日本 🇯🇵

日本 means Japan.

journal entries and/or personal anecdotes:

• Why did I move to Japan? / Why do I love Japan?
• 令和7年2月02日
• Suica reactivation - a report I wrote about reactivating a Suica that supposedly had expired using the JR Central workaround.

This section contains suggestions and notes for temporary visitors¹⁾ (i.e., people staying in Japan on the temporary visitor visa) to Japan.

• Use Visit Japan Web to fill out immigration and customs forms and get a QR to pass through customs/immigration quickly. Screenshot the QR code and information so that when you land, it's available even if your phone has trouble connecting to cell service.
• For an introduction to Japanese language that’s practical and relevant to complete beginners traveling to Japan for the first time, watch Japanese for Zero Level, which includes basic Japanese phrases that are practical and useful.
• For restaurants specifically, there is a complementary video to the above video called Zero Level Japanese at the Restaurant which is specifically geared towards ordering food and eating in Japan, which is like, a cornerstone activity.
• Install NERV Disaster Prevention and configure it to send notifications. Tap and hold the “Map” button to show the Strong Motion Monitor, which shows the realtime ground sensor data in Japan, and enable notifications. NERV provides English disaster preparedness information, which is critical in Japan. If you’re from an earthquake prone area and you’re used to them, this is not as important. Earthquake Early Warnings issued by the government are sent to mobile phones without any app installed—but NERV will provide information on less severe earthquakes, tsunami, and other severe weather.
• Carry a minimum of ¥10,000 in cash at all times. The odds of you running into a shop that takes only cash are relatively low, but if your cards aren’t accepted for some reason, you want to have cash for a taxi or similar uses.
  • Japan introduced new banknotes in 2024 and many machines do not accept these new banknotes. If you can, try to get a mix of new banknotes and old banknotes.
  • ATMs in Japan at convenience stores work with international card brands with English. 7-11/7-Bank's ATMs are very easy to use.
• Bring ibuprofen or other painkillers from home. Ibuprofen / paracetamol / naproxen / acetaminophen are available in Japan, but practically speaking, it is not nearly as available as it is in other countries, particularly the US. OTC drugs are sold at dispensing pharmacies that often have hours that they close. Some stores have it in-stock but cannot sell it to you outside of dispensing hours. You can carry a small supply of basic pain killers into the country for personal use, and it will be much more convenient.
  • EVE DX Quick is ibuprofen and each pill is 200mg. You can get this at Welcia, Don Quixote, and Matsumoto Kiyoshi if you need it (this is not an exhaustive list of all pharmacies).
• Antacids like Tums are not available in the form you expect in Japan. Famotidine (Pepcid) is available OTC, but again, you need to find a dispensing pharmacy that can distribute it. You can import a personal amount for personal use for the duration of your trip, but note: Costco, Amazon, and others distribute famotidine in quantities that exceed a 30-day supply. Legally speaking, you should bring only enough for your stay.
  • Probably the best Tums alternative is Ohta's Isan but in my experience it's not nearly as effective as Tums and it tastes rather horrible.
• Plan-B / the morning after pill is not available OTC unless you speak and read Japanese. You need a prescription, which means a trip to Tokyo Midtown Clinic if you’re in the Tokyo area, in all practical terms. In other areas, finding English-speaking doctors who can prescribe this may be annoying. Unfortunately, this is one of the areas where Japan is lacking when it comes to healthcare for women. Obviously, if you need it, you should go to the necessary measures to take it, but please don't expect it to be as available as it is in the United States.
• Check your prescriptions/drugs before coming into Japan: Information for those who are bringing medicines for personal use into Japan.
• From the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department: Tips for protecting yourself from crime or other trouble and Crime prevention tips in entertainment and nightlife districts. Particularly of note is the map of dangerous areas on the second link, which includes areas of relative danger. Japan is a relatively safe place, but even in safe places, crime does occur. Pre-plan bars and nightlife activities to avoid danger. If you are approached or propositioned by a street hawker, politely decline and walk away. In areas like Akihabara, girls tend to advertise maid cafes and the like—and these have relatively low danger, but they are expensive and it’s best to plan these types of activities in-advance.
  • Pay attention to what is going on around you and walk with intention. Normally I would not suggest this, but if you must go to Kabukicho or similar areas, be cautious. Put your headphones in and don't make eye contact with people who speak english fluently and are wearing dark clothes.
• The train system stops operating at around midnight with a few exceptions for the New Year’s holiday. Many venues have their closing time aligned to the last train departure, but this assumes you only need to go on one line in one direction. Make sure to plan your return trip adequately. Taxis have a nighttime surcharge if you need them after the trains close for the night.
• APA Hotels are controversial because the president of APA Group denies the Rape of Nanjing. Though they are cheap, many choose not to stay at these hotels. If you think that you can ignore the controversy, there are often leaflets in each room. Many APA Hotels do not allow you to control the heating and air conditioning, and tend to be uncontrollable in both the summer and winter as a result. Some APA Hotels, like APA Hotel Shinagawa Sengakuji Ekimae do not allow you to open the windows too.
• Most hotels in Japan use a room card system that requires you to insert a room card to activate electrical power to the room. This means that you cannot charge electronic devices when you leave, unless you can convince the room that you are still there. Be aware that if you do insert a foreign card into the room card slot, it may be rejected (some hotels now check for the precise room card), and similarly, be aware that if you lock yourself out with a foreign card in the slot, and hotel staff have to open the door, they might be confused or curious what card is in the slot.
• Hotels in Japan generally expect you to check-out before check-out time at the front desk. If you fail to check-out and just leave, you may be charged a room card replacement fee or late checkout fee.
• If you see an area map near your hotel, take a picture of it, especially if it includes evacuation location or emergency information. In Tokyo and areas close to the ocean or Sea of Japan, you should have a general idea of where you're staying relative to the water, in case of disaster.
• Eat food that you buy at the place you bought it from, or outside of a convenience store. Do not walk while eating food.
• You can use my mizu to find places to refill your water bottle, but most people buy and recycle water from vending machines or convenience stores.
• Ignore the signs that say not to walk on escalators. The left side in Kanto/Tokyo is for standing, the right is for walking. If every Japanese person is ignoring a rule, you should ignore the rule. In Osaka, people usually walk on the right instead of the left and stand on the right on escalators.
  • Jaywalking is a notable contra to this, and similarly, seeing just a couple Japanese breaking the rules doesn't give you the right to. No country is perfect – not even Japan. Even if 1-2 people jaywalk, you should not. Break the rules only if it would be beneficial to everyone to do so. If it would be selfish to do so, do not break the rules.
• Generally, just pay attention to what's going on around you. If everyone is being quiet, don't talk loudly or make a loud noise. Trains are usually quiet and packed because if people are being loud, it turns into a miserable situation for everybody. Japanese people line up for things. You are in a foreign country and benefit from observing what others are doing. The foreigners that report feeling uncomfortable usually have not followed this pattern. Even other foreigners in Japan will judge you if you're being obnoxious.
• Don’t say Apple Pay – instead say “Visa Touch”. Apple Pay from overseas iPhones does not even get detected by the terminals in Japan when in the “Apple Pay” mode. Japanese NFC payment standards – iD, QuicPay, and Suica – are the only ones recognized if the terminal is put into this mode. “Visa Touch” is the payment method of choice.
• ChargeSPOT operates a very good network of battery rental stations in Japan, particularly major metro areas. You do need the app installed and setup to rent though. I recommend avoiding the JUREN network, because you need to return your battery to the exact station you rented from. With ChargeSPOT, you can return a rental battery to any station on the network. This basically means every convenience store in Tokyo.
• Sunglasses are uncommon in Japan, and I don't advise wearing them unless necessary. Sunglasses obscure the eyes and generally speaking make people uncomfortable. Do not wear them indoors.
• Tattoos are not acceptable indoors at onsens (hot springs) unless covered, and there are usually still size restrictions on coverings.
• Smoking in public is generally not acceptable²⁾ outside of designated smoking areas in Tokyo. Wards/cities in Tokyo have smoking maps (e.g., Minato city smoking map, Chiyoda city smoking map) that you can use to find a place to smoke. Pachinko parlors and some game centers have indoor smoking areas, as well as some convenience stores that sell tobacco. Additionally, some establishments may charge a fee to enter the smoking room. This includes smokeless tobacco products such as vapes.
  • Cannabis is illegal in Japan, even though it is legal in other countries, and is punishable by imprisonment up to 5 years, even for foreigners.
• Even in the summer, it is uncommon to see Japanese wearing shorts, but what you do with this information is up to you.
  • In terms of practicalities, there are fashion related faux pas that foreign visitors are not judged for. But you might find yourself being self-conscious if you're the only one on a train wearing shorts or something.
  • People wear masks in Japan for fashion as much as they do protection from germs or because they're sick. Fashion related masking is probably more prevalent, in all honesty.
• In all practical terms, these are tips, not rules. Depending on the type of person you are, you may or may not care, but these may help you in situations that are otherwise undocumented.

• Apple Pay Suica guide from Kanjo over at At A Distance, and an accompanying Apple Pay Suica Recharge Guide. If you have an iPhone, odds are you should be using Apple Pay Suica in Japan for transit instead of buying Welcome Suica/Suica IC cards.
• All About Suica app covers using the Suica app when you have Mobile Suica on iPhone, including how to enable features like “Touch and Go! Shinkansen”, low-fare balance audible alerts, your Suica number, etc.
• Patrick McKenzie's Japan Travel Recommendations, which includes various suggestions for more fun travel things.
  • Do note that he mentions the Japan Rail Pass being more of a calculation these days. Japan Guide has a helpful calculator that will allow you to figure out if the Japan Rail Pass is actually economically worth it when in Japan. NAVITIME Japan also has a convenient calculator.
    • The Japan Rail Pass is also slightly more annoying to use than Suica or transportation IC cards in-general, because it's limited to JR lines, but IC cards work on private rail networks too (including Tokyo Disney's own on-island/park transit system).
• Unspoken rules not to break in Japan video from Abroad in Japan, which is also a great channel and reference.
• How to use a taxi is a really good guide on taxi hailing in Japan, and in-particular, the symbols that are used to indicate availability. This is an article from NAVITIME, a popular mapping app in Japan, so it does have upsells to their service. However, it is still quite useful.

Generally speaking, I recommend avoiding Shinjuku Station, Shibuya station, Ikebukuro station, or Gotanda station as your primary accommodation in Tokyo. Sub-stations or nearby stations are suggested more highly. Many people choose to stay in Shinjuku or in similar areas, and that can be fine, but there is often a lot of activity in these areas at night, particularly after the last trains have closed, around holidays, or weekends.

For the most comfortable experience, cross-reference the aforementioned maps from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's safety tips site with your desired destination.

If you are traveling with young children, I strongly suggest you avoid the areas in the safety tips section for hotel stays entirely. Around these stations at night, it is typical to encounter drunk salarymen or tourists and things of that nature.

Often times, travel passes for phone plans are expensive and bad. If you have T-Mobile's most expensive plan in the United States, though, you probably have 5Gb/mo of free data in Japan. This is great for a start, but maybe not enough for a long trip.

When visiting Japan, I suggest Ubigi or Airalo. These services use eSIMs, which your phone must be unlocked³⁾ and support separately while in Japan.

If your phone takes physical SIMs, you can of course buy these at the airport, but you will not be able to access Visit Japan Web immediately, so take a screenshot of the QR code if you go this route.

Data plans do not include a Japanese mobile number, and are unsuitable for buying tickets or registering for services in Japan.

If you're a visitor to Japan, you may be tempted to go down the rabbit hole and try to get a phone number that can send send/receive phone calls and SMS. In Japan, unlike some other countries (namely, the US), you need to provide photo ID to get service that includes these features. The best provider for this is Mobal.

• Mobal service is more expensive than other types of service.
• If you want to use ticketing services like Lawson Ticket or e-plus, you really need to consider getting a long-term plan with Mobal, not a short-term plan. You can get a long-term plan even if you do not have a Japanese Residence Card / you're on a tourism visa. The catch is that you basically need to pay for it forever. You can downgrade to cheap plans to park your number. I just do not suggest that you get a SIM card with a Japanese phone number unless you plan to maintain the number in the long term.
• Even if you have a Japanese phone number from Mobal, you still cannot use Mobal's service outside of the country.

It is valuable to keep a Japanese phone number, though. You can register on Yahoo! Japan and other Japanese only services and keep an account for when you're in Japan. You can also bootstrap a PayPay account without identity verification, which you can then use to buy apps and in-app purchases from the Japanese App Store. PayPay is also convenient as a QR code payment method in-general. You can pay back friends in Japan with it, and you can buy things with it, and top-up without identity verification.

Effectively, Japanese systems do not expect foreign tourists to have phone numbers that route SMS. This means that if you can do this, you can sign up for more services than you would be able to otherwise. The caveat is that it's more expensive to maintain the number, and you might find yourself in a situation where you wish you could access it outside of the country. This is currently not possible, however.

If you get a number from Mobal, due to Mobile Number Portability regulations, you can port your number to a different provider if you become a resident.

Finally, note that the process of verifying your identity will take a period of time. Usually this is 2-3 days maximum of ID verification time before your phone number will route calls and SMS. If you try to perform the registration process around a holiday or weekend, it will take longer.

Transferring a phone number to another person is a crime in Japan, so don't do that.

For various reasons, you might desire having an Apple Account / App Store account in Japan. Doing this can be relatively straight forward: create a new account and sign in. You can use a PayPay account for your payment method, and you can use an arbitrary billing address of a location in Japan. Generally speaking, Apple does not send regular mail, so the billing address can be arbitrary.

You don't need a phone number, either. The main thing you need is a payment method. Or, if you prefer, you can setup a new device from scratch in Japan, which will allow you to bypass the payment method requirement.

On existing devices, you can freely sign-in and sign-out of App Stores and change regions to download region locked apps. However, using PayPay in Japan, you have a unique ability to have almost all functionality as normal. You realistically still need to be buying Apple Store Gift Cards⁴⁾ from sketchy resellers if you leave the country, though.

And, to use PayPay in Japan, you need to have a phone number (see above).

You can create or move a Google Account to the Japan region to get access to the Japan version of the Google Play Store. If you do this, you can use…foreign bank cards to pay! Therefore, you can pay for games like Blue Archive while outside of Japan by using Google Play billing instead of the App Store.

No⁵⁾.

Yes, sometimes. There are digital prepaid cards you can get very easily, and you can charge them at ATMs. ANA Pay allows you to get an iD enabled Visa card that is technically speaking a valid Japanese payment method with only a phone number. You can only charge at ATMs without completing identity verification procedures, however.

If you can get V-Point (Vポイント), you can set up VポイントPay, which gives you a Visa card. Do note that for V-Point, you need a valid mailing address in Japan, and you can expect them to irregularly send you junk mail. It might be feasible to use an Airbnb for your address temporarily to get a V-Point card setup, but I recommend getting an address from a friend or something.

In practical terms, outside of esoteric use cases, you can pay for 99% of things in Japan with Suica/Transportation IC Card (excepting SAPICA), cash, or visa/mastercard/amex.

Yes, provided that you have a phone number, you can use these services and opt for コンビニ/Convenience Store payment. These payment methods allow you to exchange cash at a convenience store to pay for goods on Mercari and Yahoo! Japan Auctions. Please use caution: You do need an address that will actually accept your packages. Always check in-advance with your hotel if you can use their address to get a package. If you're staying at an Airbnb, you might also be able to get packages.

In the past, I used Blackship with the Pick up from Blackship shipping method to accept packages I ordered from Yahoo! Japan Auctions while in Japan temporarily. This method does work, but requires a bit of time for things to arrive and work.

You can, of course, always just ship to a forwarder and have the forwarder ship your package home. That works too! I've used both Tenso and Blackship with success.

This is a collection of moderately interesting reading related to Japan that I've found/read over the years.

• Station of despair: What to do if you get stuck at the end of Tokyo’s Chuo Rapid Line

Even though I have enough Japanese to be dangerous, I think it's still a reasonably practical expectation to want treatment in English for things that affect my body. Namely, if there is some issue, I'm probably missing the technical jargon in Japanese to be able to navigate it. These are focused on Tokyo.

• Hitomi Dental Office for dental cleaning / general dentistry with English speaking service. Japanese Health Insurance coverage accepted. I have not used their services without Japanese health insurance.
• Yaesugai Medical Office for a walk-in general practitioner. Again, I've only visited with Japanese Health Insurance, but the website includes instructions for easy navigation, and more practically speaking, seems to be accessible to tourists. There is a pharmacy right below the doctor's office, which can easily serve you after visiting. No appointment necessary. I believe the pharmacy below is an associated pharmacy with Sakura Pharmacy, but it's not exactly an uncommon name, so maybe?
• Sakura Pharmacy Tokyo Midtown is great for OTC drugs, general pharmacy needs, and COVID-19 tests in English. However, there is a caveat: sometimes there is no English speaking staff available. If you're in or near Roppongi, it's worth a visit I guess if you need a pharmacy. I have not visited Tokyo Midtown Clinic, but they're in the same building, and they seem to advertise English speaking services.
• I have never been to Tokyo Station International Clinic but they have upfront pricing and seemed to be geared towards tourists who do not have Japanese health insurance. I've heard they're expensive for routine care for residents, but maybe it's okay for a one-off visit for a non-resident.

See also: TIPS for Tokyo Life: Seeking Medical Attention. This is a really useful resource that describes the available medical systems in Japan and tips for using them. This site is geared towards foreign residents, but this particular page is also extremely useful for visitors experiencing medical emergencies. Also useful: TIPS for Tokyo Life: Buying Medicine.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government guide to medical care for tourists and foreign residents is also worth a read.

This is a set of topics for foreign residents of Japan (i.e., people who have residence cards/在留カード) who are unfamiliar with some domestic systems and/or assorted residence-specific topics.

• What is a Cash Card / キャッシュカード?
• Advice for Certificate of Eligibility (COE) holders who are actively moving to Japan or in the process of moving, or have just moved.
  • I've put my advice related to administrative procedures, disaster preparedness, and other bureaucratic matters that are unrelated to tourism here.
• The specific recycling bin I use to store PET bottles ready for recycling before group collection day is, imho, a must-buy if you get a lot of PET bottles.