DealTokyo
Your first day
Not our tips: the ranking 4,110 departing visitors gave the Japan Tourism Agency when asked what had gone wrong, in their order — which is why it opens with rubbish bins.
43.7% said nothing went wrong at all.
What went wrong, in their order
- 1 How few rubbish bins there are ごみ箱の少なさ 17.2%
- 2 Communicating with staff 施設等のスタッフとのコミュニケーション 15.4%
- 3 Crowding at sights and in neighbourhoods 観光地や地域の混雑 12.9%
- 4 Using the transport 交通機関の利用 11.3%
- 5 Too little signage, or signage that is hard to read 多言語表示の少なさ・わかりにくさ 10.9%
- 6 Paying by credit or debit card クレジット/デビットカードの利用 10.7%
- 7 Immigration 入国手続き 10.3%
観光庁, Survey on the reception environment for inbound visitors, FY2025 edition — 4,110 responses, 18 November 2025 to 13 January 2026, at Narita, Haneda, Kansai, Fukuoka and New Chitose. Percentages are the share naming each item.
1 The bins
There are almost none on the street; you finish a coffee and carry the cup for an hour. Carry a small bag and empty it at the hotel. The bins that exist are beside vending machines, for the can you just drank; inside convenience stores, for things bought there; and on station concourses.
2 Talking to people
Staff will help; the friction is vocabulary, not willingness. Point at the thing: a station name written down, a photo of the dish, or this site — every station here carries its Japanese, 銀座 beside Ginza, so a page you have open is something you can show.
3·4 The crowds, and the trains
At 08:00 and 18:00 they are the same problem, and neither is the time to move a suitcase across the city. Leave it in a coin locker: 25 Toei stations list theirs floor by floor and size by size, and say which side of the ticket gates each one is. They fill up at weekends; if the first bank is full, the next station usually has more.
5 Reading the signs
On the subway, every stop carries a letter and a number on every sign — G-09, M-16 — and they do not change with the language. Hold the code and you need to read nothing else on the platform. Every line and its numbers are here.
6 Cards, and cash
Cards work in most places a visitor goes and cash in all of them; the gap is small restaurants, older shops and the machine at the end of a market street. Carry some cash. IC cards, fares, day passes and what changes for tax-free shopping on 1 November 2026 are on Fares & tickets.
7 Immigration
The queue at Narita and Haneda is the queue. What you can do beforehand is Visit Japan Web, the Digital Agency's own service: immigration and customs details entered in advance, so you arrive with a code rather than a form. Do it on the plane.
The thing the survey does not ask about
Trains stop around midnight and nothing runs under them; the fallback is a taxi, which adds a late-night supplement from 22:00 to 05:00. Every subway station page carries its own first and last trains and, between 22:00 and 02:00 Tokyo time, counts down the ones still to come. On public holidays the weekend timetable runs, and the last train is often earlier.