Download four of these before you fly and the rest can wait. The IC card app, the routing app, Visit Japan Web and a translation app are the ones that hurt if you land without them. Everything else you can add on the train.
One warning first, because it is the most common piece of bad advice about travelling in Japan: if a 2026 listicle recommends Hyperdia, stop reading it. Hyperdia was the definitive Japanese train timetable tool for two decades, and it discontinued timetable and route search on 1 April 2022. The site is still online, which is why it keeps getting recommended — but it now returns only rough average journey times, with no departure times, no platforms, and no station-by-station breakdown. Planning a connection with it will make you miss trains.
Here is what actually works, organised by the job you need done.
1. Your IC card: Welcome Suica Mobile (iPhone) or TOURIST PASMO (everyone else)
Set this up first. An IC card is the tap-to-ride card that gets you through every subway gate, most buses, and the checkout at every convenience store. Without one you are buying paper tickets from a machine at every single transfer.
On iPhone: Welcome Suica Mobile. JR East launched it in spring 2025 and it is the cleanest option for visitors — no deposit, no issue fee, and 180 days of validity, against 28 days for the physical Welcome Suica card. It lives in Apple Wallet, so you top up with the card you already have on your phone and tap through gates without unlocking. Requires iOS 17.2 or later, or an Apple Watch Series 3 or later.
On Android: TOURIST PASMO. This is the part most guides skip, leaving half their readers stuck. Welcome Suica Mobile is iPhone and Apple Watch only — there is still no Android version as of July 2026. The answer is TOURIST PASMO, launched in May 2026 and sold from ticket machines at the major airports. It is a physical card, so it does not care what phone you carry.
Tip: Set up Welcome Suica Mobile before you land — while you still have home wi-fi and your usual payment card is not being flagged as a foreign transaction. Landing and immediately queueing at a ticket machine is the single most avoidable delay of the trip.
What the IC card app will not do
Welcome Suica Mobile added Shinkansen reservations in October 2025, and this is where people get caught out. It books JR East lines only — Tohoku, Hokkaido, Akita, Yamagata, Joetsu and Hokuriku Shinkansen, plus some limited expresses.
It cannot book the Tokaido Shinkansen — Tokyo → Nagoya → Kyoto → Shin-Osaka. That is the line most first-time visitors actually ride, and it belongs to JR Central, a different company. For that you need smartEX (§3).
It also added Green Car (first class) tickets on greater-Tokyo local lines in March 2026 — ¥750 up to 50 km, ¥1,000 up to 100 km, ¥1,550 beyond. Note these must be paid with Apple Pay; you cannot use your stored Suica balance.
2. Routing: Google Maps, with NAVITIME as backup
Google Maps is genuinely excellent in Japan and is the honest default answer. It knows platform numbers, carriage positions for the fastest exit, real-time delays, and it handles the walking transfers inside monster stations like Shinjuku better than it has any right to. For 90% of city travel it is the only routing app you need.
Japan Travel by NAVITIME earns its space for one reason: it has a JR Pass mode. Google Maps has no idea you are holding a rail pass, so it will happily route you onto a Nozomi train or a private line your pass does not cover. NAVITIME filters to what your pass actually includes, which changes the answer often enough to matter. If you are weighing whether to buy one at all, we ran the arithmetic in is the Japan Rail Pass worth it — the conclusion surprised us.
Jorudan is the third option, worth knowing if you want a second opinion on a complicated route or need an interface in one of its 13 supported languages.
Tip: Google Maps' offline maps do not include transit directions in Japan. Download the area map anyway for walking, but do not plan on routing trains without data — which is why §7 matters.
3. Shinkansen booking: smartEX
If your trip is the standard Tokyo–Kyoto–Osaka run, this is the app that books it. smartEX is JR Central's reservation service for the Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen — the lines Welcome Suica Mobile cannot touch.
It lets you reserve a seat in English, change it free of charge before departure, and link the reservation to an IC card so you tap straight through the gate instead of collecting a paper ticket. Registration is fiddly and wants a card that accepts foreign transactions, so do it at home rather than on a platform ten minutes before departure.
Reserve a seat if you are travelling with luggage. Oversized baggage spaces on the Tokaido Shinkansen must be booked in advance, and there is no way to arrange it once you are standing on the platform with two suitcases.
4. Entry and customs: Visit Japan Web
Not an app in the App Store sense — it is a web service from Japan's Ministry of Digital Affairs — but it belongs on this list because of when you need it: before you board.
It merges your arrival card and customs declaration into a single QR code. In 2026 the major airports — Haneda, Narita and Kansai — run Joint Kiosks where you scan your passport and that one QR at a single machine, handling immigration and customs in one step.
It is not mandatory. Paper forms are still handed out on the plane and accepted at every Japanese airport; you will not be refused entry without it. It just saves you a queue at the end of a very long flight. Register at least six hours before landing so the QR code is active when you arrive.
5. Translation: Google Translate
Download the Japanese language pack for offline use before you go — this takes thirty seconds and is the difference between a working translator and a spinning icon in a basement restaurant with no signal.
The camera mode is the feature that matters. Point it at a menu, a station sign, a medicine packet or a washing-machine control panel and it overlays English in place. Conversation mode handles the back-and-forth at a counter well enough for anything transactional.
VoiceTra is a worthwhile second install for spoken Japanese specifically. It is built by Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology and tuned for Japanese grammar, so it tends to handle polite forms and place names more gracefully than a general-purpose translator.
6. Taxis: GO
Japan's dominant taxi-hailing app. Uber exists but has thin coverage outside the biggest cities and mostly dispatches the same taxi fleets anyway.
GO shows you the driver approaching in real time and gives a fare estimate up front, which removes the main anxiety of flagging a cab in a language you do not read. It earns its place late at night: Tokyo's trains stop running around midnight to 1am, and after that a taxi is often the only way home.
7. Data: an eSIM app (Ubigi, Airalo)
Every app above except offline translation needs a connection. Public wi-fi in Japan is widespread but genuinely annoying — repeated captive-portal logins, per-session time limits, and none of it works while you are walking.
An eSIM is the least painful fix. Install the profile at home, land, switch it on. Ubigi and Airalo both sell short Japan data plans, and you keep your normal number active for SMS. If your phone is older than roughly 2018 it may not support eSIM, in which case a pocket wi-fi rental collected at the airport is the fallback.
Tip: Buy the smallest plan that covers your trip. Maps, messaging and translation use very little data — people routinely over-buy for two weeks of use that comes to a couple of gigabytes.
8. Food: Tabelog
Japan's own restaurant review site, and the one locals actually use. Its scoring runs harsher than international review sites — anything above 3.5 is genuinely good, and above 4.0 is exceptional and probably needs a reservation.
Use it as a sanity check rather than a discovery engine: when you are standing on a street with eleven ramen shops, Tabelog tells you which one the neighbourhood rates.
9. Bookings and tickets: Klook
Useful for the things that sell out — teamLab Planets, Universal Studios Japan, airport express transfers, and regional rail passes. Mobile tickets with instant confirmation mean you skip the ticket window, which at somewhere like USJ is a meaningful chunk of a morning.
Check the price against booking direct. Klook is frequently cheaper and occasionally is not.
What to actually install before you fly
If you do nothing else:
Welcome Suica Mobile (iPhone) — or plan to buy TOURIST PASMO at the airport.
Google Maps — with the offline area map downloaded.
Visit Japan Web — registered, QR saved, at least six hours before landing.
Google Translate — with the Japanese pack downloaded for offline use.
smartEX matters as soon as you know your Shinkansen dates. The rest can wait until you are sitting on a train with wi-fi.
FAQ
Is Hyperdia still usable in 2026? Not for planning. It discontinued timetable and route search on 1 April 2022 and now returns only approximate journey durations — no departure times, no platforms. Use Google Maps, NAVITIME or Jorudan instead.
Do I need a JR Pass app? No separate app, but Japan Travel by NAVITIME's JR Pass mode is the practical way to see which trains your pass actually covers — Google Maps will route you onto trains it does not.
Can I use Suica on an Android phone? Not Welcome Suica Mobile, which is iPhone and Apple Watch only as of July 2026. Android travellers should pick up a TOURIST PASMO card from an airport ticket machine instead.
Can I book the Tokyo–Kyoto Shinkansen in the Suica app? No. That is the Tokaido Shinkansen, run by JR Central, while Welcome Suica Mobile only books JR East lines. Use smartEX.
Is Visit Japan Web compulsory? No. Paper arrival and customs cards are still accepted at every airport. It saves time at immigration, nothing more.
Do these apps work without a data connection? Mostly not. Google Translate works offline with the language pack downloaded, and Google Maps handles walking navigation offline — but transit routing, IC card top-ups and bookings all need a connection.
Now plan what you are actually doing with all this
Apps solve the moving around. They do not tell you that Kyoto's temples are best before 9am, that Hiroshima works as a day trip from Osaka, or how many days Tokyo genuinely warrants before you are just tired.
That is the part worth getting right first — and it is what our planner does. Tell it where you are going, how long you have and what you like, and it builds a custom Japan travel itinerary day by day, with real attractions, sensible transit between them, and time that adds up. Then use the apps above to execute it.
If you want to see the shape of a finished plan first, here is a worked Hiroshima and Miyajima day trip from Osaka and a 3-day Tokyo itinerary — both built the way the planner builds them.
