Planning a trip

Entry and paperwork

Australia, the UK, most of the EU, the US, Canada, New Zealand and around sixty other countries have visa exemption for short tourist stays — 90 days for Australian passport holders. You need a passport valid for the stay, an onward ticket, and an address for your first night.

Immigration and customs declarations are handled online through Visit Japan Web, which issues QR codes to scan at the airport. Doing it before you fly saves a genuinely long queue. Japan has announced an electronic travel authorisation scheme for visa-exempt visitors in the coming years, so check whether one applies by the time you travel.

A departure tax of ¥1,000 per person is built into airfares. Some prescription and over-the-counter medicines that are ordinary elsewhere — anything containing pseudoephedrine, codeine, or stimulant ADHD medication — are restricted or prohibited, and bringing them in without prior clearance is treated seriously. If you take regular medication, check the Ministry of Health rules and apply for a Yakkan Shoumei import certificate if required.

Rail: does the pass still pay?

The nationwide Japan Rail Pass used to be an automatic purchase. Its price rose sharply in October 2023 — roughly a 70% increase — and it now needs an actual calculation rather than an assumption. Broadly:

• A standard Tokyo–Kyoto–Osaka trip does not justify the national pass. Buy individual tickets.
• Regional passes usually do. JR East, JR West Kansai–Hiroshima, JR Kyushu, Hokkaido and the Takayama–Hokuriku pass are much cheaper and often excellent value if your trip fits one region.
• The national pass earns out on long, fast, multi-region itineraries — Tokyo to Kyushu and back, or a lot of Tohoku and Hokkaido.
• Domestic flights are competitive on anything over about 600 km. ANA and JAL sell discounted fares to foreign visitors booked from abroad; Peach and Jetstar Japan are cheaper again.
• Highway buses, including overnight services, cost a fraction of the train. Willer and JR Bus both sell in English.

IC cards and city transport

A rechargeable IC card — Suica or Pasmo in Tokyo, ICOCA in Kansai, and half a dozen regional equivalents — works on almost every train, subway and bus in the country, and in convenience stores, vending machines and many shops. They are mutually interoperable, so one card covers the whole trip.

The most reliable option now is the digital card in your phone's wallet, which you can create and top up with a foreign credit card without ever queuing. There have been intermittent shortages of physical unregistered cards; visitor versions (Welcome Suica, ICOCA for tourists) are sold at the airports as an alternative.

Use Google Maps or Navitime for routing. Both give platform numbers, carriage numbers and fares, and both are accurate to the minute, which in Japan actually means something.

Money

• Cashless has arrived, but unevenly. Cards and IC work almost everywhere in cities. Small restaurants, rural buses, shrine offices, some ryokan, market stalls and coin lockers are still cash-only.
• Carry more cash than feels normal. ¥20,000–30,000 is a sensible float. Japan is a low-crime country and people do carry it.
• Withdraw at 7-Eleven or Japan Post ATMs. These reliably accept foreign cards; many bank ATMs do not, and some have limited hours.
• Always decline dynamic currency conversion — if a terminal offers to charge you in Australian dollars, choose yen.
• Tax-free shopping exists for visitors above a spending threshold at registered stores, with your passport. The mechanics of how the refund is given have been under reform, so ask in store.
• Tipping is not done. Ryokan and high-end restaurants may add a service charge; that is the whole of it.

Staying connected

An eSIM is the simplest answer if your phone supports one — bought before you fly, active on landing, generally cheaper than a pocket wi-fi rental and one less object to carry and return. Pocket wi-fi still makes sense for a group sharing one connection. Airport SIM vending machines are the fallback.

Free wi-fi is common in stations, convenience stores and cafes but frequently requires an email registration and is not reliable enough to depend on for navigation.

Luggage forwarding, and why it changes everything

Takkyubin — courier services run by Yamato and Sagawa — will move a suitcase between hotels, or from the airport to your first hotel, typically overnight for something in the region of ¥2,000–3,000. Hotel front desks arrange it, convenience stores accept it, and it is completely routine.

This is the single best piece of practical advice about travelling in Japan. Stations involve long walks, many stairs and no lifts; ryokan corridors and older hotels do not accommodate large cases well; and the Shinkansen oversized-baggage rules exist precisely because people bring them anyway. Send the big bag ahead, travel the day with a small one, and the country becomes dramatically easier.

Where to stay

Language

You can travel Japan comfortably with no Japanese. Signage in stations, major museums and tourist areas is bilingual, machine translation on a phone camera handles menus, and staff will go to considerable lengths to help.

That said, a dozen words are repaid many times over. Sumimasen (excuse me / sorry / thank you, and the way you get attention), arigatou gozaimasu, onegaishimasu (please, when asking for something), oishii (delicious), daijoubu (fine / no thanks), eigo no menu wa arimasu ka (is there an English menu). Learning katakana alone — a couple of hours' work — unlocks a surprising share of menus, because so many food words are transliterated from English.

Earthquakes, typhoons and the alert system

Japan is seismically active and organised about it. Buildings are engineered for it, and the emergency broadcast system is excellent. Install the Safety Tips app published by the Japan Tourism Agency, which delivers earthquake early warnings, tsunami and evacuation advisories in English.

In a quake: stay inside, get away from windows, do not run out into the street. Hotels supply torches and instructions. If you are on the coast and feel a long or strong shake, move inland and uphill without waiting for an official warning. Typhoons are forecast days ahead and mostly cost you a cancelled train rather than anything worse.

The mistakes people actually make

• Too many cities. Five cities in ten days means five hotel check-ins, five sets of luggage logistics and no mornings.
• Buying the national rail pass reflexively. Do the arithmetic.
• Underestimating walking. Twenty thousand steps a day is typical. Bring shoes that come off easily and socks without holes.
• Assuming restaurants take cards, and assuming they are open. Many close between lunch and dinner, and many close one weekday.
• Arriving during Golden Week, Obon or New Year without knowing.
• Booking nothing. Ghibli, teamLab, popular ryokan and reserved Shinkansen seats in peak season all need advance planning.
• Booking everything. The best afternoons are usually the empty ones.