Every coin locker is full. Now what?
You land, or you check out, and you have six hours before you can drop your bags. At the big stations the large lockers are gone by mid-morning — especially Kyoto, Shinjuku and Tokyo.
Wandering from locker bank to locker bank with a suitcase burns an hour of a trip you paid a lot for. Decide the fallback before you get to the station, not while standing in front of a wall of red 'in use' lights.
What to do
Try the large lockers first — but early
Large lockers take a full-size suitcase and cost roughly ¥700–1,000 a day. They're gone by late morning at major stations. Small and medium run about ¥300–700.
Fallback 1 — the staffed baggage room
Most big stations have a manned luggage counter (look for “Baggage Storage” / 手荷物預かり所). It costs a little more than a locker but never fills up the same way, and it takes odd-shaped bags.
Fallback 2 — book a shop through an app
ecbo cloak turns cafés, shops and hotels into luggage storage you reserve on your phone, around ¥500 a day for a bag and ¥800 for a suitcase. Reserve while you're still on the train.
Fallback 3 — just send it onward
If your next hotel is known, a convenience store will ship the bag there for you. It costs about the same as two days of locker fees and you stop carrying it entirely.
Say this
荷物を預けたいです
nimotsu wo azuketai desu
I’d like to leave my luggage here.
Watch out for
Lockers charge by calendar day, not by 24 hours
Leave a bag from 9pm to 9am and you are usually charged for two days, because the clock resets at midnight.
Don’t forget it
Station staff clear lockers after about three days and move the contents to a holding office — retrieving it is a paperwork afternoon.
Newer lockers take IC cards
Many now accept Suica/Pasmo and open with the same card you tapped — which means you must keep using that exact card to get the bag back.
Where this comes from
Last checked 2026-07-29. Locker prices vary by station and operator; the ranges above are the common ones at major JR stations.