Visa: How specific must the itinerary be when visiting Japan?

Question

I am planning on visiting Japan and I am required to get a visa for entering the country.

One of the requests for me to get a visa is to specify what my itinerary is, the problem is that I don't know specifically where I want to go. I have a rough idea of course: Tokyo (nearby places), Kyoto (nearby places), etc.

I might like one place more and decide to stay there longer, or not even visit some other places.

Can I get in trouble if I am stopped by police in a city/village where I didn't specify I was going to visit?

Answer 1

From a colleague who had a similar itinerary (only knew major stops) the following seems to be all you need in your itinerary:

• All major stops - where you are staying in large cities eg what hotel you will stay at in Tokyo, along with dates
• Start and end dates, including flight information
• Rough timelines on less well known information

If your itinerary changes, this shouldn't be too much of a problem, assuming your end date and flights are still correct.

My colleague had to change his itinerary, so kept his original printout, along with an updated one in case he had to tell authorities that he had planned one set of trips but had to change to a different version. As it happened, he didn't need to inform anyone of the changes and had an excellent visit.