Buying a SIM card at a Japanese airport

The counters exist, and they are not badly priced

Japan is not a country where you land and find nothing. All three main international gateways sell SIMs in arrivals, staff at the carrier counters speak English, and the typical airport price is around $12 — which is not the airport rip-off you might expect. On price alone the Japanese airport SIM is competitive with a mid-size travel eSIM.

The cost is time. A passport is required to register, the plans are data-only, and at Narita on a bad afternoon you are looking at half an hour standing in a line after an eleven-hour flight. That, rather than the money, is what usually decides this.

Where the counters are and when they open

Narita's queue is worst when the flight banks land together — mid-morning from Seoul, afternoon from China, evening from North America. Arrive outside those windows, between 6 and 9am or after 9pm, and the same counters clear in 5 to 10 minutes. It is the difference between a minor errand and a serious chunk of your first day.

The vending machines are the detail most people miss. IIJmio and b-mobile machines run 24 hours at Narita Terminals 1 and 2, so a late arrival after the Docomo counter closes at 11pm is not stranded. Haneda has IIJmio machines too.

Haneda is the easier airport, if you get the choice

Haneda sits 18km from central Tokyo against Narita's 60km, and the SIM queue is roughly half as long. The Keikyu Line reaches Shinagawa in 37 minutes and the Tokyo Monorail reaches Hamamatsucho in 30. Narita's fastest route is the Keisei Skyliner to Ueno at 41 minutes, with the Narita Express taking about an hour to Shinjuku and the limousine bus about 90 minutes to major hotels. If you are still choosing flights, Haneda is the better arrival in almost every respect.

At Kansai, the Haruka Express takes 30 minutes to Tennoji in Osaka and 75 minutes to Kyoto. Both need an IC card or a ticket bought at the station — a good argument for having your phone working before you reach the platform.

What the same data costs before you fly

These prices were read off the providers' own sites.

An earlier version of this page said Japan's verified ladder stopped at 20 GB, with no 50 GB plan of the kind sold in the US or Sweden. Nomad's Japanese prices were unchecked then; read at source, they include a 50 GB month at $35, or $0.70 a gigabyte — half the best rate we could previously find. Airalo's Japanese product is sold as Moshi Moshi at checkout; that is a product name, not a network. Both Nomad and Airalo also sell unlimited by duration, verified: Nomad at $11 for three days, $25 for a week, $41 for 14 days and $49 for 21; Airalo at $11.50 for three days, $17 for five, $27 for a week, $34.50 for ten days, $48 for 15 and $69 for 30.

Against $12 at the counter, a 5 GB eSIM at $10 to $11 is a wash on price. You are buying the twenty minutes back, not the money.

Which Japanese network you end up on

Be careful with what you read elsewhere on this. Airalo, Saily and Nomad publish no host network for Japan at all, so we hold nothing on which carrier they use. eSIMCard is the exception: its Japan page names KDDI, NTT Docomo and SoftBank against its plans, and it is the only one of the six that publishes this. Neither does Holafly, whatever the NTT Docomo and SoftBank pairing this page used to carry against it suggested — that came from our own data rather than from the seller. eSIM Go's listing points to SoftBank, which is the seller's own claim, unconfirmed by us and not something that should decide your purchase.

A counter SIM is different: buy from Docomo at Narita or Haneda and you know exactly whose network you are on. If you are heading well off the tourist track and want Docomo specifically, that is the one solid reason to queue.

What we would do

Install an eSIM before boarding. You will have signal while taxiing, and at Narita in the afternoon that is worth half an hour. Use the counter if your phone does not support eSIM, if you want a named Japanese carrier, or if you land off-peak and the line is five people long — at $12 it is a fair deal. After the counters shut, head for the IIJmio or b-mobile machines.

More at our Japan hub, and check your handset on eSIM compatible phones.