Japan Travel Tips: 12 Things to Know Before You Go

Japan is one of the easiest countries in the world to travel in, safe, clean, punctual to the second. The friction for first-timers is not danger or chaos. It is a set of unspoken rules and small systems that nobody tells you about until you trip over them.

Here are the 12 things I wish someone had told me before my first trip, the ones that save real time, money and the odd embarrassing moment.

Etiquette that actually matters

You will not be expected to master deep customs as a visitor. A handful of rules carry real weight, though, and getting them right shows respect.

1. Don’t tip

This is the big one. Tipping is not a thing in Japan, and leaving money behind can cause genuine confusion or be read as faintly insulting. Good service is simply the standard. Leave coins on a restaurant table and staff may well run after you to return them. The price you are quoted is the price you pay.

2. Shoes off

Take your shoes off when you enter a home, a ryokan, a temple hall, and some restaurants with raised tatami floors. The cue is usually a small step up and a row of slippers waiting. When in doubt, watch what locals do at the entrance.

3. Keep it quiet on trains, eat where you bought it

Trains are notably hushed; phone calls are avoided and conversations are kept low. Eating while walking is also generally frowned upon outside festival streets and markets, the custom is to eat where you bought the food, then move on.

Get an IC card first

The single most useful thing to set up is a rechargeable IC card, either a Suica or the near-identical Pasmo. You tap it to ride almost every train, metro and bus in the country, and you can also pay with it at convenience stores, vending machines and many shops.

The insider move: since 2023 you can add a Suica or Pasmo straight into your Apple Wallet before you even leave home, top it up with your card, and skip the queue at the airport machine entirely. Tap your phone at the gate and walk through.

Cash is still king

For all its technology, Japan runs on cash more than visitors expect, and this catches people out.

Cities and chains take cards fine, but small restaurants, temples, local markets, some buses and older ticket machines are still cash-only. Carry a few thousand yen at all times.

When you need to withdraw, head to a 7-Eleven or a Japan Post ATM. Those two reliably accept foreign cards, while many bank ATMs do not. Convenience-store ATMs are everywhere and run 24 hours, so topping up is never a problem.

Send your luggage ahead

This is the tip that quietly changes a trip and almost no first-timer knows about. A door-to-door delivery service called takkyubin (run by companies like Yamato) forwards your suitcase from one hotel to the next, usually arriving the following day, for around ¥2,000 per bag.

Instead of wrestling a large case through a rush-hour station, up and down stairs, and onto a crowded Shinkansen (where oversized bags now need a reserved spot anyway), you travel light with a day bag and your suitcase is waiting at the next hotel. Any hotel front desk will arrange it. On a Tokyo to Kyoto to Osaka trip it is worth every yen.

Make friends with the konbini

The Japanese convenience store, the konbini (7-Eleven, Lawson, FamilyMart), is a genuinely useful tool, not just a snack stop. In one visit you can:

• Eat a proper meal for a few hundred yen: fresh rice balls, bento boxes, hot fried chicken, decent coffee.
• Withdraw cash from an ATM that takes foreign cards.
• Buy concert and attraction tickets at the machine.
• Use a clean, free toilet, no purchase needed.
• Pick up an umbrella, a phone charger or a SIM-free essential you forgot.

Treat it as your base-camp resource and a lot of small problems solve themselves.

Practical odds and ends

A few more that smooth out the trip:

• Carry a small bag for rubbish. Public bins are rare, oddly for such a clean country. People carry their litter until they get home or to a konbini.
• Stand on the correct side of the escalator. Stand left, walk right in Tokyo; it flips to stand right in Osaka.
• Trains stop running around midnight. Miss the last one and you are looking at a pricey taxi or waiting until 5am, so check the time of your final connection.
• Tax-free shopping exists for tourists over a spend threshold; bring your passport when you shop for electronics or clothes.
• Pocket tissues handed out free on the street are worth taking, since some public toilets have no paper.

Apps worth downloading before you go

A handful of apps do most of the heavy lifting in Japan. Set them up at home, on your own Wi-Fi, so they are ready when you land:

• A train app (Google Maps works well, or a dedicated transit app): the backbone of getting anywhere, with platform numbers and the cheapest route.
• A translation app with camera mode: point it at a menu or a sign and read it instantly. This alone removes most of the language friction.
• LINE, the messaging app nearly everyone in Japan uses, handy if you book tours or stay with hosts.
• Your hotel and rail booking apps, with confirmations saved offline as a backup.
• A currency converter, so you always know what that price tag means in your own money.

Every one of these leans on data once you are out and about. They are at their most useful precisely when you are away from Wi-Fi, mid-journey or lost down a side street, which is the whole case for a reliable mobile connection.

Stay connected

Every tip above leans on one thing: your phone. The train apps that chain your connections, the maps that get you out of a deep metro station, the camera that translates a menu in real time, the wallet that holds your IC card. Without data, half of these stop working.

Rather than queue for a SIM at the airport or rely on patchy public Wi-Fi, activate an eSIM for Japan before you leave. You are online the moment you land, on the 4G/5G network, with your maps and translator ready to go.

With Orange, the service trusted by more than 300 million customers, you travel with peace of mind: 200+ destinations covered, 24/7 human support, and a full refund if you never use your eSIM.