The short answer
You will pay two different kinds of tourist tax in Japan, and only one of them needs any action from you. The International Tourist Tax is charged per departure from Japan and rose from 1,000 yen to 3,000 yen with the revision effective July 2026. Airlines collect it with the fare, so there is no counter and no queue. Separately, some cities tax your accommodation: Tokyo charges 100 or 200 yen per person per night above a threshold, and Kyoto moved to a five-band scale on 1 March 2026 running from 200 yen to 10,000 yen. Those appear on the hotel bill. Osaka and other cities we have not checked, so read the city's own page.
The departure tax, collected with your ticket
Japan's International Tourist Tax is charged on departures from the country, by air or by sea. The National Tax Agency's own Q and A describes the change as raising the tax rate per departure from 1,000 yen to 3,000 yen, and its page gives the revision as effective July 2026. The Japan National Tourism Organization repeats the 3,000 yen figure. Collection is handled upstream: the Q and A says the international passenger transport operator, an airline for example, must in principle collect the tax from all passengers. In practice it is a line in the fare breakdown, not a payment you make. If you fly in and out twice on one trip, you pay it twice, because it attaches to each departure.
Who does not pay it
Two exemptions are worth knowing. Children under the age of 2 do not pay. Neither do certain transit passengers who depart from Japan within 24 hours after their entry, which is the clause that saves a long layover from becoming a tax. There is also a timing rule for the increase itself: the old 1,000 yen rate is levied on departures based on contracts of carriage concluded before the increase date. So a ticket bought well before the rise keeps the lower figure even if you fly after it. The tax agency's worked example uses a contract signed on 28 June 2026 with a departure on 3 July 2026. If in doubt, look at the tax line on your own booking confirmation.
Tokyo's accommodation tax
Tokyo taxes the room rather than the traveller's nationality, and the threshold does most of the work. Accommodation for which the room charge is less than 10,000 yen per person per night is exempt. From 10,000 yen to just under 15,000 yen the tax is 100 yen; at 15,000 yen or more it is 200 yen. Per person, per night, added to the bill rather than paid at a desk. A revision is on the table: the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Tax Bureau's draft overview would lift the exemption threshold from 10,000 to 13,000 yen per person per night and move to a rate of 3 per cent. The draft does not give a start date, so treat the current bands as what you will be charged and check the bureau's page if you are booking a long way ahead.
Kyoto's five bands, from 1 March 2026
Kyoto changed its accommodation tax rates on 1 March 2026, and the new scale bites much harder at the top. Per person per night: under 6,000 yen costs 200 yen; 6,000 to 19,999 yen costs 400 yen; 20,000 to 49,999 yen costs 1,000 yen; 50,000 to 99,999 yen costs 4,000 yen; and 100,000 yen or more costs 10,000 yen. For most visitors that is a small line on the bill, but a ryokan splurge in blossom season can carry a four-figure charge per person per night. Budget for it when you compare a high-end room in Kyoto with the same money spent elsewhere, and read the rate against the per person price, not the room total.
Other cities, and what to check on the bill
Accommodation taxes in Japan are set city by city, so the only honest answer for anywhere outside Tokyo and Kyoto is to check that city's own page. We have not verified Osaka or the other cities, and repeating a number we have not read would be worse than saying so. When you check in, look for a separate line rather than an all-in total: the tax is normally shown apart from the room rate, and some places collect it at checkout. Rates are per person and per night, which is why a family of four notices it more than a couple does. And remember the departure tax is already inside your flight price, so nobody should be asking you for it at the airport.
