Guides · Mon 26 Oct 2026
New Year in Japan: what closes, what stays open, and what to book now
Between 29 December and 3 January Japan runs on a different timetable: one national holiday, six days of closures, the busiest shrine mornings of the year and trains that are reserved seats only. What shuts, what stays open, and what to sort out before the 29th.
The short answer: New Year, shogatsu, is Japan's real shutdown. Only one day in the stretch, 1 January, is a national holiday, but government offices close from Tuesday 29 December to Sunday 3 January by law, bank counters close from 31 December, and much of the country follows them. What replaces ordinary life is a fixed set of rituals, all open to you: temple bells at midnight on the 31st, the first shrine visit of the year in the three days after, first sales and lucky bags from the 2nd. The week rewards anyone who books its moving parts now. Here is the shape of it, day by day, then what closes, what stays open, and what has to be booked rather than walked up to.
The week, day by day
Monday 28 to Wednesday 30 December. The wind-down. Monday the 28th is the last working day for government offices, which then close until 4 January under the Act on Holidays of Administrative Organs. Banks trade two days longer, through Wednesday the 30th. JR's own fare calendar marks 29 and 30 December as peak-season days: they are the heart of the outbound rush, the whole country travelling home at once. Restaurants are still mostly open, and the department store food halls do some of their biggest business of the year. If your trip starts in this window, arrive with everything printed, charged and reserved.
Thursday 31 December. Omisoka, the last day. Bank counters are now closed, from today until 3 January under the Banking Act Enforcement Order, and the closure widens to much of ordinary Japan. The evening belongs to the temples. From around midnight, bells across the country are rung 108 times, joya no kane, one strike for each of the 108 earthly desires people are said to carry, rung out with the old year. The famous bells draw crowds who come to watch; at smaller neighbourhood temples the queue often gets to strike the bell itself. On our calendar the day is full: the final day of Countdown Japan 26/27, the year-end rock festival at Makuhari Messe in Chiba; a Silvester concert of Die Fledermaus highlights at Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and on Miyajima, the Chinkasai fire-prevention rite at Itsukushima Shrine, with around a thousand pine torches carried down to the beach. Trains on several major lines run through the night for the shrine crowds, though which lines do it this year is announced each December, so check before you plan a late one.
Friday 1 January. Ganjitsu, the one national holiday of the six days, and the strangest day of the Japanese year: the quietest streets and the busiest shrines. Most shops are shut, department stores included. Shrines and temples are at their fullest from the small hours, for hatsumode, the first visit of the year, and the first sunrise, hatsuhinode, draws its own crowds to beaches, headlands and observation decks at dawn. Two of our listings give the day a fixed point: the Emperor's Cup final, Japanese football's traditional New Year's Day fixture, at the National Stadium in Tokyo, and the start of the Suntory Hall New Year Concert run, Viennese waltzes and operetta from the Volksoper Wien company, 1 to 3 January. Both are ticketed. Hatsumode is not.
Saturday 2 January. The reopening begins, and it begins with selling. Department stores hold their first sale of the year, hatsuuri, on the first or second day of January depending on the store, and the famous item is the fukubukuro, the lucky bag: a sealed bag of goods sold for well under the value of its contents, contents unknown until you open it. The big stores' bags go in the first hours, to queues that formed before opening. The day's other appointment is ceremonial. At the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, the Emperor and the Imperial Family receive the New Year greeting of the general public, appearing on the palace veranda several times through the day; entry is walk-up, and it is one of only two days a year the inner grounds open this way. And the Hakone Ekiden sets off, Japan's great university relay, Tokyo to Hakone today and back tomorrow, watched by crowds along the whole route and half the country on television.
Sunday 3 January. The third of the sanganichi, the first three days, and the last day of the official closure. The Ekiden runs its return leg into Tokyo. The return rush peaks: JR's fare calendar marks 2 and 3 January as peak-season days, in the inbound direction. In Osaka, the Hatsuharu New Year Bunraku opens at the National Bunraku Theatre, running 3 to 24 January.
Monday 4 January. Ordinary Japan comes back: offices and bank counters reopen and the rush drains away. If your dates are flexible, this is the hinge, and beyond it sits the quiet, cold, good-value Japan of midwinter.
What closes
| What | Closed | The detail |
|---|---|---|
| Government offices | 29 December to 3 January | Set by the Act on Holidays of Administrative Organs. Ward offices, immigration, public counters: all shut, reopening Monday 4 January. |
| Bank counters | 31 December to 3 January | Set by the Banking Act Enforcement Order. Branches trade on 29 and 30 December, then close for four days. Convenience store and station ATMs keep running; it is the counters that stop. |
| Post offices | The core days | Counter services pause over the holiday core and Japan Post publishes a specific year-end timetable each December. Treat the post office as closed from 31 December to 3 January and check that schedule if one matters to you. |
| Museums and galleries | Varies, roughly the last days of December into 1 to 3 January | There is no national museum calendar. Most institutions close for a stretch somewhere across this window and each publishes its own dates. Assume closed, check the one you want. |
| Small restaurants and bars | Commonly several days, often 30 or 31 December to 3 or 4 January | The family-run places are the backbone of the closure. Chains and hotel restaurants mostly trade, on shortened hours. The restaurant you travelled for is the one most likely to be dark. |
| Clinics and pharmacies | Most shut for the core days | Ordinary clinics close with the offices. Cities run holiday duty rotas and publish them locally; your hotel front desk is the fastest route to the list. |
What stays open, and gets busy
Shrines and temples have their biggest days of the year. Hatsumode, the first visit, is mostly done between midnight on the 31st and the 3rd. The scale at the top end is hard to overstate: the Japan National Tourism Organization puts Meiji Jingu in Tokyo at about three million visitors for hatsumode, and the government's own magazine records the same figure for Naritasan Shinsho-ji in Chiba. There is no booking and no ticket. You join the flow, make your offering in cash, and buy the new year's charms at the shrine office. Timing is the only lever you have. The crush is at midnight and through New Year's Day; JNTO's own advice for Meiji Jingu is to come at around four in the morning, when the midnight crowd has thinned, and the evenings of the 2nd and 3rd are calmer than the days. A smaller shrine in your neighbourhood gives you the same ritual at a fraction of the crowd, and for many visitors it is the better memory.
Convenience stores do not close at all, and over this week they graduate from useful to essential: hot food, drinks, basic supplies, and ATMs that take foreign cards, at 3 a.m. on New Year's Day. Our closer look at the conbini explains the machine behind the counter.
Trains and stations keep running, on holiday timetables, carrying some of the heaviest loads of the year on the peak days above. The winter illuminations are still on: 35 of the displays on our calendar run straight through the New Year nights, the Marunouchi lights in Tokyo among them, collected on the winter illuminations season page, and the snow country is in full season on the snow season page.
What to book now
Intercity trains. This is the booking that cannot wait. From 25 December to 5 January, every Nozomi on the Tokaido and Sanyo shinkansen, the fastest Tokyo to Osaka and Hakata services, runs with reserved seats only: the non-reserved cars disappear entirely, a rule JR Central and JR West now apply at every peak. A non-reserved ticket in that window buys you standing room in the vestibule, even if a seat sits empty. Reserved seats go on sale at 10:00 a.m. one month before the travel date, so seats for 29 December open on 29 November, and for travel on 31 December they open on 1 December, November having no 31st. The peak-direction trains, out of the big cities on 29 and 30 December and back on 2 and 3 January, go first. Slower Hikari and Kodama trains keep their non-reserved cars, and the rail pass guide does the pass arithmetic.
Hotel nights over the 31st to the 2nd. New Year is a domestic peak, not an international one: resort towns, onsen towns and the shrine cities take the pressure, and the best rooms go early. Book those nights as the fixed point of the trip and build around them; our hotels page is organised city by city for exactly that.
The ticketed fixtures. Countdown Japan, the Emperor's Cup final and the Suntory Hall concerts above are ticketed events on fixed dates inside a week when many visitors assume nothing is on; their pages on our calendar carry the details. What cannot be booked is everything else that matters: hatsumode, the temple bells, the first sunrise, the Imperial Palace greeting. Those are walk-up, and the only preparation they ask for is warm clothes, cash in small denominations, and a decision about which crowd to stand in.
Food, and the money point
The food of the holiday is osechi, the boxed New Year dishes, prepared in advance and seasoned to keep, precisely so that the first days of January need no cooking: lacquered boxes of sweet black beans, herring roe, rolled omelette and chestnut mash, each dish carrying a wish for the year. As a visitor you will mostly meet osechi at a hotel breakfast or a ryokan dinner, and that is fine. For ordinary eating, plan on the pattern above: the small places shut, the chains and hotel restaurants trade, and anything specific and bookable should be booked, because the places that are open take the whole week's demand between them. The convenience store is the honest fallback, and over New Year it is a good one.
Money needs one decision, made before the 31st. Bank counters close from 31 December, and while the convenience store ATMs keep working, the cash-only moments multiply this week: shrine offerings and charms, festival stalls, small shrines with no card reader in sight. Draw a working float while the banks are still open and carry it in small notes and coins. Our guide to cash or card in Japan covers which machines take foreign cards and how much to carry on a festival day, and the practical page rounds up the rest of the arrival small print.
Sources: Act on Holidays of Administrative Organs (government offices closed 29 December to 3 January) and Banking Act Enforcement Order (bank counters closed 31 December to 3 January), as summarised from the statutes; Japan National Tourism Organization, New Year guide (hatsumode numbers for Meiji Jingu, the four in the morning advice, department stores reopening on the first or second day, fukubukuro); Highlighting Japan, the Japanese government's magazine (joya no kane and its 108 strikes, Naritasan visitor numbers); JR Central and JR West (Nozomi reserved seats only, 25 December 2026 to 5 January 2027); JR East seasonal reserved seat fare calendar (peak-season days 29 and 30 December 2026 and 2 and 3 January 2027); Public Relations Office, Government of Japan (the general public's New Year greeting at the Imperial Palace, 2 January). Event dates, venues and statuses are as recorded on this site's calendar, checked 26 October 2026. Closure patterns for museums, restaurants and post offices are the usual pattern of the week, not a guarantee for any one place; each institution publishes its own dates.
More reading on the articles page, or go straight to the events calendar.