Pick up a rice ball at a Tokyo convenience store, check the shelf tag, pay at the register, and the number on the receipt is usually exactly what the tag said. That's by design — Japan requires almost all consumer prices to already include tax. But there's one place where the sticker price and the receipt can disagree, and it trips up more visitors than any other quirk of Japanese pricing: the gap between Japan's two consumption tax rates, 10% and 8%, and a single sentence you're supposed to say at the register that almost nobody says.
Japan has two tax rates, not one
Since October 1, 2019, Japan's consumption tax (shouhizei, 消費税) has had a standard rate of 10% and a reduced rate of 8%. The reduced rate exists mainly for groceries and everyday food, so raising the overall tax didn't hit household food budgets as hard. The split is defined narrowly:
- 8% (reduced rate): food and non-alcoholic drinks you buy to eat elsewhere — supermarket groceries, convenience store food, bakery items, bento boxes, food delivery — plus home-delivered newspapers.
- 10% (standard rate): everything else. Alcohol is always 10%, even a can of beer from a supermarket shelf. Any food or drink consumed "dining out" — at a restaurant table, a café seat, or a food court bench — is 10%. So is every non-food purchase: hotel rooms, train tickets, clothes, souvenirs, admission tickets.
The logic the tax office uses is "where will this be eaten," not "what is this." The same onigiri is 8% in your hand on the street and 10% if you sit down at a table to eat it. That one distinction is the whole reason this gets confusing.
Why most price tags already match what you pay
You don't normally have to calculate any of this yourself. Since April 1, 2021, Japan has required almost all prices shown to general shoppers — on shelf tags, restaurant menus, store websites, flyers — to be tax-included (zeikomi, 税込). Before that date, stores could legally advertise a pre-tax number and add tax at the register, which is exactly the "plus tax" surprise many countries still have. Japan closed that loophole specifically so shoppers would never need to do register-counter math. If you see a price on a tag or a menu, with very rare exceptions for business-to-business listings, that's the number you'll pay.
The one place the sticker still doesn't tell the whole story
Convenience stores sell the same bento and onigiri for both takeout and eat-in, usually from an "eat-in corner" (ichi-in sukoa, イートインコーナー) with a counter or stools near the window. The shelf tag is calculated at the 8% takeout rate. If you tell the cashier you're eating in, the register is supposed to add the extra 2% and your total comes out a little higher than the tag.
In practice, almost nobody volunteers this. Convenience store chains deliberately don't ask at checkout, because quizzing every customer about their lunch plans slows the line down, and Japanese surveys of store staff have found only a small fraction actually check. The honest move — and the one we try to do ourselves when we grab a sandwich and sit at the eat-in counter near our local Lawson — is to say "ten'nai de" (店内で, "I'll eat it here") at the register, or "mochikaeri de" (持ち帰りで, "to take away") if you're not. Say nothing and the default assumption is takeout, which is why the receipt total at a convenience store eat-in corner can come out a yen or two off from doing the math on the shelf price yourself — it's not a mistake, it's the rate you didn't declare.
Nobody is going to chase you down over a 2% difference on a ¥150 rice ball. But now you know why the eat-in counter has a sign about it, and why the total sometimes looks slightly odd.
Chopi: I always forget and say nothing, then feel guilty eating at the counter.
Log: Just say "ten'nai de" before they scan anything — it takes two seconds and then you don't have to think about it.
That's really the whole trick: the sentence has to come before the scan, not after. Once the receipt prints, the rate is locked in.
Quick reference
| Situation | Rate | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Groceries, supermarket food | 8% | Food to eat elsewhere |
| Convenience store food, taken away | 8% | Takeout |
| Same food, eaten at the eat-in counter | 10% | Counted as dining out |
| Restaurant or café, sitting down | 10% | Dining out |
| Food delivery (Uber Eats, Demae-can, etc.) | 8% | Not "dining out," even though it's hot food |
| Beer, wine, any alcohol | 10% | Alcohol is excluded from the reduced rate regardless of where you drink it |
| Hotel rooms, train fares, souvenirs, clothes | 10% | Non-food goods and services |
What this has nothing to do with
Two other things get mixed up with the 8%/10% split, and they're genuinely separate systems:
- Tipping and service charges. Consumption tax is a government tax baked into the price; it isn't a tip, and you never add anything extra for service on top of it. Some hotels and upscale restaurants add their own service charge (usually 10–15%), which is a private business fee, not a tax. We cover how that works separately in our guide to tipping in Japan.
- Tax-free shopping for tourists. That's an export exemption — a short-term visitor can get the consumption tax waived entirely on goods they're taking out of the country, shown at a passport-stamped tax-free counter. It's a different process with its own paperwork, and as of November 1, 2026 it changed from an instant in-store discount to a refund claimed at the airport. See our tax-free shopping guide for what changed.
The 8%/10% split, by contrast, applies to everyone, tourist or resident, all the time, and there's no refund or exemption for it — it's simply part of the price you see.
FAQ
Do I need to calculate tax myself when shopping in Japan?
No. Since April 2021, nearly every price aimed at ordinary shoppers — shelf tags, restaurant menus, store websites — is required to show the tax-included total. What you see is what you pay, with the convenience-store eat-in declaration being the main exception.
Why did my convenience store receipt not match the shelf price?
Most likely you ate at the store's eat-in counter, which is taxed as "dining out" at 10% instead of the 8% takeout rate printed on the shelf tag. Saying "ten'nai de" (eating in) or "mochikaeri de" (to take away) at the register lines up the price in advance.
Is this the same as the tax-free shopping tourists get?
No. The 8%/10% split is the regular consumption tax everyone pays. Tax-free shopping is a separate export exemption only for short-term visitors buying goods to take home, claimed with your passport at checkout or, as of November 2026, refunded at the airport. See our tax-free shopping guide for that process.
None of this changes how much you should budget for a day in Japan by more than a percent or two either way — see our cash and daily budget guide for the bigger picture. But if a convenience store receipt ever looks a yen or two higher than the tag, now you know why, and what to say next time so it doesn't surprise you.
