Visit Japan Web: one QR code for immigration and customs, at eight terminals

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Japan's arrival paperwork is now one QR code on your phone — but only eight terminals in the country have the machine that turns it into a single stop. Everywhere else you still queue twice. Here is what to register before you fly, and the details that decide whether the fast lane is open to you.

1What it replaces

Two forms used to be handed out on the plane: the foreigner's arrival record, and the customs declaration for personal effects and unaccompanied baggage. Visit Japan Web, run by the government's Digital Agency, registers both online and hands you a single 2D code. Since 25 January 2024 the immigration and customs codes have been one code rather than two, and the stand-alone Customs Declaration App stopped working the same day.

It is free, it is not compulsory — the paper forms still exist — and the fast lane is only for people who used it, because the joint kiosk reads a Visit Japan Web code and nothing else. There is no app. That absence has produced a small industry of fake “Visit Japan Web” apps, which the Digital Agency warned about in 2023; the service is a website, and the only app-like thing on your phone is an offline copy the site itself installs on your home screen.

One more code comes out of the same account, for shopping: the tax-free code. It is separate from the arrival code, and the rules around it change on 1 November 2026 — see the tax-free guide before you plan a shopping day around it.

Illustration: Japan Trip Zero

2What to have in front of you

Ten minutes with the passport to hand, and one thing you must not skip: the screen that asks for the emailed confirmation code has to stay open while you fetch it. Close it, and the code is void and you start again from the first page. The official manual runs to 150 pages because it is a manual; the work itself is this:

Then you register the entry itself: the flight, where you are sleeping, and the arrival procedures page. That page is the one that matters at the airport, and it holds three things — a short health question, your arrival record, and your customs declaration. Press it once and the code below is what the officer or the machine will read.

Source: Digital Agency, Government of Japan · official usage guide, English screens

3The eight terminals where it is one stop

The joint kiosk is the whole point of the system: one machine that hands the same set of details to immigration and to customs at once. Japan Customs publishes where it exists and when it is open, and the list is shorter than the marketing suggests.

Two things follow from that table. Narita's Terminals 1 and 2 only joined on 24 September 2026 — any guide written before that told you Narita had a kiosk only in Terminal 3, and that is now out of date. And three airports with heavy tourist traffic have no kiosk at all: New Chitose, Chubu and Naha. There you get the second-best version, the electronic declaration terminal and gate in the baggage hall, which is what the joint kiosk was built on. Immigration stays a normal counter queue.

Where the declaration terminal exists, use it while you are standing around waiting for your bag: at Haneda, Fukuoka and Naha the terminal is in the baggage hall itself, so the customs half of the arrival is done and dusted before your suitcase arrives.

Illustration: Japan Trip Zero

4The four rules that decide whether you get through

• 135 cm. Anyone shorter than 135 cm cannot use the joint kiosk at all, whatever is on your phone. Families with small children use the manned counters. The customs e-gate is kinder: children under 100 cm go through it with the family.
• One person at a time. Every traveller passes the machine individually, including a family whose codes all sit in one account. Register the group on one phone — then expect four turns at the machine.
• The customs gate wants a chipped passport. It checks your face against the image stored in the passport's IC chip. A passport without a chip can still use Visit Japan Web, but the gate will not open, so you join the officer queue.
• Uncover your face. The camera compares you with the passport chip at the kiosk and again at the gate. Masks and sunglasses off, and walk through facing forward.

5What I would do

• Register the night before, at home, on wifi. Not in the arrivals hall: the confirmation screen has to stay open while you fetch the emailed code, and the passport scan is the slow part.
• Screenshot the arrival code as a backup — but keep the live page too. Editing anything reissues the code, so a screenshot from last month is a dead picture. The tax-free code cannot be screenshotted at all.
• Buy data before you fly. The offline copy is genuinely useful, but only for pages you opened while online.
• Check your terminal before you fly. Land at Narita T1 at 22:30 and the kiosk closed at 21:30 — you are in the queue with everyone else.
• Ignore the app store. There is no Visit Japan Web app. Anyone selling you one is not selling you the government's service.

Source: Digital Agency, Government of Japan · official usage guide, English screens

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