I found lots of useful tips in this subreddit particularly regarding how tax free shopping in Japan works so thought I’d share my recent experience with the group.
In general all my tax refunds were processed seamlessly at point of purchase and the shop assistant would scan my passport. Whilst most shops processed the tax refund free of charge, the occasional shop would charge a very small handling fee for processing the tax refund.
Some department stores require you to queue at a separate till to claim tax refunds after completing the purchase. Some of these queues can be quite long (20-30mins) so bear in mind if in a rush.
When departing from Japan (specifically Narita airport), there’s a counter after security but before immigration (I think) that asks for any travellers with tax free shopping to have their passports scanned. I felt like we could’ve walked straight past this counter without any questions asked. However I did the honest thing and had the official scan my passport and no further action was required. They did not ask me to show any items that my family had purchased. For context we had bought 4 different pairs of trainers, a load of clothes and tonnes of snacks and beauty products. Essentially it was a large suitcase worth of goods. I assume their system would only flag travellers who had suspicious quantities of the same products purchased.
by dovenhawk