To people travelling to Japan recently, from when the airplane lands to you being able to get out of the airport, how long does it take roughly? (getting luggage, immigration process, etc.)
Asking this question cuz I’m supposed to land at 1.05pm and thinking to book another flight to Osaka intl. airport at 4.15pm. Not sure if that’s cutting too tight.
Thank you all!
19 comments
I can’t speak on personal experience (especially recently), but this would be far too stressful for me personally… Assuming you’re going international into NRT, you *may* need to change terminals (which I’d expect to take ~20-30 minutes all in) so that’s another thing to factor in if you hadn’t already and then go BACK through security, bag check, etc. (I’m guessing you already factored that in, but wasn’t 100% sure if you were just thinking of luggage, immigration, etc. for entering Japan as opposed to checking in to a domestic flight).
Another consideration to make is if your departing flight into Japan changes its time. Assuming your booking these flights independently from each other (vs connecting flight), that’s another risk worth assessing as well as other small delays like landing too early or slightly late and needing to wait for a parking spot (so to speak).
For me, just over 3 hours would give me more stress than I’d personally want to deal with (I’m currently trying to look into something similar-ish where we’ll likely just fly early the next morning instead), but I’m very risk averse. Hopefully somebody else with recent experience can tell you if it’s likely possible.
Just landed there yesterday and I’ll say it took a decent while to disembark, get through immigration, collect baggage, and customs. Customs was fairly quick and disembarking was fast (we were closer to the front of our plane). But immigration was ~45 mins in line and we were waiting for baggage for ~30 mins. After that was figuring out how to train in to Tokyo to get to our hotel, but that delay was down to user error :P. Hope that helps give you an idea!
It took me a total of about 5 minutes to get through immigration, then customs another 5 as I had to declare things and then I was through to baggage claim which my bag was already on the belt.. super super quick but that’s just my experience!!
So fast. Maybe 15 minutes to literally get off the plane (row 55) but then doing the forms online, immigration took about ten minutes and then less than that for customs. Bag was already on the belt when through immigration and you pick it up pre customs. Just make sure you do the forms on line for speed, 3 hours is a TON of time.
It took us 1.5 hours to get through immigration, grab our bags, drop off our bags for the domestic flight, go through security, and get to the gate when we flew through NRT in April.
Though, these were flights booked on a single ticket (so we already had boarding passes and any delays would be the airline’s problem), and we didn’t need to change terminals. Having to do the full check-in process and/or change terminals would definitely add more time.
That said, three hours is a bit of a gamble. Any delays in your original departure and you’d be in a spot of bother.
I’ve seen a lot of posts in this sub about an hour+ for immigration, another hour+ for customs, hour+ to get JR pass. The responses here so far are making feel better about my arrival in a few weeks.
Of course, I’ve mostly been reading people’s trip reports during cherry blossom season.
Keep in mind your airplane arriving could be delayed. Rain set me back 3 hours flying into NRT
Flew in this week and it took about an hour to deplane + customs, get checked bags, declarations, check in bags for next flight and get through security to a different terminal. 3 hours should give plenty of time. I had 3 hours and even with my plane delayed an hour on the way there, had more than enough time.
Arrived three weeks ago in NRT. Took 1.5 hours from when our plane landed to when we picked up our bags. The line for customs was the longest.
We touched down in Japan on a Saturday morning about 6-ish, just a weekend before the Japan Golden week. It appeared that we were the only flight that touched down and therefore we cleared immigration and picked our luggage in maybe 20min.
On the flight out, we arrived 3-hour before our departure, hearing that the airport could be overwhelmed. But again, very light passengers load in the airport and there was not much queue to anything. Leaving was via an unmanned e-gate, so it was even quicker that way.
Today it took me 2 hr. Long lines (I had QR). However, you can barely feel it.
And 1 hr to activate the JR pass.
Landed at NRT on Tuesday at 4:30pm-ish. It took about an hour to get through customs without checked luggage. Highly recommend registering with Japan Travel for QR code – got to cut the declarations line with self checkout machines.
I landed 4/28 – Not that long. They changed the procedures literally the week before golden week (according to my driver) and now it’s super fast. Took me like 10 min total maybe lol. My driver said it was hours during peak cherry blossom season.
Give yourself at least 3 hours, could be long lines. Just was there on March 31st.
we had a 1.5 hour layover in Haneda a few weeks ago… and our plane landed late. I asked one of the staff directing people around the giant immigration line what to do and she told us to get in the residents line. We caught our connection to Osaka!
Edit: we had to get our bags and get to another terminal with them too.
Don’t listen to anyone. It’s 2-3 hours if you’re going through immigration, bags, JR pass. The lines are always long
NRT is v quick. Maybe 30 minutes in a long line. Oddly enough, HND was considerably longer.
For us it was about 15 minutes from the time we landed till we got to baggage pickup.
It took us about an hour two days ago, 2pm local time.