Packing Tips for Our Japan Baseball Tours

Packing strategies for our Japanese baseball tours present a unique challenge for many guests. We often receive inquiries about packing best practices and laundry options during our tours. Here are some recommendations we’ve compiled after 25+ years of traveling around Japan and watching baseball.

Note: these tips are tailored for our Japanese baseball tours. Our guides will assist with your specific needs and provide expert local tips on the ground – for example, coin laundry often accepts IC cards and automatically dispenses detergent.

If you’re traveling on your own, you may want to utilize Japan’s reliable takkyubin luggage forwarding service. And you might want to consult our JapanBall’s Travel Guide to Japanese Baseball.

Be Prepared to Change Locations Multiple Times on our Fan Tours

Hotels are very accomodating with storing luggage in the lobby for us when we arrive before check-in begins.

Unless you’re taking our Tokyo NPB Tour, which doesn’t change hotels, you will be changing hotels multiple times during your trip. If you’re on the NPB Full Tour, you may change hotels up to around times (the specific number can vary slightly from year to year). If you’re on Segment 1 or Segment 2, you will also change hotels several times.

All of this movement means repeatedly packing and unpacking your luggage, checking in and out of hotels, and utilizing planes, trains, and automobiles to travel between cities.

Here are some recommendations to help you prepare for the epic Japanese baseball travel adventure of a lifetime!

Packing Light

These tour guests know how to pack light!

Limit yourself to one medium-sized suitcase and a day bag or backpack. Avoid XL suitcases, which tend to encourage excessive packing and can be cumbersome on trains. Ideally, your suitcase should not be much larger than carry-on size.

Tips for packing light:

No events require a dress code. Dress like you would when attending a ballgame at home.
Wear your favorite comfortable walking shoes on your flight to Japan and don’t pack any additional shoes. Extra shoes are rarely worth the space and weight.
Bring one set of clean underwear and socks for every day, but strategically choose other clothing items (especially pants) that can be worn multiple times.
Resist the urge to pack for every contingency. That item that you rarely use or wear but think you might want in Japan? Leave it at home. If you really do end up needing something, you can buy a Japanese version during your trip—which will likely be unique and high-quality—and it will become an unexpected souvenir.
Check the weather. I recommend checking historical information in addition to current forecasts, especially for longer trips. This site shows Tokyo’s (or any other city or country) annual average temperatures, humidity, and precipitation on a per-month basis.
- If you want to prepare for potentially cold weather or tend to feel cold on airplanes, layer multiple items rather than bringing a bulky jacket or sweatshirt. I typically bring one thin windbreaker that takes up minimal space and can easily be stuffed into my carry-on. That is usually all I need, but if it’s particularly cold, I can layer multiple shirts underneath it.

Minimize the Need to Do Laundry

Unless you’re on the NPB Full Tour, pack enough clothes so you don’t have to do laundry during the trip. Yes, that might mean bringing about ten days’ worth of clean clothes. If you’re on the Full Tour, try to do laundry only once, if possible.

You’ll want to avoid doing laundry because:

Our schedule often does not optimally align with the required drop-off and pickup times for our hotel’s wash-and-fold service. That said, if we are scheduled to be in a city for two nights, you can usually drop it off at check-in and have it ready before departure. Even if the timing works out, hotel laundry is priced at a premium and charged per item, which can make it very expensive.
Many hotels do not have self-service laundry facilities or have very few machines.
Laundromats are not as ubiquitous as in the U.S. and other countries.
You will likely prefer spending your precious free time exploring (or maybe resting) rather than doing laundry.

Consider Doing In-Room Hotel Laundry

Bring a small amount of laundry detergent. Individual detergent packs like these won’t leak and can be brought in your carry-on. You can wash clothes in your hotel sink or bath: just submerge them in warm water, agitate with soap, rinse well, and hang dry.
One of our guests shared that she brings a gallon-sized Ziplock bag and uses it to wash underwear. Add dirty garments and soap, shake vigorously, rinse, and hang dry. She uses the same bag over and over throughout the trip.
Pack quick-drying clothing (e.g., polyester)—especially shirts—since these hang-dry quickly in hotel rooms, particularly when hung in the path of the room’s air-conditioning unit.
Guests develop their own in-room laundry methods, but my strategy is to throw my dirty clothes in the shower before getting in. I then soap and shampoo with my clothes on the shower floor, using my feet to agitate them a bit (I use a two-ounce Dr. Bronner’s All-Purpose Soap, but you can also use the provided hotel soap and shampoo). After thoroughly rinsing myself and the clothes, I close the drain, fill the tub with soap and water again, agitate the clothes some more, then drain and rinse again. All clean now! I then wring them out and use hangers or room lamps to strategically hang them to dry in the main room (not the bathroom), where there is more air circulation.

Other Packing Tips

My suitcase, toward the end of a long trip: clean clothes organized in packing cubes and dirty clothes in my lightweight duffle bag.

Looking for info on how much cash to bring, how widely credit cards are accepted, and more money-related topics? Read our article – Costs, Currency, Credit Cards, and Tipping in Japan.

Packing cubes are the best! Trust me—just give them a shot (you can also get them at REI if you want to source them elsewhere).
Stuff a lightweight polyester duffel bag in your luggage for multiple use cases:
- Use it to separate dirty clothes during the trip. It keeps things contained, and if you end up using a wash-and-fold service or laundromat during one of our longer stops, everything is ready for drop-off and pick-up.
- Some guests buy a lot of souvenirs and find their suitcases fill up quickly. A lightweight duffel gives you a second bag for the return trip, if needed.

Play Abroad Packing Tips

You might want to consider using an old-school baseball bag to combine personal and playing equipment, and ensure that your bats fit in your luggage.

If you are participating in our Play Abroad offerings, you are likely traveling during the summer. Japan’s summer weather is very hot. Expect high temperatures and humidity that border on oppressive. Check this site for average annual temperature, humidity, and more.

Bring all of the regular baseball equipment that you would need to play in a game. We do not want to burden our hosts by asking to borrow anything. There are sporting goods stores in Japan, but we should rely on them for fun items to bring home, rather than having to procure anything to participate in games or practices.

If your checked bag is lost or delayed, you don’t want that to also dampen your ability to play. Pack the baseball items you cannot play without in your carry-on—at a minimum, your uniform and mitt.
Many players find it useful to bring a traditional baseball equipment bag on our trips because it can be checked on their flight to Japan. However, if you prefer to use a baseball backpack on gameday, check your bat by laying it diagonally in your suitcase.
Certain items must be checked: bats, metal cleats, glove conditioners, pine tar, oils, or other liquids or pastes.
You can bring a couple of baseballs in your carry-on, but security may stop you if you bring many.
Parents might want to bring a small seat cushion if they prefer to use those. Bring sun protection as well if you are sensitive to the sun.