📌 What you will learnYou do not have to read it all — jump to what you need.1. How Japanese over-the-counter medicine is classified2. The May 2026 restriction: eight ingredients, one box each3. What is genuinely worth buying — and still unrestricted4. Where to shop…
Category: Life in Japan
Expat guides, shopping, and everyday life in Japan
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Bear Safety in Japan 2026
📌 What you will learnYou do not have to read it all — jump to what you need.Japan has a bear problem, and 2026 is the year it stopped being a rural story1｜The numbers, and what they actually mean2｜Why it happened3｜When and where the risk…
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Best Japanese Shampoos & Hair Care 2026: 6 Drugstore Heroes
Tax-free shopping in Japan changes on 1 November 2026 Until 31 October you show your passport at the till and simply pay without the 10% consumption tax. From 1 November you pay the full tax-included price in the shop and claim the tax back at…
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Best Japanese Instant Ramen 2026
Ask anyone who has lived in Japan what they miss most after leaving, and instant ramen comes up surprisingly often. Japanese instant noodles are in a completely different league from the 10-cent packets you grew up with — we are talking restaurant-grade tonkotsu broth, chewy…
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Best Japanese Makeup 2026: 8 Cult Products Worth Importing
Tax-free shopping in Japan changes on 1 November 2026 Until 31 October you show your passport at the till and simply pay without the 10% consumption tax. From 1 November you pay the full tax-included price in the shop and claim the tax back at…
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Gyms in Japan for Foreigners 2026: Costs, Contracts
Joining a gym in Japan looks simple until you are standing at the counter holding a contract written entirely in Japanese, being asked for a bank account you may not have, and discovering that cancelling requires a visit in person before a specific date.The gyms…
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Cycling in Japan 2026
On 1 April 2026, Japan changed the way it polices cyclists. Until then, most bicycle offences were either ignored or, in serious cases, handled as criminal matters — which meant police rarely bothered. Now there is a middle option: the blue ticket (青切符 / ao-kippu),…
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Leaving Japan Checklist 2026
Leaving Japan is not one task. It is roughly fifteen small tasks spread across a ward office, a pension office, a tax office, a bank, a phone carrier, a landlord and a utility company — and several of them cannot be done once you have…
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Japan Garbage Sorting Guide 2026: The Rules Nobody Explains
Ask any foreigner living in Japan what confused them most in their first month, and garbage sorting will be near the top of the list. Not the language. Not the trains. The garbage. It sounds trivial until you are standing in front of six different…
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Dashi Explained 2026: The Japanese Stock Behind Every Dish
📌 What you will learnYou do not have to read it all — jump to what you need.The invisible ingredient behind almost every Japanese dishThe four building blocksHow to make dashi from scratchThe shortcuts: what Japanese households actually useWhat to buy: a starter shopping listStorage:…
