Playing Golf in Japan as a Newcomer: Driving Ranges, Booking and Course Etiquette

Quick answer

Hi, I'm Miya, and I help newcomers settle into life in Japan. Golf here is far more approachable than it looks from the outside. You start at a tall netted driving range you can walk into after work, renting clubs at the counter and buying a ball card from a machine. When you're ready for a real course, you reserve a tee time online — a weekday morning is the kindest place to begin. A round runs as nine holes, a proper sit-down lunch at the clubhouse, then the back nine, and it usually finishes with a bath.

Start at the driving range

You have almost certainly already seen one without knowing what it was: a tall structure wrapped in green netting, held up by steel poles, lit until late at night, tucked beside a highway or a few minutes from a station. These multi-tier ranges are the everyday front door to the sport here. There is no membership, no introduction, no appointment. You walk in, tell the person at reception you're alone, and they hand you a slip with a bay number on one of the two or three levels.

You do not need to own anything to start. Ranges keep rental clubs behind the counter — usually a small set, sometimes a single club of your choosing — and many lend shoes and a glove too. Balls are bought as a prepaid card from a vending machine in the lobby. You take the card up to your bay, slot it into the reader beside the mat, and an automatic tee-up machine feeds a ball onto the tee for you, one at a time, until the card runs out. If you don't use every ball, most ranges refund the balance when you return the card.

Go on a weekday evening and you'll find the place full of people in office clothes hitting a hundred balls before dinner, which is exactly the right atmosphere for a beginner. Aim at the distance markers hung on the net rather than worrying about where the ball lands, start with a short club instead of the driver, and treat the first several visits as learning to make contact. Nobody there is watching you, and the upper tiers are usually the quietest place to be bad in peace.

Booking a tee time

Most courses here take visitors, and you do not need a member to introduce you the way you might expect. Booking happens on reservation sites where you filter by date, region, and start time, and each listing is a plan rather than a bare slot: it will state whether lunch is included, whether a caddie comes with the group, and how many players the booking assumes. Reading the plan details carefully matters more than picking the course — that is where the shape of your entire day is decided.

Weekday mornings are the friendly place to start. The course is quieter, groups move without pressure behind them, and the staff have the time to walk a first-timer through check-in. Start times are earlier than newcomers expect, with the first groups going out around sunrise, so factor in the drive. Cancellation windows and no-show rules vary from course to course, so check the course's own page for its terms rather than assuming, and confirm your booking when the reservation site asks you to.

The shape of a round here

This is the part that genuinely surprises people. You play the front nine, and then instead of turning straight onto the tenth tee, you come back into the clubhouse, change shoes if you like, and sit down to a full lunch in the restaurant. A caddie or the staff will often hand you an order form a hole or two before the turn so the kitchen has your meal ready. The break can run anywhere from forty minutes to well over an hour, depending on how busy the course is and when your afternoon start time is posted.

So budget the whole day rather than a morning. Between the drive out, check-in, eighteen holes, the turn, and the bath afterwards, you are realistically looking at leaving early and getting home in the late afternoon or evening. Don't schedule anything in the middle of the day, and tell whoever is waiting for you that golf here is a full outing rather than a quick eighteen. Once you expect the rhythm, the long lunch becomes one of the nicest parts of it.

Caddie or self-play, and the carts

You will see two formats in the plan listings. A caddie round means someone walks or rides with your group, carries and hands you clubs, reads the greens, tells you the yardage, and — quietly and firmly — keeps the four of you moving on time. Self-play means your bag rides on the cart and you manage your own club selection and distances. Self-play has become very common and is the easier choice for a newcomer who would rather not feel watched, though a caddie is genuinely educational for a first round if your group is happy to have one.

Either way there is almost always a cart. They are electric four-seaters, and the systems differ by course: some run on a guide rail and stop at fixed points, some are remote-controlled with a handset so the cart follows you up the hole, and many carry a screen showing the hole layout and remaining distance. Some courses keep carts on the paths only; others sell fairway access on the day when conditions allow. Ask at check-in which applies, because it changes how much walking you do and how you plan each shot.

Dress code, pace, and the bath at the end

Dress is more formal than most newcomers assume, and the expectation covers arriving as well as playing. A collared shirt tucked in, proper trousers or golf shorts, and golf shoes with soft spikes are the baseline; denim, cargo trousers, tank tops, and sandals are commonly turned away. Traditional clubs also expect you to arrive and leave in tidy clothes — a jacket in the colder months at the more formal ones — and to change in the locker room rather than in the car park. If you are unsure, the course's own site states its rules plainly.

Pace of play is taken seriously. The standard is simple: keep up with the group in front of you, not merely ahead of the group behind. Play ready golf, take one practice swing rather than five, rake the bunker after yourself, repair your ball mark on the green, and walk to your ball while others are hitting. A caddie or a course marshal may gently ask your group to speed up, and that is normal rather than a rebuke. Nobody minds a beginner scoring badly; they mind a group falling a hole behind.

When you finish, the round isn't quite over. Nearly every clubhouse has a large communal bath, and soaking before you change back into your street clothes is the ordinary ending to the day rather than an extra. Towels and basics are usually laid out for you. Policies on tattoos differ between clubs, so if that affects you, check with the course beforehand. Afterwards you settle the whole day's bill at reception on your way out, using the receipt or tag you were given at check-in.

Getting there, your clubs, and a line that works

Two practical ways to get your clubs to a course. Luggage delivery services will collect a golf bag from your home or a convenience store counter and send it to the clubhouse to wait for you, then send it home again afterwards, which means you travel with just shoes and a change of clothes. The other way is simply to drive: courses here are built around car access, with a drop-off at the entrance where staff take your bag straight to the cart while you park. If you have neither clubs nor a car yet, many courses rent sets, and plans sometimes include a shuttle from the nearest station.

Here is where a Japanese line quietly matters. Reservation sites and the clubs' own apps register you against a Japanese phone number — it is the field that stops people at sign-up — and confirmations, weather calls, and day-of contact all go there. On top of that, the last stretch of the drive takes you well outside the city, and you'll be following your maps app on mobile data rather than on the café wifi you planned it with. Sorting this out is refreshingly simple: you apply online with your residence card, and eSIM-capable phones can often connect the same day, typically in about fifteen minutes.

Have a look at our setup guide for eligibility and the step-by-step, and confirm current terms on the page before you apply. With that in place, the rest of the first round is just logistics: book a weekday morning, send your clubs ahead, put the course into your maps app the night before, and let the long lunch and the bath at the end take care of the day. I'll be right here if you want help with the first booking.