The real takkyubin fare table, which almost nobody publishes
Transportfares revised on 1 October 2025
Reviewed on 2026-10-18. This information expires: confirm it close to your travel dates.
Takkyubin — sending your suitcase ahead to the next place and travelling the transfer day with a day bag — is one of the best Japanese habits to copy, and it is almost impossible to find out what it costs. The best-ranking Spanish guide gives as its only figures "¥800 to ¥5,000", a range so wide it cannot be budgeted with.
The price is not a mystery: Yamato publishes it. It depends on two things and neither is exact distance. The first is SIZE, the sum of the parcel's three sides: 120 goes up to 15 kg, 140 to 20 kg and 160 to 25 kg. A normal travel suitcase almost always lands in the 140 or the 160. The second is the REGION PAIR, not the kilometres: Japan prices by zone, so what counts is which region it leaves from and which it arrives in.
Here is the table, tax included, paying cash, before discounts. The two columns are the two sizes a real suitcase fits in:
Within the same region (Tokyo to Tokyo, Kyoto to Osaka): ¥2,630 for size 140 and ¥3,020 for 160. Kanto to Kansai, that is Tokyo to Kyoto or Osaka, the commonest run of all: ¥2,780 and ¥3,160. Kanto to Kyushu or Hokkaido: ¥3,250 and ¥3,630. End to end, Hokkaido to Kyushu: ¥4,310 and ¥4,690. And to Okinawa, which carries a sea or air surcharge: ¥4,030 and ¥4,680 from Kanto, ¥3,900 and ¥4,550 from Kyushu, and ¥4,910 and ¥5,560 from Hokkaido.
If the case is small and fits the 120, it drops considerably: ¥2,040 within Kanto, ¥2,170 to Kansai, ¥2,610 to Kyushu or Hokkaido and ¥3,360 to Okinawa.
There is a discount almost nobody mentions and it is easy to take: carrying the parcel yourself to a Yamato branch or a konbini knocks ¥100 off per item. If the hotel collects it at reception, which is the convenient way, that discount does not apply — and some places add a handling fee of their own on top.
And a date that explains why the numbers above match almost nothing else written: Yamato revised its fares on 1 October 2025. Size 160 within Kanto went from ¥2,510 to ¥3,020 that day, 20 per cent in one go. A year later there are still pages, calculators and comparisons running on the old prices.
What this means for your trip
For a normal trip with two or three long transfers, takkyubin comes to six to nine thousand yen in total, not "a few hundred". It is still worth it — boarding a rush-hour shinkansen with a big case is miserable, and some trains require a reservation for oversized luggage — but it is a budget line, not a rounding error.
It pays off especially in three places: when the leg crosses a mountain traverse such as the Tateyama-Kurobe Alpine Route, which comes out in a different prefecture and gives you no way back; when the next stop is a mountain ryokan you reach on foot; and when several one-night stops stack up, because then the move is to skip the short stops with a single shipment and travel light for those days.
The practical rule: the case normally takes a day, so sending it to a stop where you sleep one night achieves nothing. The Japlan.es planner already works this out — it groups shipments to skip the short stops and tells you how many nights you will be without the big case.
Questions
What does it cost to send a suitcase from Tokyo to Kyoto?
¥2,780 if the parcel is size 140 (three sides totalling up to 140 cm, max 20 kg) and ¥3,160 if it is 160 (up to 25 kg), tax included and paying cash. Knock ¥100 off if you take it to a konbini or a Yamato branch yourself.
What size is my suitcase?
Add the three sides. A large cabin case usually stays under 120; a normal checked case, around 65-70 cm tall, lands in the 140; and a big one of 75-80 cm, in the 160. If you go over on size or weight they charge the next band at the counter.
Can I do it from the hotel?
Yes, and that is the normal way: most city hotels and many ryokan handle it at reception, you fill in the waybill there and it is collected in the morning. What you lose is the ¥100 drop-off discount, and some places add a fee of their own.
How long does it take?
Normally next day within Honshu if you hand it over in the morning. To Okinawa, the islands and some mountain spots it takes longer. That is why sending it to a one-night stop is pointless: it would arrive after you have left.
Is paying by card cheaper?
Practically the same: the cashless table is a few yen lower (¥2,629 against ¥2,630 within Kanto at size 140). The discount that does show is the ¥100 for taking the parcel to a branch or konbini instead of having it collected.
What is still unclear
We were running the old prices too, until today. The planner's luggage calculation used the pre-October-2025 table — Kanto's ¥2,510 was still sitting there, untouched, more than a year on. It was corrected on 18 October 2026 against Yamato's official table, and the estimate rises by ¥500 to ¥1,200 per shipment depending on the leg. We say so because it is exactly the error everyone else gets criticised for.
The region pair cannot be derived from kilometres, and our calculation approximates it that way. The real fare depends on which administrative region each city falls in, not on straight-line distance, so on legs that sit right on a zone boundary the estimate can be one band out. For an exact figure there is Yamato's own simulator.
Accommodation surcharges are not published anywhere consistently. Many hotels handle the shipment at reception for nothing; others add a fee. There is no table for this and we are not going to invent one.
Delivery times are not a guarantee. For most of Honshu the case arrives next day, but Okinawa, the islands and some mountain valleys take longer, and in high season or bad weather it slips. If what is travelling is something you absolutely need at a particular hour, do not send it: carry it.
Build your route with this already factored in
The planner accounts for these changes where they matter: the JR Pass comparison uses current prices, and the cost summary includes the taxes you will actually run into.
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