Your First Business Trip in Japan: How Shucchou and Expenses Work

Quick answer

Hi, I'm Miya, and I help newcomers settle into life in Japan. The first time someone says the word shucchou to you — a business trip — the travelling itself is rarely the hard part. The hard part is everything around it: who approves it, who books it, whose card pays for the train, and what you're supposed to hand in when you get back. It's a small administrative world with its own order, and once you've been through it, it stops being mysterious.

Here's the short version. Approval comes before booking, not after. Your company either arranges travel through its own channel and pays directly, or asks you to pay and claim it back, so find out which applies to you before you buy anything. Keep every receipt, file your expense report soon after you return, and expect a per-day travel allowance called nittou at some workplaces but not all. Every detail below varies by company, so your own travel rules — or one question to the back office — are the final word.

Approval comes before booking

In a lot of Japanese workplaces, a trip exists as a document before it exists as a plan. You fill in a shucchou application with the dates, the destination, the purpose, who you're meeting and a rough outline of how you'll travel, and it goes to your manager — sometimes to another approver above them as well. Until it comes back approved, nothing gets booked.

Ask early how much lead time the approval usually needs, because that's what decides whether you're choosing between convenient departures or taking whatever is left. If the person who asked you to go is also the person who approves it, that still doesn't replace the form. The application is what the accounting side works from later.

Write it the way the approver expects to read it: departure and return times, whether you're staying overnight, and whether you're travelling from home straight to the destination instead of going to the office first. That last detail — chokkou and chokki, going straight there and straight home — often changes what you can claim and how your attendance is recorded, so state it plainly rather than assuming it's obvious.

Booking: the company's channel or your own wallet

There are broadly two patterns. In the first, travel is arranged through a channel the company has set up — an internal desk, a designated agent, or an account somebody else holds — and the fare and the room are billed to the company directly. You may be handed a reservation number or an e-ticket and nothing else, and you may never see the cost at all.

In the second, you buy the ticket yourself and claim it back afterwards. Before you do, check which seat types and travel classes your rules allow, whether an overnight stay has an upper limit, and whether anything beyond the ordinary option needs approval in advance. This is the most common place a first trip goes sideways: the travelling is fine, but something bought in good faith sits outside what the rules cover.

Either way, don't change a booking quietly. If the meeting moves and you need a different train or an extra night, go back through the same route you booked through and get the change recorded. Improvised rebookings are the ones that turn into an awkward conversation three weeks later, when somebody in accounting is looking at two reservations and one trip.

Nittou: the travel allowance, in general terms

Many companies pay a daily travel allowance, called nittou or shucchou teate, for the days you spend away. The thinking behind it is that leaving your usual desk creates small costs nobody wants to itemise — a meal you wouldn't otherwise have bought, local buses and taxis, a charger you forgot, laundry. Rather than chase each one, the company pays a set amount per day, and some also pay a separate allowance for nights spent away from home.

Whether your workplace has one at all, how it's worked out, whether same-day and overnight trips differ, and when it reaches you are all internal rules. They live in a document usually called the shucchou ryohi kitei, the travel expense regulations. Some companies pay no allowance and simply reimburse what you spent. Ask your own back office rather than a colleague who joined from a different industry.

One practical point. Because an allowance is usually paid as a flat sum, you often don't submit receipts for the things it's meant to cover. But often isn't always, so hold on to your meal and local-transport receipts until you've confirmed how your company treats them. Keeping them takes no effort; recreating them later takes plenty.

The business hotel, and arriving later than planned

Business hotels are built for exactly this trip: a compact room, a desk, a kettle, a unit bathroom and very little else. Check-in generally opens in the afternoon and checkout comes in the morning, the front desk will want your name and usually ID, and breakfast may or may not be part of the booking. Shared coin laundry, an ironing corner and a shelf of amenities near reception are common, which is why experienced colleagues pack so little.

If your last meeting might run long, tell the hotel. Some places ask you to contact them if you'll arrive after a certain hour, and smaller ones staff reception only part of the night. A short call or a message from the platform is enough, and it's far easier than explaining yourself at midnight to a locked entrance.

If the trip is cancelled after everything is booked, say so immediately — to whoever approved it and to whoever made the booking. Cancellation charges are normally handled as part of the trip, but only when they're reported while they can still be kept small. And if the trains stop while you're travelling, contact your manager and the person expecting you first, then ask station staff for a delay certificate, keep whatever documentation you're given, and note the times. If you end up staying an extra night, get approval if you can reach someone, and keep the receipt if you can't.

Back at your desk: receipts, the report, and omiyage

The expense report — keihi seisan — is what finishes the trip. Most companies want it within a set window after you return, in a fixed format or a system, tied to the application that was approved. File it while the details are fresh: which day you took which train, which meal was with a client and which was your own dinner. Reconstructing an itinerary a month later from a pocketful of paper is a genuinely unpleasant evening.

Collect receipts as you go rather than at the end, and ask for them made out to the company name if your rules require that. A photo of each one the moment it's in your hand protects you against thermal printing fading or an envelope going missing. If you tapped through the gates with a transport IC card, you can usually print a usage history at a ticket machine in the station, which saves you reconstructing fares from memory.

Then there's omiyage. In many workplaces it's natural to come back with a boxed regional sweet for the team — individually wrapped, roughly enough to go round, left in the shared area with a short word to whoever is nearby. It's a small thank-you to the people who covered your desk while you were away, not a rule, and it's worth watching what your colleagues actually do before deciding how much it matters in your office. A word of thanks to the person who took your calls carries at least as much weight.

One thing worth sorting before you travel: your phone

Lay the trip out like this and it's striking how much of it runs on your phone. The e-ticket you tap at the gate, the hotel confirmation you show at the front desk, the expense app you photograph receipts into, the message telling you the afternoon meeting has moved an hour earlier — all of it lands in the same place. On the road, a Japanese number and a data plan are working equipment rather than a comfort.

If you've arrived recently and haven't set this up yet, it's worth doing before your first trip rather than after it. Your residence card is the document that unlocks the process, so have it with you. Signing up online with an eSIM often means you're active the same day — usually around fifteen minutes from finishing the application — and having a number your office and your hotel can reach you on is as useful as the data itself.

If you'd like it step by step, we have a setup guide here on the site covering what you need and the order to do it in. Conditions change from time to time, so please confirm the current terms on the official campaign page before you apply rather than relying on any summary, mine included. Get it handled while you're still at home, and your first shucchou gets to be about the work. Have a good trip — I'll be cheering for you at the gate.