Joe Tomei here. A colleague of mine, Akira Sakai, is working to organize a group called Code for Kumamoto, which is part of the ‘Civic Tech’ movement, where applications useful to a particular community, using open source data, are written. There are similar initiatives in neighboring prefectures (Code for Saga, Code for Nagasaki) and the kick off event is Saturday, 13 June. A pdf announcing the event is here http://www.kumagaku.ac.jp/files/press/press20190709.pdf?fbclid=IwAR37O2t4A2wsWzWsSg7LDrq42kXlzye7glOO6_p7ryKZxhxIZ1wuq9P2u5o
Obviously, this will be in Japanese, but if this interests you, you may want to check it out.