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About this tool
Build a prioritised Japan etiquette briefing for the places you will actually visit, with a readiness score and the phrases that matter.
This guide turns Japanese etiquette into a briefing for the specific places you will visit, ranking each rule by how much trouble getting it wrong actually causes. Tick the temples, restaurants, trains, ryokan, shops, homes, offices and streets on your itinerary and it returns the rules that apply, weighted by severity and by the kind of trip you are taking, plus a readiness score for the ones you already know. The underlying principle it teaches is the one Japanese public life runs on: do not impose on the people around you.
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Rules are scored by severity and by trip type, so the ones that would actually cause a problem come first.
Temple rules stay out of the way if you are not visiting temples, but anything with a legal consequence is always shown.
Tick what you already know and the weighted score shows how much of the briefing is still ahead of you.
No. Tipping is not part of the system and leaving money on a table often causes confusion, with staff following you out to return it. Service is included in the price everywhere, from a ramen counter to a taxi. The one recognised exception is kokorozuke, a gratuity for a ryokan attendant, which is given quietly in an envelope rather than as loose notes.
Never stand them upright in a bowl of rice and never pass food from your chopsticks directly to someone else's. Both imitate Buddhist funeral rites — rice set before the dead, and bones passed between relatives after a cremation. Rest chopsticks on the holder or across the bowl, and use the serving pair or the clean ends when taking from a shared plate.
Often not at a public bath, though it is easier than it was. Many onsen, pools and gyms still refuse visible tattoos because of the historic association with organised crime. The reliable routes are a tattoo-friendly bath, a private family bath booked at a ryokan, or waterproof cover patches for a small design. Check before you book rather than at the changing-room door.
It depends entirely on where. Streets and public parks are fine; temple halls, museums, department stores and many restaurants restrict it, and photographing people without asking is taken seriously. Kyoto's Gion district is the strictest case: signs posted from October 2019 warn of a ¥10,000 penalty for photography on the private lanes, and some of those lanes have since been closed to tourists.