Guide
Your First Trip to Japan, Start to Finish
Rail passes, cash, connectivity and luggage forwarding sorted before you land.
12 min read
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Planning and Logistics
Almost all the stress of a Japan trip happens before you leave. Once you land, the country is remarkably easy. Here is the practical layer, sorted once so you can stop reading forum threads.
- Rail pass
- Do the maths first
- IC card
- Add it to your phone
- Cash
- More than you think
- Luggage
- Forward it ahead
Rail passes are not automatic value
The Japan Rail Pass is a fixed-price pass covering most JR trains for a set number of consecutive days. Since the price rose substantially it is no longer the obvious buy it once was, and whether it pays depends entirely on how much long-distance travel you do inside the window.
The way to decide is arithmetic. Price your actual planned journeys individually, total them, and compare. Regional passes covering one area cost less and are frequently the better answer.
Prices and rules change more often than blog posts get updated. Check the official JR site rather than trusting any article, this one included.
IC cards
A rechargeable tap card — Suica, Pasmo and regional equivalents — covers trains, buses, convenience stores and vending machines, and removes the problem of working out fares entirely. If your phone supports it, add one to your wallet and top up by card. That sidesteps periodic shortages of physical cards and is the highest-value ten minutes of preparation available.
Money
Cities are increasingly card-friendly, but the exceptions are exactly the places worth going: small restaurants, rural buses, shrine offerings, older shops. Not every Japanese ATM takes foreign cards — convenience store machines, particularly 7-Eleven's, are the reliable option and have English interfaces.
Connectivity
- An eSIM is usually cheapest and simplest if your phone supports it — install before departure, activates on landing.
- Pocket wifi makes more sense for groups sharing one device.
- Airport rental counters work but cost more and eat arrival time.
Luggage forwarding
Takkyubin couriers will send a suitcase from one hotel to the next, usually overnight, for a modest fee. Hotel front desks arrange it routinely. This matters because trains are not built for large cases, stations involve stairs, and some shinkansen require reservations for oversized bags. Sending the big case ahead turns a transfer day from an ordeal into a pleasant train ride.
[ADD YOUR OWN] What you got wrong on your first trip. The mistakes are more useful to a reader than the checklist.