Arriving In Japan

Arrival process and travel to hotel.

Posted Jun 10, 2025 Updated Mar 16, 2026

By Dolf Starreveld

4 min read

Arriving In Japan

We had used the Visit Japan Web website in advance to fill out entry paperwork. I filled this out for the whole family before departure using a single account. You will need to scan or take photos of each passport page, complete various forms, and so on. Ultimately, you will receive a QR code that you must use at the airport. While I generated the QR code before departure, one friend who will travel to Japan later mentioned they could not generate it and were told in the application that you cannot generate it until you arrive. While I have no idea why this difference existed, it highlights a critical point: arrange to have an eSIM installed on your phone before traveling. You will then have immediate connectivity upon landing for things such as this. More on this will be discussed in a separate post.

Arrival at Narita Airport

Our flight, JL 58, arrived on time at 4:30 PM. We arrived at Narita airport. You might also have a flight to Haneda airport, which is closer to central Tokyo. Your choice may depend on the airline you select and the specific flight. At Narita (and I presume Haneda as well), as you go through customs (which comes before immigration), you will need to scan your passport on machines that also capture your face for facial recognition. It is compared with your passport (I presume). The machines have instructions in English, but they are not as clear as they could be, which caused some confusion. There are people there to help, though. After that, you come through immigration, and they want both passports and the QR code.

Here, I found out I was supposed to have one QR code per person, but I only had one for myself. The website only offered me a single QR code at the time, and the instructions were unclear enough that I didn’t realize I needed to take additional steps. The immigration officer wanted to refer me to a secondary process, but I feigned not to understand and had him tap on my phone to generate the other codes. That then allowed us to proceed. The entire entry process took about 20 minutes.

Drive to the hotel

We were met by a pre-arranged driver in the arrivals hall with a sign. He took us to the parking garage, where we were picked up in a familiar brand (Toyota) SUV/VAN of a model we weren’t used to: the Toyota Vellfire. We quickly found out that model naming in Japan has some funny (to us) names, such as Vellfire (Hellfire?), Voxy (Foxy?), Sienta (not to be confused with our Sienna), Roomy (which is relatively small!), Harrier (which does not look like the Jet), etc. Anyway, this is a spacious and comfortable taxi for three people and six pieces of luggage.

We each travelled with a standard-size carry-on and a backpack (Cotopaxi Allpa 28L). Thus, no checked luggage to worry about. This was reasonably sufficient for our three-week trip, and we had ample room for all necessary clothes, an extra pair of shoes (in case we ended up with thoroughly wet shoes, which happened once), various electronics, medications, and more. I also carried an empty, smaller backpack (Cotopaxi Batac 16L) for each day. This was handy for holding water bottles, umbrellas, a pocket WiFi, purchases, etc.

While we made a moderate number of purchases during our trip, they could not all fit in the same luggage for the return trip. We purchased a cheap bag (¥2,200 or $15) at some point and packed the items we bought in my wife’s carry-on, transferring other items from there into the bag. The carry-on became checked luggage on the way back, and the bag was the new carry-on (besides her backpack). If you buy a lot of things, consider purchasing a cheap suitcase instead. They can be had for as little as $40. The quality is not excellent, but reasonably sufficient for this purpose. Along the way, we used the luggage-forwarding service to send a smaller amount of goods to our final hotel, so we did not have to carry extra bags.