Coin lockers, IC-card lockers, and the five hours between checkout and check-in

Most Japanese hotels check you out at ten and in at three. That leaves five hours in which the city is open, the trains run, and you are pulling a suitcase up a staircase nobody warned you about.

The locker that takes a card, not coins

Newer locker banks have one touch panel in the middle rather than a keyhole on every door. You pick an empty box, load it, and tap the same IC card you use for the trains — Suica, Pasmo, ICOCA. The card becomes the key, so there is no paper slip to lose, but you have to return with that exact card. It is the wrong day to lend it to whoever is buying the coffee.

Coin lockers still outnumber them: around ¥400 for a small box, ¥500 to ¥600 for a medium, ¥700 to ¥800 for one that swallows a checked case, fed in ¥100 coins as you close the door. Both kinds charge by calendar day rather than by 24 hours, and most stations clear the contents after three.

Where the empty ones actually are

By ten in the morning the bank nearest the ticket gates is full. Walk to the far end of the concourse, or outside the gates entirely — the corner by a side exit, the basement under the department store, the floor above the bus terminal. If nothing is free, ecbo cloak books space behind the counter of a café or a bike shop by the hour — a person rather than a locker, and usually the better outcome.

When the bag should travel without you

Moving between cities, send it. Hotel front desks and conbini counters both take takkyūbin (宅急便), the door-to-door courier network; a large case from Tokyo to Kanazawa runs roughly ¥2,000 to ¥2,500 and lands the next day. Plan around the cut-off — handed over before noon it moves that afternoon, handed over at six you have paid to be a day behind your own luggage.

The suitcase does not need to see the temple.

身軽になってから、街を歩く。