A tax on the room is one of the few travel costs in Japan that nobody quotes you in advance. It does not appear on Booking.com. It is not in the rate your hotel emailed you. It turns up at the front desk, in cash, at check-in or check-out, and it is almost always small enough that people pay it without asking what it was.
It is also spreading fast. In January 2026 there were roughly twenty places in Japan charging a lodging tax. By August there are more than forty-five, and another dozen have already been approved for 2027. Hokkaido brought in a prefecture-wide tax on 1 April 2026, and eighteen of its municipalities stacked their own on top of it. Nagano followed on 1 June. Kyoto quintupled its top band on 1 March. If you last visited Japan in 2024, most of what you knew about this is now wrong.
What is in this guide
The calculator below covers every place a foreign visitor is realistically likely to sleep. Every figure in it was read off a prefectural or city ordinance, or off the Ministry of Internal Affairs register of local taxes, on 20 August 2026. Where a rate could not be confirmed from a government source, the place is not in the calculator at all rather than being filled in with a guess.
What will Japan’s lodging tax cost you?
Rates checked against prefectural and city ordinances on 20 August 2026.
Enter the room-only rate for the whole room, before consumption tax and before any meal plan. Japan taxes lodging per person, per night, so the room rate is divided by the number of guests first — which is why two people sharing often pay less tax each than one person alone.
The three things that trip people up
1. The tax is per person, not per room
This is the single biggest source of confusion, and it works in your favour more often than against you. Japan taxes the lodging charge per person, per night. If two of you share a room costing 18,000 yen, the taxable figure is 9,000 yen each, not 18,000 yen.
In Tokyo that is the difference between paying nothing and paying something. A solo traveller in an 18,000 yen room is above the 10,000 yen threshold and owes 100 yen a night. A couple in the same room are at 9,000 yen each, below the threshold, and owe nothing at all. Same room, same night, same hotel — one bill, not the other.
It cuts the other way in Kyoto, where there is no exemption floor at all. Everyone pays something, however cheap the bed.
2. The taxable figure is the room only
Every ordinance we read defines the lodging charge the same way: the room rate and any service charge, excluding meals and excluding consumption tax. That matters enormously at a ryokan, where a 30,000 yen per-person rate typically includes dinner and breakfast. Only the room portion is taxed, and the ryokan works out the split.
Hiroshima Prefecture is explicit that the service charge is inside the taxable base. Kyoto is explicit that the commission a hotel pays to Booking.com or Agoda is not deductible — the tax is calculated on the gross rate before the platform takes its cut, which is why the figure at the desk sometimes looks higher than you expected from what you paid online.
3. Two taxes does not always mean twice the tax
Where both a prefecture and a city levy a lodging tax, there are two entirely different models, and they produce different bills.
Additive. Sapporo is the common case. Hokkaido charges 100 yen on a room under 20,000 yen; Sapporo charges 200 yen on top; you pay 300 yen. The two amounts add up.
Carved out. Kutchan, Fukuoka City, Sendai and Nozawa Onsen all work the other way. There is one figure the guest pays, and the prefecture’s share is taken *out* of it rather than added *to* it. In Kutchan you pay 3 per cent of the room rate, full stop — the Hokkaido tax is inside that 3 per cent, not on top of it. In Fukuoka City you pay 200 yen, of which 50 yen quietly goes to the prefecture. Sendai is 300 yen, split 200 to the city and 100 to the prefecture.
Nagano is a hybrid nobody expects. The prefectural rate is 200 yen, but inside the five towns that levy their own tax it is halved to 100 yen, and the municipal amount then sits on top of the reduced figure. In Hakuba the village collects both portions in one payment and publishes only the combined number, which is why Hakuba’s own website shows 200 yen where the village’s share is really 100.
Get this wrong and you will over-estimate a Fukuoka stay by 25 per cent and a Kutchan ski week by rather more. The calculator above already accounts for it.
Every rate we could confirm, in full
All figures are yen per person per night, and all bands refer to the room-only charge per person per night after dividing by the number of people sharing. Where a prefectural and a municipal tax both apply, the figure shown is the total the guest pays.
The big four
| Where | Room charge per person | Total tax |
|---|---|---|
| Tokyo (all 23 wards and the rest of the metropolis) | under 10,000 | nothing |
| 10,000 to 14,999 | 100 | |
| 15,000 and above | 200 | |
| Kyoto | under 6,000 | 200 |
| 6,000 to 19,999 | 400 | |
| 20,000 to 49,999 | 1,000 | |
| 50,000 to 99,999 | 4,000 | |
| 100,000 and above | 10,000 | |
| Osaka | under 5,000 | nothing |
| 5,000 to 14,999 | 200 | |
| 15,000 to 19,999 | 400 | |
| 20,000 and above | 500 | |
| Nara | any | nothing |
Kyoto’s schedule changed on 1 March 2026. The old top band was 1,000 yen; it is now 10,000 yen on rooms over 100,000, and the entry-level rate doubled from 200 to 400 yen for most ordinary hotel rooms. Kyoto also has no exemption floor — a 4,000 yen hostel bunk is taxed at 200 yen.
Nara genuinely charges nothing. The mayor said in January 2025 that he wanted a lodging tax; no ordinance ever followed, and Nara appears nowhere in the national register. If you are watching your budget, a night in Nara is a night off.
Hokkaido, where it got complicated on 1 April 2026
Hokkaido Prefecture now charges 100 / 200 / 500 yen at 20,000 and 50,000 yen breakpoints, with no exemption floor — every stay is taxed. Eighteen municipalities add their own. These are the ones visitors actually use:
| Where | under 20,000 | 20,000 to 49,999 | 50,000 to 99,999 | 100,000+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sapporo | 300 | 400 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| Otaru | 300 | 400 | 700 | 700 |
| Hakodate | 200 | 400 | 1,000 | 2,500 |
| Asahikawa | 300 | 400 | 700 | 700 |
| Furano | 300 | 500 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| Rusutsu | 200 | 400 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| Shimukappu (Tomamu) | 200 | 400 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| Toyako Onsen | 300 | 700 | 1,500 | 1,500 |
| Anywhere else in Hokkaido | 100 | 200 | 500 | 500 |
Kutchan — the town that contains most of what people call Niseko, including Hirafu — is the exception. It charges a flat 3 per cent of the room rate with the prefectural share taken out of that figure. On a 40,000 yen room shared by two, that is 600 yen each per night, which over a week is 8,400 yen for the pair. It is by some distance the most expensive lodging tax in Japan for a mid-range ski booking.
Niseko Town (the separate municipality next door, covering Annupuri and Higashiyama) still uses fixed amounts: 200 yen up to 5,000, then 300, 700, 1,500 and 2,500 yen at 20,000 / 50,000 / 100,000 breakpoints. It switches to a percentage rate on 1 November 2026, so a booking made now for a January stay will be taxed under a schedule that does not exist yet.
Akaigawa exempts its own village tax below 8,000 yen, but the prefectural 100 yen still applies, so a cheap night there costs 100 yen rather than nothing.
Nagano, new since 1 June 2026
Nothing is due below 6,000 yen per person anywhere in the prefecture.
| Where | 6,000 to 9,999 | 10,000 to 19,999 | 20,000 to 49,999 | 50,000 to 99,999 | 100,000+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nagano City and the rest of the prefecture | 200 | 200 | 200 | 200 | 200 |
| Matsumoto | 200 | 200 | 200 | 200 | 200 |
| Karuizawa | 200 | 250 | 250 | 250 | 700 |
| Hakuba | 200 | 200 | 400 | 900 | 1,900 |
| Achi / Hirugami Onsen | 300 | 300 | 300 | 300 | 300 |
| Nozawa Onsen | 3.5% of the room charge |
Hakuba’s top band is the steepest fixed amount in the country outside Kyoto. Nozawa Onsen’s 3.5 per cent is the combined figure — the prefecture’s 100 yen comes out of it, so do not add anything on top.
Everywhere else
| Where | Room charge per person | Total tax |
|---|---|---|
| Sendai and the rest of Miyagi | under 6,000 / 6,000+ | nothing / 300 |
| Hirosaki | any | 200 |
| Yugawara Onsen | under 50,000 / 50,000+ | 300 / 500 |
| Atami | any | 200 |
| Takayama | under 10,000 / 10,000–29,999 / 30,000+ | 100 / 200 / 300 |
| Gero Onsen | under 5,000 / 5,000+ | 100 / 200 |
| Gifu City | any | 200 |
| Tokoname (Centrair airport hotels) | any | 200 |
| Toba | any | 200 |
| Kanazawa | under 5,000 / 5,000–19,999 / 20,000+ | nothing / 200 / 500 |
| Hiroshima City, Miyajima, all of Hiroshima Prefecture | under 6,000 / 6,000+ | nothing / 200 |
| Matsue | under 5,000 / 5,000+ | nothing / 200 |
| Fukuoka City | under 20,000 / 20,000+ | 200 / 500 |
| Kitakyushu and the rest of Fukuoka Prefecture | any | 200 |
| Nagasaki City | under 10,000 / 10,000–19,999 / 20,000+ | 100 / 200 / 500 |
| Kumamoto City | any | 200 |
| Miyazaki City | any | 200 |
A few of these are worth pulling out.
Takayama and Gero have no floor. A 3,000 yen dormitory bed in Takayama is taxed at 100 yen. Almost every other banded schedule in Japan exempts the bottom; these two deliberately do not, and Gero says so in writing.
Nagasaki’s tax is a city tax, not a prefectural one. Sasebo and Huis Ten Bosch charge nothing. Plenty of guides get this wrong and tell you the whole prefecture is taxed.
Kumamoto and Miyazaki only started on 1 July 2026. If a source tells you they are free, it was written before the summer.
Atami exempts children of elementary-school age and under, but has no price floor at all — the 200 yen applies to the cheapest room in town. Kyoto, by contrast, has no general child exemption; only organised school trips are exempt.
Tokoname catches Centrair airport hotels. Neither Nagoya nor Aichi Prefecture charges anything, so a night in central Nagoya is free and a night by the airport is 200 yen.
Where there is still no lodging tax
Confirmed against the Ministry of Internal Affairs register as of 1 July 2026, so this is an absence of a tax rather than an absence of information:
Yokohama, Kamakura and the whole of Kanagawa apart from Yugawara. Kobe and the whole of Hyogo. Nagoya and the whole of Aichi apart from Tokoname. Nara, city and prefecture. Chiba. Sasebo. Okinawa, for another five months. Most of rural Japan.
Chiba is the one to watch: the prefecture is actively working on a scheme and press reporting points at 150 yen a night from 2028, but nothing has been approved and we are not treating a newspaper figure as a rate.
What changes next, and when
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 Oct 2026 | Morioka and Nasu begin charging |
| 1 Nov 2026 | Niseko Town switches from fixed amounts to a percentage |
| 1 Feb 2027 | Okinawa Prefecture begins, along with Ishigaki, Miyakojima, Motobu, Onna, Chatan and Nago. Nago is 1.2 per cent capped at 1,200 yen |
| 1 Mar 2027 | Wakkanai, 200 yen |
| 1 Apr 2027 | Tokyo moves to 3 per cent of the room rate, with stays under 13,000 yen exempt |
| 1 Apr 2027 | Tomakomai 3 per cent, Yamagata City 3 per cent, Fujiyoshida 200 yen, Fujikawaguchiko 200 yen |
| 1 Apr 2027 | Nagasaki City reschedules to 100 / 300 / 500 yen (proposed, consent pending) |
| 1 Oct 2027 | Kitahiroshima 3 per cent |
| 1 Jun 2029 | Nagano’s prefectural rate rises from 200 to 300 yen and every municipal figure moves with it |
The Tokyo change is the significant one, and it is not a rumour: the metropolitan assembly passed it and the Minister for Internal Affairs formally consented on 30 June 2026. From 1 April 2027 a 40,000 yen Tokyo suite carries 1,200 yen of tax a night instead of 200. A 12,000 yen business hotel room carries nothing instead of 100. Tokyo is expected to bring private lodging into scope at the same time.
Charges that are not the lodging tax
Three other things appear on Japanese accommodation bills and get confused with it.
The bathing tax (nyuto-zei). Charged at onsen with a genuine hot spring source, typically at the standard rate in the Local Tax Act, and set separately by each municipality. It is a different tax with a different legal basis and it is not in this calculator; we have not checked it town by town and will not publish a figure we have not read. Expect it as a small separate line at an onsen ryokan.
The Miyajima visitor tax. 100 yen per person per arrival, or 500 yen for an annual pass, charged since October 2023 by Hatsukaichi City and collected inside your ferry fare. If you stay overnight on the island at 6,000 yen or more, you pay this and the 200 yen Hiroshima lodging tax, from two different places. The calculator adds it for you when you choose Miyajima.
The international tourist tax. 1,000 yen per departure until 30 June 2026; 3,000 yen from 1 July 2026. It is collected inside your air or sea ticket, applies to residents and visitors alike, and has nothing to do with where you slept.
How this was checked
Every rate above was read off the taxing authority’s own page or ordinance, in Japanese, on 20 August 2026, and cross-checked against the Ministry of Internal Affairs register of non-statutory local taxes dated 1 July 2026. Where a municipality’s published table and the prefecture’s published table disagreed, we took the municipality’s ordinance — the prefecture’s summary posters are dated September 2025 and are already stale for Kutchan and Akaigawa.
Three things we could not settle, and are telling you rather than papering over.
Kutchan has not published how it rounds its 3 per cent, or what happens when 3 per cent of a very cheap room falls below the prefectural fixed amount. The calculator rounds down to the yen; on a cheap room in Kutchan, treat the result as approximate.
Toyako’s own website has been unreachable for us, so its figures come from the ministerial consent document and the prefectural rate list, which agree with each other but are not the town’s own page.
Rates for seven smaller Hokkaido municipalities, plus Morioka and Nasu, are not in the calculator because we could confirm only their start dates and not their amounts.
We check rates on the day we write, print the date, and leave them alone afterwards. If you are reading this long after August 2026, the schedule table above tells you which entries have since expired.
Editor’s note
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