Don’t Miss This Completely Free Japan Travel Activity

Don’t Miss This Completely Free Japan Travel Activity

This is everything you need to know about collecting Japan travel stamps and why it’s one of the best free activities you can do while you’re in Japan. Let’s get started. So, picture this. You’re running all over Japan, seeing different cities, traveling through train stations, airports, ferry terminals, ropeways. You’re running all over the country. How cool would it be if you had a fun little side quest to every location you visited while you’re traveling around? Welcome to the world of stamp collecting. It takes every transit location you go to and turns into a fun little memory that you’ll enjoy long after you’ve returned home from Japan. It’s super quick. It’s very fun. And best of all, it’s completely free. Some of the things I personally love about stamp collecting is you really never know how the stamp’s going to turn out. Uh some of the stamps are going to give you a nice clean press with beautiful lines uh and great color. Others will be imperfect with uh a color that doesn’t work out. Uh sometimes it’s faded a little, but that’s all part of the experience. You get to collect a personal souvenir, one that you’ve hunted down yourself and made with your own hands. When you return home, the stamps that you’ve collected turn into a story book, one that you can share with your friends and family. You can say, “Hey, I got that one in Kawasaki. I picked up this one in Okyama.” It is a great conversation piece. And if you’re into making your friends and family jealous, it works great for that, too. So, where can you find Japan travel stamps? You can honestly find them all over the country, but the two most common locations that I find them at are train stations and tourist information centers. Look for a stamp station right after you’ve gone through the ticket gate, where you would normally tap your IC card or insert your paper ticket. All right, so let’s talk a little bit about asking for stamps. At a JR station, I’ve never had to ask an attendant for a stamp. It’s always been a freestanding self-s served station. However, at tourist information centers, and they often times have the coolest stamps, it’s hit or miss. Sometimes there’s a freestanding self-s serve station within that uh tourist information center, and other times the staff member will have to do it for you. It’s sitting behind the counter. The staff is glad to do it for you. You can simply say or if you don’t want to bother with any Japanese, you can show them your stamp book. They’ll know exactly what to do. Just be sure to thank them, smile, and of course, drop that OG. All right, I briefly wanted to talk about the difference between a Japan travel stamp like this that you would get at a tourist information center or a train station or a castle and a stamp rally. So, a stamp rally is essentially a scavenger hunt that you can do at a location. For example, this is one we completed at the Naha airport in Okinawa. uh you essentially get a little handout like this that has uh might have a map on it that shows you all the different locations and where you can hunt down the different stamps. This will spread out through three different floors on different sides of the airport. And as you visit each each stamp spot and collect each stamp, you can complete your map here and turn this in for a small prize. Usually, it’s like a little small keychain. Uh, in our case, it was these Okinawa themed uh, soft stickers. These are going these are all going to my son. We have no use for these, but um, it was just a lot of fun running around the airport to all the different stamp locations and filling this out. So, really fun little uh, idea, especially if you’re traveling with kids. If you see a stamp rally, definitely take time to do it. They will have so much fun. All right. So, one other kind of common stamp rally that you may come across in Japan is a layered stamp rally. This is another one that we completed at the Naha airport in Okinawa that has a gray airport. There are lots of stamps to collect there. But essentially, you go around and collect all the different stamps like you would at a different stamp rally, but this time you do it all on a postcard that they provide for you. So, you take the little postcard, you slip it into the postcard size specific stamper, and at each location as you press the stamp on, it adds another layer of ink on here, and eventually all the stations combined create a final work of art here. I think this one was six different stations. It was a lot of fun. So, people ask me, “What kind of stamp book should I take with me to Japan?” And honestly, it’s whatever works. at bare bones. If you have a blank piece of paper, you can walk away with capturing a stamp at like a train station. But I do have a few recommendations. So stamps vary in size, shape, and ink type. Some are really juicy and apply a lot of ink, especially some of those self- inking stamps versus a separate ink pad that you uh dab the stamp on beforehand. So, I like a small sketchbook with thicker pages so that when you press that stamp in, the ink doesn’t bleed onto the other side of the page. The other thing I do recommend is a hard cover uh stamp book if you can. So, one thing that will happen as you’re pulling this out of your bag or your sling or or whatnot, this is going to get jostled around and handled a lot. It’s going to catch on things. It’s going to go through transit with you uh through stations and trains and whatnot. You’re not going to be carrying this in your hand all day long collecting stamps. It’ll just be whenever you see a station. So, I do like having a hard cover to protect uh all the little stamps that you have. Uh this sketchbook also has perforated pages. A project for a later time is once we fill this out, we want to rip these out, frame the ones we really like, and hang them up in an office somewhere. So, that’s just a a personal project that we would like to do, but just something else to think about. And also, I do like when it has the little strap here to just make sure it uh keeps everything nice and secure in there. So, funny enough, my wife took a new sketchbook for our last trip to Japan, which she lost at the very first part of our trip. So, we had to go find another replacement really quickly. We picked this up at a local honas or a bookstore. It’s just a nice little uh blank notebook. Um about the right size for stamps that you could have and this worked great. As you can see, it’s not as tough as a hard cover. It’s getting a little wrinkled, but it still worked great. So, anything will really work. The real main point and takeaway here is to just take something with you cuz right after you get off that plane, there are stamps waiting for you to collect. So, where else can you find Japan travel stamps? Find them at airports, castles, certain shrines and temples. Some specialty shops will have them. Some hotels and neocons might have them as well. Some theme parks and major tourist attractions like a scenic ropeway. So, one thing I have to call out here, collecting stamps from airports or train stations, is very different from gouin, which is sacred seal stamps that you would get from a temple or a shrine. Goshin require a specific book called a gshuo that the temple staff will write in. If you want to do both, that’s great, but just make sure you keep your travel book and your gosho separate. I hope you found this information to be helpful. If you’re planning a trip to Japan soon, feel free to check out some of my other videos with Japan travel tips. 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Japan’s travel stamps are one of the best free souvenirs you can collect across the country! Whether you’re passing through train stations, visiting castles, or even checking into airports, there’s a stamp waiting for you.

In this video, I’ll show you:
– Where to find Japan travel stamps
– What to look for at train stations, tourist information centers, and airports
– Stamp Rally & Layered Stamp Overview
– Tips for collecting your first stamp and keeping your collection safe

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Stamp book that I recommend: https://amzn.to/4o1Jdfi
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