About this site
Planning a trip to Japan produces two kinds of question. The first kind — where to eat, which neighborhood to stay in, whether a shrine is worth the detour — has thousands of good answers already. The second kind does not:
- How much of my shopping comes back, and by when does customs have to see the goods?
- What is the lodging tax at this hotel, on these dates, in this city?
- Does the rail pass cost the same wherever I buy it?
- How much of what I am carrying can I bring in without paying duty?
These have exact answers. The answers are set out in tax law, municipal ordinances and railway tariffs — and those documents are in Japanese, revised on fixed dates, and largely reported in English as one-line summaries that lose the part you needed.
What this site does
It turns those documents into calculators, and shows its working. Each tool page carries the rule, the arithmetic, the source it came from and the date that source was last read.
What it does not do
- No recommendations. We do not rank hotels, review restaurants or rate attractions. Where you should go is not a question with a source document.
- No advice on individual cases. We describe rules. Whether a rule applies to your situation is between you and the authority that wrote it.
- No stock photography of Mount Fuji. Illustrations here are diagrams we draw ourselves, when a diagram explains something a sentence cannot.
Why the dates matter so much here
Four of the rules covered by this site change on fixed dates within nine months: the departure tax tripled on 1 July 2026, rail pass prices at overseas agencies rose on 1 October 2026 (online prices did not), tax-free shopping moves to a refund system on 1 November 2026, and Tokyo's lodging tax becomes a percentage on 1 April 2027.
An article that says "currently" is wrong from the changeover date onward, and usually stays wrong for months. So the rules on this site are stored with the dates they apply between, and the calculators answer for your date rather than for today. How we verify explains the mechanics.
Who writes it
The site is written and maintained from Japan. That is the whole of the advantage it has: the primary sources are readable, and when a municipality publishes an ordinance revision there is no wait for someone to summarize it in English.
How it is paid for
Through advertising, and in future possibly through affiliate links for services we would describe anyway. Two rules govern that, and they are not negotiable: advertising never appears beside a calculator's inputs or results, and no commercial relationship changes what a rule says. If a cheaper option is better for you, the calculator will say so.
Found something wrong? Tell us — a correction with a source link is the most useful thing we receive.