Honto Japan Editorial– Author –

The certificate everyone calls a yakkan shoumei stopped existing in 2020, applications moved online in 2025, and two common ADHD medications are treated in completely opposite ways. Here is what the rules actually say, with the quantities.

Japanese law has no category called a love hotel, and whether one counts as an adult business is decided by the building rather than by anything that happens inside. Here is how the pricing works, how check-in works, and why you still need your passport.

Kochi has more coffee shops per head than anywhere else in Japan, and 91.9 percent of them are independent. Here is where to have the local version of morning service - which involves rice balls - and what the official pages get wrong about each other.

The Snoopy Museum moved out of Roppongi in 2018 and English guides still send people there. Here is where it actually is, how the time-slot tickets work in English, which Peanuts cafes have closed, and why the hotel only takes bookings twice a year.

Most English guides say Tokyo has no permanent Dragon Ball store. It opened in November 2025, at Tokyo Station, and the Jump Shop is one floor below it. Here is what is real, what closed, and why the tax-free rules change completely on November 1, 2026.

Three of the onsen ryokan English guides recommend in Osaka are not trading right now, and two of them reopen on the same day. Here is what is actually open, why Osaka has more hot spring sources than Kyoto but far fewer ryokan, and the two taxes you pay at check-out.

A coffee in Japan costs 300 yen or 780 yen depending on which kind of shop you walk into, and the difference has a name. Here is what each chain charges, how the two morning-service systems differ, and why the smoking rules reversed in 2020.

The owl cafe English guides recommend most has not existed for years - its operator moved the birds to a sanctuary. Here is what is actually open, why entry runs from 800 to 3,800 yen, and why the CITES argument you have read does not apply to the birds in these rooms.

The famous 8 p.m. rule applies to dogs and cats only - owls, hedgehogs and otters have no legal closing time at all. The reason every English guide gets this wrong is that Japan's official translation of the law stopped in 2005. Here is the current text, and how to check a cafe yourself.

English guides say Japanese manga cafes always demand ID. The law says otherwise: the requirement is a Tokyo ordinance, and it only bites when you use an internet terminal in a private booth. Real 2026 prices, the passport question, and what you cannot eat in your own room.

Tokyo's antique markets do not run on the schedule English guides print. Oedo Antique Market is not first-and-third Sunday, August is canceled outright, and two markets that guides still recommend have been dormant for years. Here is what the organizers themselves publish.

Okinawa is 1,000 miles from Tokyo and there are exactly two ways in: fly, or take the 25-hour ferry from Kagoshima. This guide covers both with real published numbers - which cities have nonstop flights to Naha, the one airline that files a public fare table, the ferry's port-by-port timetable and fuel surcharge, how to get from Naha Airport into the city, and how to reach Ishigaki and Miyako without touching Naha at all.