Luggage
Send the suitcase. Travel with a day bag.
Japan's courier network is the traveller's cheat code: hand your suitcase over at a hotel desk, a convenience store or an airport counter, and it is waiting at your next hotel the next day. This page explains takkyubin, the airport counters, the official hands-free travel scheme, and how to ship a bag home when the trip ends.
How takkyubin works
Takkyubin is door to door parcel delivery, and luggage is its most traveller-friendly use. You hand the bag over, fill in a waybill with the destination hotel's name and address and the date you want it, and choose a delivery date and time slot. The bag travels overnight; you travel with whatever fits in a day bag. Keep one night's clothes, chargers and medicines with you, because next day is the promise, not same day.
Yamato TA-Q-BIN, the black cat
Yamato Transport, the black cat company, is the name you will see most. Its standard TA-Q-BIN takes parcels whose three sides total between 60 and 200 cm, with next-day delivery to most areas of Japan, Yamato's own service pages say. Waybills and drop-off are at Yamato offices, convenience stores and TA-Q-BIN agencies across the country, and most hotel front desks will send a bag for you.
The airport counters
Both directions work at the airport. Yamato's Airport TA-Q-BIN sends a bag from your home or hotel to the airport, delivered by the day before your departure date, or from an airport counter to your home or hotel; parcels over 30 kg are not accepted, and a handling fee of ¥660 (about US$4) applies at the major airports. Sagawa Express runs the other big traveller network: its Hands-Free Travel service has 65 service centres with dedicated counters, including airport counters that deliver to Tokyo hotels the same day when you drop the bag by early afternoon.
Hands-free travel, the official scheme
The Japan National Tourism Organization promotes all of this under one name, Hands-Free Travel. Counters certified for the scheme carry its logo; the major airports, Narita, Haneda and Kansai among them, have delivery counters that send bags to your hotel, and most major hotels can arrange delivery on to the next hotel. JNTO's guidance gives the typical shape of the services: items up to about 160 cm in total, 25 to 30 kg, with contents worth under ¥300,000 (about US$1,900), delivery same day or on a date you choose, and compensation if a bag is damaged or lost.
Shipping a bag home
When the trip ends and the suitcase is full of shopping, the same thinking works internationally. Send My Bag ships luggage door to door between countries, collected from your hotel or home and delivered to your address abroad, so the flight home is taken with hand luggage only. Full disclosure: we have applied to join Send My Bag's affiliate programme, and while that application is pending this is a plain link and we earn nothing from it.
Sources
Facts on this page were checked on 3 November 2026 against the sources listed below. Services and prices change; the carrier is the final word.