NTT's Japan Telephone Directory (iTownPage) allows one to search in English for businesses by category and region. Unfortunately, however, the English contents are not complete enough at this writing (April, 2005) much use to Kumamoto residents as a database. Persons looking for a complete database of businesses in Kumamoto really need to refer to the Japanese side of the NTT's Japanese-language telephone directory (TownPage or what Americans would call "yellow pages"). However, on a few topics, the information contained in the English-language database may be of interested to residents of Kumamoto. Here are the topics that I am aware of at this writing: