Booster: Before You Fly & Arrival Day

In this booster

The first hour in Japan is the most nervous hour of the trip — and the least improvised. Immigration, customs, baggage, the bus downtown: every step is a queue, a script, and a pictogram, and almost none of it requires speech. This pack gives you the script for your ears, the one word that answers the only real question (kankou — sightseeing), and the handful of sentences that get you from the arrivals hall to your hotel. It runs on Lesson 4’s doko desu ka and Lesson 6’s made — no new grammar: every sentence here is a frame you already own, wearing new nouns. Boosters assume the finished core (Lessons 1–9).

One calming truth before the details: airport staff and immigration officers handle foreigners all day, and English works for their three questions. This pack isn’t for surviving the airport — it’s for walking through it feeling like you’ve already started the trip.

Tap each sentence and listen first, repeat it aloud, then check yourself against the text and meaning that appear. Tap again to listen as often as you like.

Before you fly: the checklist

Nothing below needs Japanese — it needs doing before the airport. The course’s scattered “do this ahead” advice, collected into one checklist:

• Visit Japan Web. Register your passport and fill in immigration + customs online before you fly; the QR code it gives you replaces both paper forms and most of the talking in “The scripted hour” below.
• The medicine check. Some common Western ingredients (pseudoephedrine cold medicine among them) are restricted at Japan’s border, and large supplies of any prescription need an advance import certificate — check the current rules while changing plans is still cheap. The Pharmacy booster covers buying local equivalents once you’re there.
• Travel insurance. Japanese hospitals are excellent and often want payment up front from visitors — carry insurance that covers medical care, and the card that proves it. Lesson 10 taught you to say Hoken ga arimasu (“I have insurance”); this is where you make it true.
• Do the rail-pass math. The nationwide pass’s 2023 price rise turned “buy the JR Pass” from a default into a real calculation — total your actual route first. If it wins, buying ahead at the official pass site is cheaper than buying in Japan. Rules and prices change; check current ones, and see the Trains booster for the vocabulary either way.
• Sort out your Suica. The IC card runs your whole city life, and how you get one depends on your phone. iPhone: add it before you fly — open Wallet, add a transit card, choose Suica; setup is built in. Most Android phones from outside Japan can’t hold a Suica (the chip differs) — your move is a physical card on day one: the Welcome Suica (the no-deposit tourist card, Haneda and Narita only) if you land in Tokyo, or the ordinary local IC card from any station machine anywhere else (¥500 deposit; the first-hour notes below have the details).
• Print your hotel’s address in Japanese. Or screenshot it. The juusho move below turns that piece of paper into every taxi ride of the trip.
• eSIM and offline maps. Order the eSIM, download the maps, and load the AI translator into your chatbot app — the Beyond page names the tools worth packing.
• Book the big-ticket things. Sumo, ballgames, and the famous museums sell out before the day; mountain huts book out in season; tattoo-friendly onsen are worth researching rather than gambling on.
• Pack the small things Japan assumes:
  • a hand towel — dryers and paper towels are rare (the toilet tutorial below explains)
  • slip-on shoes — you’ll be taking them off more than you think
  • socks without holes — they’ll be on display every time the shoes come off
  • a Type-A power adapter, if your plugs aren’t North American (Japan runs 100V, two flat pins)
  • a power bank — your phone is your map, translator, wallet, and train ticket; it dying at 4 p.m. is the modern lost passport
• Pack lighter than feels safe. You’ll buy more than you think, and empty suitcase space is the cheapest souvenir insurance. Don’t dread the big bag on travel days — locals ship suitcases between hotels instead of dragging them onto trains. And anything you forget, the ¥100 shop (Daiso and its cousins) fixes for pocket change.

The scripted hour

Immigration wants your passport, your fingerprints, and one fact. Customs wants one answer. Both are below in “What they’ll say to you” — your production side is tiny:

Getting to town

First stop: the toilet

Let’s be honest about the itinerary: for many visitors the first real destination in Japan is a bathroom — and it will be the most technologically advanced bathroom of their lives. A short tutorial:

• Finding one is never the problem. Stations, konbini, and department stores all have free, clean toilets — Lesson 4’s Toire wa doko desu ka is the only sentence you need, and usually the pictograms answer before you ask.
• The button panel, decoded. Learn 止 (stop) first — it ends whatever the seat has started. 流す = flush (often split into 大/小, big/small). おしり (oshiri — literally “bottom”) fires the warm-water wash the seat is famous for; ビデ (bide — bidet) is the front-facing version. And the red button (呼出 or 非常) calls staff — it is not the flush. Pressing it summons a human; now you know the story before you’re in it. Some toilets flush by hand-wave sensor or a lever on the tank instead.
• The slipper rule. Ryokan, izakaya, and homes keep dedicated toilet slippers inside the bathroom door: step in, swap in; step out, swap out. Walking back to dinner in the toilet slippers is the single most classic visitor mistake in Japan — now it won’t be yours.
• Two habits worth forming on day one: carry pocket tissues (older public toilets may lack paper — the free tissue packs handed out at stations exist for this) and a small hand towel (dryers and paper towels are rare; every local carries one).
• The squat style (washiki) survives in older stations — face the hood. And that little sound button (音, sometimes a speaker icon)? It plays flushing sounds for privacy. Japan thought of everything.

Dialog

At the arrivals-hall information counter, address in hand. Listen cold first — no peeking — then check yourself line by line.

The whole exchange is Lesson 4 and Lesson 6 wearing airport nouns — and the address in your hand did half the talking.

What they’ll say to you

Four lines for your ears — the immigration booth and the customs desk. You never say these.

Most of this now happens at machines with your Visit Japan Web QR code — the human versions above are the fallback, and hearing them calmly is the whole skill.

How to behave: the first hour

• Don’t rehearse — queue. The line moves, the pictograms lead, and officers switch to English without a flicker. Save your Japanese for the bus counter, where it starts actually earning smiles.
• Send the suitcase, keep a day bag. The takkyuubin counter in arrivals will have your luggage at the hotel tomorrow — and your first train ride isn’t a wrestling match. Locals do this constantly.
• Cash and card, one stop. The konbini in arrivals has a 7-Bank ATM with a full English flow (better rates than the ryougae counter), and the station downstairs sells the IC card that runs your whole city life.
• The airport sells two tourist-only bargains. Neither is on the regular ticket machines — both are passport-gated, and locals can’t buy them, so guidebooks under-mention them:
  • Welcome Suica (if your phone can’t hold a Suica — see the checklist): sold from the red Welcome Suica machines and the JR East Travel Service Centers at Haneda and Narita, English menus throughout. No deposit, valid 28 days, charged with cash — and leftover balance isn’t refunded, so spend it down at a konbini on your last day. (Landing elsewhere? The tourist-only, deposit-free card is a Tokyo thing — everywhere else you simply buy the ordinary local IC card, ICOCA at Kansai for example: ¥500 deposit, no passport, ordinary machines with English menus, and it works identically nationwide. The ask, at any counter, is the Subway pack’s IC kaado wa arimasu ka.)
  • Tokyo Subway Tickets (24/48/72 hours), if Tokyo is your base: sold at the arrivals-lobby transport counters — at Narita often bundled with the Skyliner, at Haneda with the monorail or limousine bus, and the bundles are the best version of the deal. (Missed it? Tokyo Metro pass offices and BIC Camera stores sell them in town.) Three mechanics: the clock is rolling hours from first tap, not calendar days; it’s a paper ticket that feeds through the gate slot, not a tap card; and it covers Tokyo Metro + Toei only — JR lines like the Yamanote loop are a different company.

Vocabulary reference

Recognize only — never say these:

Anki deck

Download the booster deck — sentence cards are the course; suspend the vocab cards unless a word won’t stick.