you

11.3% of records are unclassified upstream, some coordinates drift, and closed shops persist until the weekly rebuild. We publish the exact numbers and the filters that handle each case: known limitations.

Clients and references

OpenAPI 3.0 specification
Python client and TypeScript client
Changelog (breaking changes flagged, 90-day overlap)
Status (live health and dataset freshness)
Terms and privacy — includes the refund policy

Use cases

Site selection

Score a retail location by station footfall (catchment) against category saturation (census).

Chain expansion

Find prefectures where a brand is under-represented relative to POI density.

Market research

Demand modelling from POI counts for all 47 prefectures across 16 categories, from 2,629,417 facility records.

AI agents

Query Japanese geography without pre-baked integrations; pay per call with x402.

Endpoints

Endpoint	Price	Description	Query
`GET /poi/municipality`	Free	47都道府県×16カテゴリのPOI件数	-
`GET /poi/quality`	Free	ジオコーディング品質の分布	-
`GET /poi/catchment`	$0.05/call	駅周辺の人口・施設密度	limit
`GET /poi/chains`	$0.03/call	チェーン店の出店密度	min_count, limit
`GET /poi/aliveness`	$0.02/call	街の活気スコア	min_score, limit
`GET /poi`	Free	データセット一覧と価格	-
`GET /health`	Free	サービス状態	-
`GET /openapi`	Free	OpenAPI 3.0 仕様	-
`GET /signals/energy/price`	$0.05/call	JEPX電力需給×気象からの価格シグナル	area
`GET /signals/subsidy/award-rate`	$0.05/call	補助金採択率推定インデックス	industry, prefecture