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In Japan, your phone is not a convenience. It’s your map, your train ticket, your translator, and your camera — often all four inside the same ten minutes.
Our family of four spent two weeks in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka this July, walking seven to eight miles a day. Here’s the tech that made that work, and the one thing everyone tells you to buy that you can skip.
The Short Answer
You need three things: a battery bank that can refill a phone at least twice, a couple of multi-port wall chargers so four people aren’t fighting over two outlets, and entertainment for the kids that’s fully downloaded before you leave home. You do not need a plug adapter — Japan uses the same outlets we do.
A Battery Bank (Do Not Skip This One)
Think about what your phone is doing on a normal day in Japan. Google Maps is navigating you through train transfers. Your Suica card is paying your fare at the turnstile. Google Translate is reading a menu. And you’re photographing everything, because it’s Japan.
That’s a brutal battery load, and you left the hotel twelve hours ago.
We carried an Anker battery bank and used it daily. Anker has been the default in this category for years because they’re reliable and available everywhere. Whatever brand you land on, buy it before you fly and make sure it can charge a phone at least twice. Running out of phone in a Tokyo station with two kids in tow is a solvable problem. Check price on Amazon
Multi-Port Wall Chargers (The Underrated Item)
Here’s the math nobody does before a family trip: four people, four phones, four watches, three tablets, a camera, and a battery bank that all need charging — against however many outlets your hotel room happens to have. Japanese hotel rooms are efficient. That is a polite way of saying small, with fewer outlets than you want.
We ended up with five plugs between the four of us. My wife and I each carried a multi-port Anker charger — the kind that handles two or three devices at once across a mix of USB-C and USB-A. I had a third multi-port charger on top of that. And the kids used the basic single-port plugs that came in the box with their Kindle Fires, which cost nothing and worked fine.
That mix is the actual recommendation: buy two or three good multi-port chargers for the adults, and stop there. Every device you own came with a plug, and those plugs still work. What you’re solving for isn’t a shortage of chargers — it’s a shortage of outlets, and one multi-port brick turns a single outlet into three. Everything charged overnight. Nobody negotiated. Check price on Amazon
The Adapter You Don’t Need
Every Japan packing list tells you to buy a travel adapter. Ours never came out of the bag, and here’s why: Japan uses the same flat two-prong outlets as the United States. Your charger fits. Plug it in and go.
Two footnotes. First, Japanese outlets are often ungrounded, meaning no slot for that third round prong — so a US three-prong plug (a laptop brick, some camera chargers) may not fit even though the two-prong ones do. A two-dollar three-to-two-prong adapter from a hardware store solves that, at a fraction of what a “universal travel adapter” costs. Second, Japan runs 100 volts to our 120. Modern phone, tablet, laptop, and camera chargers handle that range without noticing. Check the fine print on anything unusual, like a hair appliance, but your everyday electronics are fine.
The better use of that money: another multi-port charger.
Kids’ Headphones That Have Lasted Five Years
Our kids’ headphones have been in continuous service since September 2021. Nearly five years, many flights, and the specific abuse that only elementary schoolers can deliver to electronics. They flew 13 hours to Tokyo and 13 hours back, and they still work.
Durability is the only headphone spec that matters for kids. Everything else is marketing copy. Check price on Amazon
Kindle Fire Tablets
Our kids are on their third generation of Kindle Fires. We replace them roughly every two years, which tells you two things: they get used constantly, and they’re cheap enough to replace without a family discussion about it.
They are a lot cheaper than iPads. During Prime Day, we can get a huge discount on them and we get a credit for the old ones we return. At some point, the will get iPads … just not yet.
For a direct 13-hour flight from Houston to Tokyo, downloaded shows and games are not optional equipment. Emphasis on downloaded — load everything before you leave home. Airplane Wi-Fi is not a plan, and a tablet full of streaming apps with no cached content is just an expensive coaster. Check price on Amazon
Cables: Bring More Than You Think
Nothing exciting here, just a rule: count your devices, then bring that many cables plus one. Multi-port chargers are useless without enough cords to fill the ports, and the only thing worse than a dead phone is a live outlet you can’t reach. Keep a short cable in your day bag for the battery bank so you can charge while you walk.
What This Setup Cost, Roughly
A battery bank, a couple of multi-port chargers, and a handful of cables runs well under $150 total, and every piece works on your next trip too. The headphones and tablets we already owned — the headphones for five years, the tablets on a two-year cycle. That’s the theme of everything on this list: nothing here was bought for Japan. It was bought once and has been earning its keep since.
The Bottom Line
Charge everything, bring more ports than you think you need, download the entertainment before you fly, and keep the adapter money. Your phone is going to work harder in Japan than it does at home — plan for that and the rest takes care of itself.
Part two of our packing list covers everything that isn’t tech: packing cubes, shoes, the passport bag, and the free suitcase trick that saved our shopping haul.
More from our Japan trip: the QR code that got us through immigration in minutes, how we got around with two kids, and what the weak yen actually bought us.
This post reflects our family’s July 2026 trip. Product prices and availability change; check current listings on Amazon.
