Japan Packing List Generator

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Generic packing lists are useless for Japan, because Japan's list is different: you take your shoes off constantly, public bins barely exist, small restaurants are cash-only, and some ordinary cold medicine is illegal at the border. Pick your month and plans below and you get the list that actually matches.

The five things almost every list misses

• A coin purse. Japan still runs on coins up to ¥500 (about $3.30). Without somewhere to put them your pockets become a piggy bank by day three.
• A small hand towel. Many public toilets have neither paper towels nor a dryer. Every Japanese person carries a handkerchief; you'll want one within a day.
• Shoes you can slip off. Temples, ryokan, some restaurants, some fitting rooms and a few museums are shoes-off. Laces get old fast — and so do socks with holes.
• A plastic bag for rubbish. Public bins are genuinely rare. You carry your litter until you find one, or back to the hotel.
• Cash. Cards are widely accepted now, but small restaurants, shrines, markets and rural buses still aren't. 7-Eleven ATMs take foreign cards and are everywhere.

How the quantities work

Clothing counts assume you do laundry roughly every five days — which in Japan is easy, because coin laundries are everywhere and most business hotels have machines on a guest floor. Above about a week the list stops growing: packing 14 shirts for a 14-day trip is how people end up dragging a suitcase up station stairs. Japan is a country you walk and take trains in, not one you drive around, so the real constraint is what you can carry up a flight of steps without help.

Once it's packed, price the trip in the cost calculator and shape the days with the itinerary builder. Fuller reasoning behind these choices is in the packing guide.