【Updated 2025.3】I took another trip to Japan over the holidays, so here are a few fresh tips to add to this guide.

This article is reposted from a reader in our WeChat group, from the WeChat public account Lazy 33’s Food, Drinks, and Fun. Original article link.

Language

English proficiency in Japan is very low. Even in major cities like Tokyo and Osaka, usually only hotel front desk staff can handle everyday conversations in English. Restaurants that cater specifically to tourists may have better English support, but the ones I booked on this trip generally were not that type. In fact, you are often more likely to run into someone who speaks Chinese, especially at tax refund counters in shopping malls, where there always seem to be fellow Chinese speakers around.

My goal is to travel to Japan more than 10 times, and with that in mind, I started learning Japanese on Duolingo a year ago. I have kept up with it almost every day, but I do not study very long each day, and Duolingo moves pretty slowly. So even after a year, I can only manage some very basic conversations, and my ability is still quite limited.

The app in the upper-left corner of the image above is called VoiceTra. It is an official app from the Japanese government. I used it several times when we really could not communicate, and it worked extremely well. The speech recognition and translation were both fast and accurate. To use it, first speak Chinese on the Chinese->Japanese screen. Once it finishes translating, tap the lower half of the screen to switch to Japanese->Chinese, then hand the microphone to the other person, and you can have a back-and-forth conversation.

Beyond spoken conversation, Japanese uses many Chinese characters, so text recognition is still relatively manageable for Chinese readers. Many public places also have English or Chinese signage.

Transportation

Besides the language barrier, transportation is the single most important topic. Our itinerary covered all the classic first-time Japan destinations: Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Hakone, and Mt. Fuji. Public transit in most of these places is extremely well developed and is often even faster than taking a taxi. We did consider hiring a private car for the whole trip, but my husband felt that experiencing public transportation was also important, and I completely agreed.

Japan’s public transportation system is very complicated; even locals do not always fully understand it. As tourists, though, we just need to focus on the fastest, easiest, and most cost-effective ways to get around.

JR Pass

There is something called the JR Pass, and there are both regional versions and a nationwide version. If you are visiting both Osaka and Tokyo, you would need the nationwide one. I spent quite a while researching it, and my conclusion was: do not buy the nationwide JR Pass. First, it is a hassle because you have to buy the voucher in advance and then exchange it in Japan. Second, it only covers JR, so for anything else you still need to use an IC card or buy separate tickets. Third, you also have to exchange tickets for the Shinkansen. Fourth, on the Shinkansen you cannot take the fastest Nozomi trains, only the slightly slower trains, which run much less frequently than Nozomi. Fifth, when I calculated our Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka-Hakone-Tokyo route, a 7-day JR Pass not only failed to save money, it actually cost more. If you are not sure whether it is worth it, you can use the JapanTravel App shown below and enter your itinerary to calculate whether buying a pass makes sense. Regional JR Passes can be better value than the nationwide JR Pass, but for a standard itinerary, the nationwide pass usually is not a great fit.

IC and Suica

After looking into all the options, I felt the most convenient choice was still an IC card. First, download the Suica app, the one with the green background and black face icon. It is only available in Japanese, but that is okay. Then open your phone’s Wallet and add a Japanese transit card; choose Suica there as well. At that point, use Amex or Mastercard to load money onto the card. I tried a U.S. Visa, and it did not go through. In the Wallet app settings, find Express Transit Card and turn it on, so you do not need to enter a password or use Face ID every time you tap. Once you have this card set up, you can use your phone anywhere that accepts IC cards: subway stations, buses, convenience stores, taxis, and even inside Disney. IC cards are now extremely widely accepted in Japan. They use NFC, so in many cases you can still tap even if your phone battery is dead, although older phone/watch models may have some issues.

If you want even more convenience, you can transfer the Suica card to your Apple Watch so you do not need to take out your phone. Note that this is a transfer: one card cannot exist on both your phone and your watch at the same time, so you need to choose. You also need to enable Express Transit there. Even if the device runs out of battery, it can still usually be used for transit tapping. iPhone instructions: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209494

What about kids? Children under elementary school age, meaning under 6 years old, ride for free. For kids ages 6-12, you will need to buy a physical child IC card after arriving in Japan. These are sold at major subway stations and similar locations. Age 12 and up pays the same as adults.

Using this image as a divider...

So why download the Suica app mentioned above? To ride the Shinkansen. An IC card by itself cannot be used directly for the Shinkansen. As I understand it, Japanese rail fares are split between a base fare ticket, which can be paid with an IC card, and a limited express surcharge ticket, which cannot. The Shinkansen falls into the limited express category. If that sounds confusing, do not worry, just keep reading.

First, you also need to download another app called SmartEX App, shown at the far left of the second row in the image above. This is the official app for buying Shinkansen tickets. It can be switched to English. Create an account, then register your Suica card inside the app; you can register cards for family members too. You can find your Suica card number in the Suica app by tapping the small information icon. If your card does not appear when you open the Suica app, try restarting your phone. That worked for both me and my husband.

The Shinkansen has two seat types: reserved seats and non-reserved seats. Reserved seats require you to choose a specific time and seat. Both times, we bought non-reserved seats. Japan has two major holiday periods, Obon in late August and Christmas. Outside of those two periods, non-reserved cars are generally said to have seats available. When we went to Japan, it was probably still considered peak season, and hotel prices were outrageous, but we still had no trouble finding seats in non-reserved cars. Besides offering more flexible timing, which is especially helpful when traveling with kids, non-reserved tickets only require you to choose the date rather than a specific train. Another advantage is that you do not need to buy tickets for children under 6, because while kids under 6 ride free on basically all transportation, with reserved seats, a child without a ticket does not get a seat. If someone is sitting next to you, you would have to hold the child the whole time, which is rough on a trip of several hours. Buying a child ticket from Tokyo to Kyoto would cost around $100. The non-reserved cars are in the first few cars, and this is marked on the platform floor.

Back to ticketing: because we bought non-reserved seats, we did not need to worry about a specific train and could simply buy a same-day non-reserved ticket. Reserved seats use basically the same process. After purchase, the app asks whether you want to link the ticket to your IC card, meaning your Suica. Choose yes, then assign each ticket to each person’s IC card. Physical cards can also be assigned. Once that is done, you are all set. At the Shinkansen station, there is no need to line up to buy paper tickets; you can just tap your Suica and board, which is incredibly convenient.

If you do not want to link your Shinkansen tickets this way and prefer to buy them at the station, you can use either the ticket machines or the staffed counters. The machines can be switched to Chinese or English, but for some reason at Tokyo Station none of my credit cards worked, and only cash worked. Most importantly, remember to buy both the base fare ticket and the limited express ticket at the machine.

JR

JR East can now also be booked through its official website, and it covers a wide area, so you can buy tickets based on your needs:

  • https://www.eki-net.com/zh-CHS/jreast-train-reservation/Top/Index

This is especially useful for limited express trains. For regular trains, you can just tap your IC card.

Taxis

For taxis, you can use Didi, which many of us are already familiar with from China. We used Didi to call taxis throughout the trip. We did not use Didi private cars, mainly because we were concerned that traveling with a child without a car seat might not be compliant.

You can also use Uber. Here is a comparison between Uber and Didi:

Uber

Pros: Payment is convenient since you can link a credit card directly, and there is no need to pay again when you get out; wait time estimates are fairly accurate.

Cons: Coverage is much lower than Didi. It often does not work in smaller cities, let alone rural areas; pickup is often forced to a nearby pickup point, which is not very friendly if you have a lot of luggage or do not want to walk.

Didi

Pros: broad coverage, so you can use it even in smaller cities; pickup is often available from your current location, which means less walking.

Cons: payment is made directly to the driver, so it depends on what payment methods the driver accepts in the car; wait time estimates are not very accurate, and you often end up waiting several extra minutes.

These two apps didn’t work in more rural places like Hakone and Fuji. There’s another one called Go that seems to cover more areas, but it requires a Japanese phone number to sign up, so that was a dead end for us too. If you’re not using an app, you can ask your hotel to call a taxi for you. Whether it’s arranged by the hotel or through an app, there’s usually an extra dispatch fee. At some hotels with heavy traffic or on busy streets, the bell service can simply flag down a taxi for you, or there may already be taxis waiting outside for passengers, which is even easier. In those situations, you can also ask the bell service to tell the driver your destination. Most taxi drivers do not speak English. Using an app saves you from having to explain the address.

Sometimes taxis take credit cards or Suica, and sometimes we paid cash. Some taxis display accepted payment methods on the screen in the back seat. If nothing was listed, we usually paid cash. Better ones also accept Apple Pay. Most drivers are very friendly and will help with luggage, get out to greet you, and so on, though some are more passive and stay in the car. The doors are automatic, though, so the driver opens and closes them; passengers do not need to touch the door.

Taxi prices are about the same as taking an Uber in the U.S., or sometimes even cheaper. Oddly enough, taxis in Tokyo are cheaper than in places like Osaka, Hakone, and Fuji. Our longest taxi ride on this trip was from Hakone to Fujikawaguchiko, which cost a little over 200,000 yen total. Within cities, rides were generally around 10,000-30,000 yen.

We mainly used Google Maps, with 乗換案内 as a backup. The official international version of 乗換案内 is JapanTransit, which is the app on the far right of the second row in the image. There are lots of copycat apps in the App Store, so be careful not to download the wrong one. It’s better to switch both apps to Chinese, since Japanese uses so many Chinese characters that translating everything into English can actually make it harder to recognize. When checking a route, first look carefully at the icon on the far left to confirm which line it is, and then make sure you’re headed in the right direction. In Tokyo, Google Maps often tells you which platform to use, which is very convenient, but in Osaka that information is often missing. If all else fails, compare the departure times; Japanese trains are extremely punctual except in unusual situations. Shinjuku Station in Tokyo and Umeda Station in Osaka are widely known as the two easiest stations to get lost in, so build extra time into your itinerary for getting lost... Traveling as a family, we were always slower than Google Maps predicted.

Renting a car

Larger rental car companies such as nippon-rent-a-car and toyota-rent-a-car have English booking websites. nippon-rent-a-car also has a partnership with National/Enterprise in the U.S.

For our Hokkaido trip, booking through the National/Enterprise website was quite a bit cheaper than booking directly through nippon-rent-a-car. Though that may also have been because we took advantage of elite status with the rental car company.

If you have a U.S. driver’s license, you need to get an international driving permit from AAA. It costs $20 + 2 passport photos, although apparently it can’t be done in a few states. See the AAA website for details: https://www.aaa.com/vacation/idpf.html

Cars are right-hand drive. At first, you’ll probably open the wrong door or turn on the wipers instead of the turn signal, but that’s not a big deal. What matters is remembering that you cannot turn left on red. Also, both times we returned a rental car, they checked the gas receipt, so make sure to keep it.

Hotels

Japanese travelers are famous for booking far in advance. In Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, you can often still book a chain hotel last minute, and if one doesn’t work out you can switch to another. But in mountain areas like Fuji and Hakone, where most lodging is small hotels or inns, if you don’t book several months—or even a year—ahead, your options close to the trip can become both limited and expensive, and it’s not impossible to end up with nowhere to stay. So if you’re heading into the mountains, book as early as possible if you want the place you really want.

Disney hotels release rooms three months in advance, and they also book up very quickly. For especially popular dates, it’s best to book the day inventory opens.

For these non-international-chain hotels (in other words, not Hilton/Marriott/Hyatt/IHG), prices on Japanese sites such as the official hotel site, Rakuten Travel, or Ikkyu are often much cheaper than on English-language OTAs such as booking, agoda, or Expedia. You can use your browser’s translation feature to book on Japanese websites. First, try filling everything out in English. Sometimes you need to enter your name in Japanese; if so, Google can help translate your name into Japanese. If a Japanese postal code is required, you can enter the hotel’s postal code. If a Japanese phone number is required but no verification code is needed, you can enter the hotel’s phone number. Beyond that, for non-chain hotels, if the English version of the site doesn’t show availability, switch to Japanese. Sometimes searching for 1 guest won’t show any rooms, or a room that can clearly fit 3 people still won’t appear when you search for 3 guests. If the number of guests on the reservation does not match the actual number of guests staying—including even a very small child—I strongly recommend contacting the hotel to confirm, so you don’t risk being denied check-in.

Restaurants

As a pretty serious foodie, the most important part of this trip for me was the food. I think restaurants recommended on Xiaohongshu are too hit-or-miss, so for this trip I mainly used tabelog.com. The site can be viewed in Chinese or English; for the same reason, I recommend Chinese. It’s similar to Yelp in China, but a “cleaner” version. Many high ratings on Chinese review platforms are inflated, while tabelog reviews feel more genuine. Japanese diners also have very high standards, so don’t be scared off by what may look like low ratings there. On this trip, we ate almost entirely at restaurants rated 3.5 or above, and we had no major misses.

As everyone knows, most high-end restaurants in Japan do not allow children, which is not very family-friendly if you’re traveling with little kids. But on tabelog, you can filter for this. Open the advanced search and look for the options related to children. Sometimes that information may not be accurate—if you check the option for “preschool children accepted,” you may miss some other restaurants that also allow young children. I tried removing that option, but then ran into several places that only revealed on the reservation page that they accepted children ages 13 and up, which was a waste of time. Since we plan to go back many times in the future, checking the box was still the easiest approach. If you only plan to go once and want the very best meals, you can try leaving the children filter unchecked and focus mainly on places with “个室,” meaning a private room; those may possibly allow kids. In rural areas, restaurants may not even have this filter set up, so it works better in major cities.

The sad part is that once I selected the option shown above, almost all Tokyo restaurants rated above 4 disappeared... leaving only one: Matsukawa. I called Matsukawa last October, and they told me they were already fully booked through the end of this year—in other words, more than a year in advance. Brutal. Later, our hotel concierge told us that this restaurant only accepts regulars.

The site also lets you filter by cuisine. On this trip, I picked a different type of cuisine every day, and everything was so good that I had absolutely no desire to go back to the U.S. just yet... I’ll probably write a separate post about that later.

So once you’ve picked a restaurant, how do you make a reservation if you don’t speak Japanese? My method was to google “restaurant name in Japanese + reservation.” English-friendly reservation sites include tablecheck, tableall, autoreserve, omakase.in, pocket concierge, and so on. Or you can also book through the Japanese version of tabelog—just enter your hotel’s phone number in the Japanese phone number field.

Besides reservation websites, the hotel concierge can also help. For families not traveling with kids, a concierge may be able to book very high-end restaurants that are not available online. In theory, the more luxurious the hotel, the better its chances of getting you into harder-to-book restaurants.

For this trip, I mainly used TableCheck and the hotel concierge, and I also used AutoReserve once. TableCheck is very easy to use and does not charge a booking fee. It is also the only platform among the ones listed above that connects directly to the restaurant’s availability; the others all need to reconfirm with the restaurant whether seats are actually available. Because of that, restaurants also seem to prefer working with TableCheck, and it ended up being my favorite platform.

AutoReserve, on the other hand, charges a fee. Later I wanted to modify a reservation, but I had forgotten my account password. It could only send a verification code to a phone number, but US phone numbers could not receive the code at all, so I got stuck in an endless loop. The site also had no customer service whatsoever. In the end, we had to ask the hotel concierge to help us change the reservation. So overall, I’d avoid it. I also looked at a few other sites, and some of them charge service fees too, so that’s something to watch out for.

For some restaurants, you can also try calling directly to make a reservation. At popular restaurants that are well known among international visitors, staff can usually speak at least basic English.

As mentioned above, Japan’s good restaurants are often very small, with only a handful of seats. So if you want to eat really well, you need to book ahead. Even when there are seats, popular restaurants often have very long lines, and with a kid, waiting like that just isn’t realistic.

My strategy was to book dinner for every day far in advance, and to make sure each day featured a different type of cuisine. We ate so incredibly well on this trip. I looked forward to dinner every single day, and it made me so happy. For lunch, since our schedule was less predictable with a child, I kept things more flexible—either just eating casually somewhere or making a last-minute reservation the day before based on our plans. At that point, I wasn’t expecting to get into the hottest restaurants; “good enough” was perfectly fine.

If you’re searching for restaurants on your phone, you still really need Tabelog—the app right in the middle. That said, it’s not very user-friendly. First, you have to switch to the Japanese App Store. Second, the app is only in Japanese. Third, when searching restaurants, you can only see the first few results; if you want to keep scrolling, you have to pay. The mobile website is not great either, so it’s much easier to do your research on a computer. If you do want to download it, switch to the Japanese App Store and type “taberogu” using a Japanese keyboard.

The TableCheck app is also quite handy for viewing restaurants you’ve already booked, but for making new reservations, the web version is still better. I checked a few restaurants, and the mobile version didn’t have an option for dining with children.

Planning the Itinerary

I still mostly used Qyer’s itinerary planner. For a destination like Japan, where so many Chinese travelers have already been everywhere, Qyer is a very practical tool for trip planning. But ever since having a child, planning an itinerary has become more about creating a framework. We don’t actually follow a strict day-by-day schedule. We adjust along the way based on how things go. Here is our rough itinerary for reference:

As I mentioned before, because we plan to visit Japan many times, for this first trip our goal was mainly to get a feel for the different regions, local culture, and atmosphere. So in each place, we traveled at a pretty relaxed pace and did not try to check off every single must-see. If your goal is to hit all the classic highlights, then with only two short weeks, just doing Kanto or Kansai would already be enough.

Here is our 11-day Hokkaido itinerary for late July: Hakodate – Lake Toya – Noboribetsu – Sapporo – Otaru – Furano – Biei – Sapporo.

I previously wrote about the principles of planning international travel in Traveling to Paris at Christmas with a Three-Year-Old (Part 1), and the same principles apply in Japan as well. If you’re not sure where to start, I’d recommend reading that post.

Attraction Tickets

For some of the more popular attractions, you need to buy tickets or reserve a spot in advance (the competition is real). A few examples:

Ghibli Museum, Mitaka — a must for Hayao Miyazaki fans. The ticketing system is not very friendly to foreign visitors, so if you do not have friends in Japan, you can try asking your hotel concierge to help buy tickets.

Pokemon Cafe — a fun stop for kids who love Pokemon. Thankfully my child has not gotten into Pokemon yet, so I can put this one off a little longer.

Shibuya Sky observation deck — one of Tokyo’s hottest observation decks right now. Tickets around sunset need to be bought several weeks in advance; other time slots can usually be booked closer in. Klook is fine for this.

For smaller local attractions, you can sometimes pick up discount coupons at hotels, local tourist information centers, or JR stations.

Shopping

I personally hate wandering around stores without a plan, and I rarely buy anything unless I have a list. So before the trip, I made my shopping list early. Most of what I wanted was from Japanese domestic brands, where prices are good and selection is great.

Foreign visitors can shop tax-free in two different ways: tax refund after purchase, or immediate tax exemption at checkout. As the names suggest, a tax refund means you pay first and get the tax back later, while tax exemption means the tax is removed right when you buy. Immediate tax exemption is more cost-effective, because in most cases tax refunds come with a processing fee, usually around 1.5%. If you are buying a lot, the difference can really add up.

That said, department stores—most of which use the tax-refund model—often have coupons. Before departure, you can download coupons from Klook. Most are 5% off coupons. These are the ones I downloaded:

If Klook does not have one, you can search Google for the mall name + coupon. If that still does not work, go to the mall and ask at the service center. Sometimes the service center has the coupons; sometimes they are distributed at the tax refund counter. Most malls popular with international tourists offer 5% discounts. However, these coupons usually cannot be used on top luxury brands or jewelry.

That is why, for jewelry, I most recommend shopping at flagship stores. You can get direct tax exemption there, and the selection is usually better too.

For other items, especially second-tier brands or higher-end beauty products that are not sold in drugstores, department stores are a better choice because you can use the 5% coupons.

The Rakuten Duty Free coupons are a bit complicated and require some calculation, which I found kind of annoying.

Drugstore items are generally inexpensive, and if you are shopping for personal use, the price differences usually are not huge. You can just pick things up while you are out shopping. Nearly all drugstores offer tax-free shopping.

Drugstores and major department stores also usually have coupons. At drugstores, in addition to tax exemption, you can often get an additional 3% - 8% off depending on your purchase amount. Just search Google for the name of the drugstore you want to visit + coupon.

Most of the items on my shopping list can be found pretty easily, but here are a few that are harder to track down:

The GINZA does not seem to be available everywhere. I saw it at Rakuten Duty Free, and it is also available at airport duty-free shops and ANA in-flight duty-free.

For baby and kids’ items, Akachan Honpo (Akachan means “baby” in Japanese) is probably the most complete option. However, Akachan Honpo locations tend to be pretty far out, not in city centers, so we did not make it there on this trip. If you want to go, you probably need to plan for it separately. Drugstores do carry some children’s sunscreen, but not much. For kids’ toothbrushes, I only saw electric ones; I did not see manual ones like the popular Baby Smile toothbrush.

Elegance, also known as the “E compact powder,” almost always has purchase limits, but those limits are per store, so you can just go to another store and keep buying.

I basically only saw Twany at Lumie, and nowhere else.

For IFME kids’ shoes, you can check their official website to see which stores carry them. We bought ours at Tobu.

WPC umbrellas are unbelievably light—just 115g for one umbrella. I saw them at Rakuten, and also at some larger gift shops along the street. The patterns are cute too.

I had seen posts on xhs saying Issey Miyake bags were very hard to buy, which honestly surprised me. I bought mine at Matsuya Ginza. There was absolutely no line when I went. Maybe because I was not buying one of the hottest styles, but I was able to get it very smoothly.

Trash Bags

There are very few public trash cans on the streets in Japan, supposedly because trash sorting is too complicated. When traveling, we often had to carry our kid’s trash around with us for quite a while, especially food waste, which is really unpleasant if you don’t have a bag for it. Before the trip, I bought this diaper bag dispenser, and my partner thought it was a very clever and useful idea:

Taobao also has similar capsule-style trash bag dispensers that are even cuter.

Car Seat / Stroller

If you’re not renting a car, you don’t need a car seat for taxis, so you can skip bringing one. If you do rent a car, you can also request a car seat. In a place like Japan, where public transportation is so developed, it’s generally not worth bringing a car seat unless you’re traveling with a very small baby and want to think it through more carefully. Of course, if you have something very lightweight like a mifold, it’s also fine to bring it along if you really want to.

Strollers are not especially convenient in Japan. Although every subway station has an elevator, not every exit does, so you often have to walk very far. Also, except for the ones at airports, elevators in Japan are usually extremely small; our family of three could barely squeeze in. There are often lines too. That means you can end up wasting a lot of time waiting for elevators, or carrying the stroller up and down. Some subway stations are especially complicated and require several elevator transfers, or carrying the stroller up hundreds of steps. It really isn’t convenient.

On the other hand, bringing a stroller can make some things easier. For example, during our trip, immigration lines at Japanese airports were extremely long. We saw people spending four or five hours before finally getting through. But because we had a stroller, we were taken straight to a fast-track lane with no line at all and got through immediately.

Also, because of jet lag, our kid was still very sleepy after getting off the plane. Without a stroller, we would have had to carry her while she slept. For places like Disney, where you walk your legs off, I always bring a stroller too (though maybe you can rent one?). For a family like ours, where both I and my kid get tired of walking very easily, we brought the stroller despite the hassle. We used it a lot, and our kid often napped in it. Of course, some friends have high-energy kids who can walk 30,000 steps a day without getting tired, and in that case you really can skip it.

We use a Goodbaby pocket stroller, which folds up very small. This time I bought a backpack for it, so when we didn’t need the stroller, we could fold it up and my partner could carry it. It worked great:

If you have a different umbrella stroller, you can search to see whether there’s a similar backpack for it.

Pack Light

I mainly want to talk about the differences between Japanese hotels and North American hotels. All the hotels we stayed at this time provided slippers for both adults and children, though if you don’t like showering barefoot, you can bring shower slippers. They also provided toothbrushes and toothpaste, and every hotel gave children a separate toiletry kit with things like a kids’ toothbrush, toothpaste, and bath towel. So you don’t need to pack those items that you’d normally have to bring yourself in North America.

In Japan, people start using umbrellas even when it’s barely drizzling. Coming from Seattle, we were like, “You need an umbrella for this??” Small shops by the roadside sell umbrellas everywhere, and some brands are lightweight and stylish. Because we had a packed itinerary at the beginning of the trip, we brought our own, but if you have time to browse a local shop, you can just pick one up there.

If you’re bringing a lot of luggage, or expect to buy quite a bit during the trip, there’s no need to worry too much. There are luggage storage options everywhere in Japan, and it’s also very convenient to use takkyubin to send your bags to your next stop or to the airport. But there’s no guarantee of same-day delivery; it usually takes at least until the next day.

Visit Japan Web

Just fill it out before departure. There’s a customs code and another code—I forget exactly what—but there are several in total. When we entered Japan, they checked our customs code. It’s not a problem if you don’t fill it out in advance; you can also complete a paper form on the plane.

Another very useful feature on it is the tax-free QR code. If you go out without your passport, most merchants will still let you use this QR code for tax-free shopping. The tax-free QR code was newly launched in April 2023, so when we went, many merchants still didn’t know about it; we only found out it worked by trying it. Hopefully it becomes more widely accepted, and then you can just leave your passport at the hotel.

Fireworks Festivals

https://hanabi.walkerplus.com

This site is pretty comprehensive. It’s only in Japanese, but Google Translate works fine.

Mt. Fuji

Apparently, you can only see Mt. Fuji clearly about 1/3 of the year. There’s an official Mt. Fuji visibility forecast website: https://fuji-san.info/zh-cn/index.html. It updates every day at 4 PM Japan time, and the forecast gets more accurate the closer it gets.

The last few days of our trip were fairly flexible, so I checked this site every day. It just so happened that one of our flexible days had a visibility score of 10. So I quickly made a last-minute booking at one of the hotels with the best Mt. Fuji views. But in reality, booking close to the date means very limited choices, higher prices, and a real chance there won’t be any rooms left. I was honestly just very lucky to pull that off. It’s probably better to book your hotel well in advance, and then if visibility looks poor closer to the date, either go anyway or see whether cancellation is easy.

Here’s a photo of the view from that hotel as a preview of the upcoming Mt. Fuji trip report:

I originally wanted to publish the trip report first and then the guide, but several readers were urging me to post the guide, so I hurried and put this together.

About the Author

This article is reposted from the WeChat public account of a reader from the WeChat group, 懒人 33 的吃喝玩乐. The account publishes high-quality original articles, so feel free to follow if you’re interested.