# How to Play Golf in Japan: Etiquette, Dress Code and What to Expect August 28, 2026 · Sampo Kuokkanen Golf in Japan isn't hard to arrange. At most courses you need no member's introduction, no handicap certificate and no Japanese at all. What catches visitors out is the shape of the day. You'll probably arrive in a jacket, ride a cart you aren't allowed to leave, break for a sit-down lunch after nine holes, and finish the afternoon naked in a communal bath. Budget six hours for eighteen holes, not four. What follows is the practical part: what to book, what to wear, what happens between the car park and the bath, and which bits of etiquette are different here. ## The short version - **Booking:** online, in advance, on Rakuten GORA, GDO or Jalan Golf. Most courses take visitors with no introduction and no handicap. - **Getting there:** effectively car only, and driving on a foreign licence means arranging an international permit, or an official Japanese translation of your licence, before you arrive. Some courses run a free club bus from the nearest station, but it must be reserved. - **Dress code:** a jacket to arrive at traditional clubs, suspended at many of them over the summer. Collared shirt, no denim, no sandals, soft spikes only. - **Arrive:** an hour before your tee time. Thirty minutes is cutting it fine. - **The round:** riding cart, four to a cart, often with a compulsory lunch break of 45 to 60 minutes between the nines. - **After:** a large communal bath, then settle the whole bill at the front desk on your way out. - **Tipping:** not done, including for caddies. --- ## Booking a round The three big booking sites are **Rakuten GORA**, **GDO** and **Jalan Golf**. They are Japanese-language sites with thin English support, but they are structured enough that a browser translation gets you through, and they show the real prices, including what is bundled into each plan. Booking direct with the course by phone works too and is sometimes cheaper, though it usually means speaking Japanese. If you are still choosing where to play, the [course listings on Japan Voyage](https://golf.japanvoyage.jp/golf_courses) cover Japanese courses with their layout, location and prefecture, which is a reasonable starting point before you go looking for a tee time. Two things to know before you pick a date: - **Weekday and weekend are different sports, price-wise.** A weekday round outside the big metro areas often runs somewhere around 6,000 to 12,000 yen including lunch and cart. The same course on a Saturday can be double that or more. Public holidays price like weekends. - **Read what the plan includes.** Japanese plans bundle. A listing will say whether lunch is included (昼食付), whether it is self-play or comes with a caddie, and whether the cart fee and the golf course tax are inside the price or added at the desk. Two plans at the same course on the same day can differ by several thousand yen purely on inclusions. Most courses accept a minimum of two players, and some weekend slots want three or four. If you are travelling alone, look for a **one-player booking** (1人予約) on Rakuten GORA or GDO: you book a single slot and are grouped with strangers, which is normal and nobody finds it awkward. A handful of older members' clubs still require an introduction from a member or a handicap certificate, but they are the exception and they say so on their own site. --- ## Getting there Japanese courses are in the hills, typically 60 to 120 minutes out of the city, and they are built around the assumption that you drive. Very few are walkable from a station. Your options, best first: - **Rental car.** The default. Parking is free and there's plenty of it. - **Club bus.** Many courses run a free shuttle from the nearest station timed to the morning tee sheet. It almost always needs to be reserved when you book, and there is often only one departure. Miss it and there is no second one. - **Taxi from the nearest station.** Works, but a 20-minute rural taxi ride isn't cheap, and finding one at five in the afternoon is harder than finding one at seven in the morning. Book the return when you book the outward. A few courses do work without a car. They are mostly municipal or riverside public courses on the edge of the big cities, such as the Kuzuha Public Golf Course on the Yodo river between Osaka and Kyoto, or Wakasu Golf Links out on Tokyo Bay, and they sit within a walk or a short bus ride of a station. They are public and short courses rather than members' clubs, and there are not many of them, but if you are travelling by train those are the ones to search for first. If you're driving, six things before you pick the car up: - **Sort the licence before you fly.** If your licence is from a country in the 1949 Geneva Convention, which covers most of Europe, you need an International Driving Permit issued at home, valid for a year. Japan won't issue one to a visitor, and no rental desk will hand over a car without it. - **Traffic is on the left** and the car is right-hand drive. Easy enough on the expressway, less automatic at a rural junction at six in the morning. - **Tolls are real money.** Expressways are not free, and a course 90 minutes out of Tokyo or Osaka can be 3,000 to 6,000 yen in tolls for the round trip on top of fuel. Take the ETC card the rental company offers for a few hundred yen and you drive straight through the gates instead of queuing. - **Size the car to the bags, not the people.** Two players and two bags fit a kei car; they are far roomier inside than they look from outside. Four players and four bags need a wagon or a small minivan. Say how many golf bags when you reserve. - **Check when the rental desk opens.** Most offices open at eight, which is too late for a half past seven tee time an hour away. Early starts mean collecting the car the evening before and paying to park it overnight, so build that into the price. - **Winter means tyres.** Courses that stay open through the winter are still up in the hills, and the access road can be frozen at the morning start even when the fairway is fine. Book a car on winter tyres from December to March, and expect chains to be required further into the mountains. If you are drinking at lunch, which is normal in Japan, you cannot be the one driving home. See the warning in the lunch section. --- ## The dress code, including the jacket question This is the part visitors get wrong, and it is because the rule has nothing to do with what you play in. It is about what you arrive in. **Traditional members' clubs expect a jacket at the clubhouse door.** You arrive in a jacket, change into golf clothes in the locker room, play, bathe, change back, and leave in the jacket. A blazer over a collared shirt is enough. No tie is needed at almost all courses. **Most of those courses suspend the jacket rule in summer**, stated as a cool-biz period running roughly from June to September. The dates are set by each club and posted on its own site, so check rather than assume: some start in May, some hold the rule until October, and public and resort courses often have no jacket requirement at any time of year. On the course and in the clubhouse, the rules are consistent almost everywhere: - Collared shirt, tucked in. Mock necks pass. Round-neck T-shirts do not. - No denim, anywhere on the property, including the clubhouse. - No cargo shorts, no cut-offs. Shorts are fine in summer at most courses, and plenty of them still want long socks with the shorts. - No sandals. You arrive in street shoes and change into golf shoes in the locker room, not in the car park. - **Soft spikes only.** Metal spikes are banned just about everywhere in Japan. - Hats off indoors, in the clubhouse and the restaurant. Pay-and-play and public courses are a lot more relaxed about all of this, except the spikes and the denim. The course's own site has a dress code page. Two minutes with a translation app beats an argument at the door. --- ## From the car park to the first tee The sequence is the same at nearly every course, and it takes longer than you expect the first time: 1. **Bag drop first.** Stop at the entrance, take your clubs out, and leave them at the bag drop. Staff take them from there and load them onto your cart. Do not carry your bag into the clubhouse. 2. **Then park.** Move the car to the car park after you have dropped the bag. 3. **Check in.** At the front desk or, increasingly, at a self check-in machine. You give your name and booking, and get a locker key or a tag with a number on it. That number is your tab for the day: lunch, drinks and the pro shop all go on it. 4. **Change.** Locker room, golf shoes on. Most locker rooms have everything you need except a towel for the course. 5. **Be at the tee ten minutes early.** Start times mean what they say here. If the group ahead has gone out and you are not there, the course will move on without much sympathy. Note that your start may not be the first hole. Big courses run a two-tee start, with half the field going out on the tenth, and your paperwork will say which. --- ## On the course **You will ride, and you probably cannot walk.** Riding carts are standard, one per group of four with the bags strapped on the back. Plenty of courses do not permit walking at all, and where they do it is an exception you have to ask about. Many carts are on rails or restricted to paths, and a lot of newer ones are remote-controlled: you press a button and the cart drives itself up to the next stop while you walk to your ball. **Caddie or self-play.** Self-play (セルフプレー) is now the norm and is what the cheaper plans mean. Caddie-accompanied rounds are still offered at traditional clubs and add a few thousand yen per player. A caddie will manage the cart, read greens, and generally keep you moving. If you have one, let them drive the cart. **Two greens.** This is the one that catches everybody out the first time. Many Japanese courses, especially older ones, have **two greens on every hole**: a bentgrass green and a korai (a warm-season Japanese grass) green. Japan's summers are hard on bentgrass, so the club plays one green while the other rests, and switches seasonally. A sign at the tee, or the flag colour, tells you which green is in play. Aim at the wrong one and you will hit a perfectly good shot to a green nobody is putting on. Do not walk across the out-of-play green. **Pace.** The expectation is roughly two hours fifteen minutes per nine, and courses actively manage it. A marshal will appear if you fall behind. Play ready golf, keep your pre-shot routine short, and take your putts. **Scoring.** Most carts have a screen with GPS yardages, hole maps and a scorecard you tap in as you go. At the end it prints or emails a card. It is in Japanese, but numbers are numbers, and it is the most useful thing in the cart. --- ## The lunch break After the ninth hole you stop, go inside, and eat. This is not optional at most courses: the tee sheet is built around a **break of 45 to 60 minutes** between the nines, and your back nine tee time is fixed. This is why a Japanese round takes six hours or more. The first time, the break feels like the course has forgotten about you. It has not. That is the schedule. Some courses offer **through-play** (スループレー), which is eighteen holes without the break, and it is worth looking for if you would rather be home by early afternoon. It is the exception rather than the rule, and it tends to appear on early morning slots. Practical points: - Lunch is often included in the plan. Where it is, you choose from a set menu, sometimes with a few hundred yen surcharge for the pricier items. The food is proper restaurant food, not snack-bar food: curry, katsu, noodles, sashimi sets. - Order before you go out, or at the turn. Many courses take your lunch order at check-in so it is on the table when you come in. Otherwise the cart screen or a phone call from the ninth green does it. - Beer at lunch is part of the day here, and every course sells it. Japan's drink-driving law is close to zero tolerance, the penalties are severe, and they extend beyond the driver: a passenger who let it happen, and whoever supplied the alcohol or the car, can also be charged. If your group is drinking, someone is not, or you are not driving home. --- ## After the round: the bath Nearly every Japanese course has a **large communal bath**, and using it after your round is just how the day ends. It is included in your green fee. Bath etiquette is the same as any Japanese onsen or sento: - Naked. No swimwear, and no towel in the water. - Wash and rinse thoroughly at the seated showers *before* getting into the bath. - The small towel is for washing and for modesty on the way to the bath. Leave it on the side or on your head, not in the water. - Tattoos are still a problem at some clubs. Policies vary and the course's site or the front desk will tell you. Towels are provided at some courses and rented for a small charge at others, and the changing room will have everything from razors to hairdryers. Then you dress, and if the club has a jacket rule you put the jacket back on to leave. **You pay on the way out.** Take your locker key or tag to the front desk and settle everything at once: green fee, cart, lunch, drinks, the pro shop sleeve of balls. Cards are accepted almost everywhere, though a rural course may still be cash-friendlier than you expect. --- ## What it costs Prices vary enormously by region, day and course, but the components are consistent: - **Green fee.** The headline number, often with lunch and cart inside it. - **Cart fee.** Sometimes separate, a few thousand yen per group or per player. - **Caddie fee.** Only if you book a caddie plan. Several thousand yen per player. - **Golf course utilisation tax.** A prefectural tax charged per player per day, commonly in the 400 to 1,200 yen range depending on the course's grade. It is normally added at the desk rather than shown in the online price. Players under 18 or over 70, and players with a disability certificate, are exempt, so bring ID if that applies to you. - **Consumption tax** at 10 per cent, sometimes shown separately. - **Getting there.** Not part of the green fee and the line people forget: a rental car from roughly 7,000 yen a day, a few thousand yen of expressway tolls for the round trip, and fuel. On a cheap weekday round that can be half the cost of the day again. **No tipping.** Not the caddie, not the bag staff, not the restaurant. Nobody expects it, and offering makes the moment awkward for both of you. --- ## Bringing clubs, shipping them, or renting You have three sensible options and only one of them involves carrying a golf bag onto a train. - **Ship them.** Japanese courier services carry golf bags as a standard product, and sending your clubs from the airport or your hotel straight to the course is completely routine here. Book it a few days ahead, confirm the course accepts deliveries and on what date, and address it to the course with your name and tee time. Do the same in reverse for the trip home. - **Rent.** Most courses rent full sets, typically a few thousand yen, and shoes for less. Reserve rentals when you book: courses hold a limited number of sets, and left-handed sets are scarce. - **Carry them yourself.** Fine if you have a car for the whole trip. Miserable on the Shinkansen. --- ## Etiquette that is actually different The usual golf courtesies apply, and Japanese players observe them carefully. These are the ones that are specific to here: - Check which green is in play before you hit, and never walk over the resting one. - If you have a caddie, the cart is theirs to drive. Leave it alone. - Rake the bunker and put the rake back where you found it, inside the bunker and lying in line with play. Courses are particular about this. - If you are having a disaster on a hole, pick up and move on. Holding up the course is worse manners than a bad score. - Change your shoes in the locker room, not at your car, and never walk into the clubhouse in golf shoes where a shoe change is signposted. - Phones on silent, and take calls outside rather than in the clubhouse. - Greet people: the staff, the starter, the group you are paired with. It costs nothing and it sets the tone of the whole day. - Do not tip. Really, do not. --- ## When to play - **Spring (late March to May)** and **autumn (October to November)** are the best conditions of the year and the busiest weekends. Book early. - **Rainy season (roughly June to mid-July)** is cheap and often perfectly playable, with the risk of a washout. Courses rarely cancel for rain alone. - **Summer** is severe. Take the earliest tee time available, drink far more than you think you need, and expect the jacket rule to be suspended. - **Winter** plays fine in Kanto, Kansai and west, with frost delays that can push a morning start back. Courses in Hokkaido and much of Tohoku close for the season. - **Golden Week (late April to early May), Obon (mid-August) and the New Year** are the peak of peak pricing. Avoid if you can, book months ahead if you cannot. --- ## FAQ ### Do I need a handicap certificate or a member's introduction? At most courses, no. Book online, turn up, play. A small number of traditional members' clubs still require an introduction or proof of handicap, and they state it on their own site. ### Do I really have to wear a jacket? At traditional clubs, to arrive and to leave, yes, and a blazer over a collared shirt is enough. Many of those clubs suspend the rule over the summer, and public and resort courses often have no jacket rule at all. Check the course's dress code page. ### Do I need an international driving permit? To rent a car, yes, if your licence comes from a 1949 Geneva Convention country. Get the permit at home before you travel, because you cannot obtain one once you are in Japan. A few countries are outside that convention and use an official Japanese translation of the home licence instead, so check which applies to yours. ### Can I walk instead of riding a cart? Usually not. Riding carts are standard and many courses do not allow walking. If it matters to you, ask before you book. ### Is the lunch break compulsory? At most courses, yes: your back nine has a fixed tee time after a 45 to 60 minute break. Look for a through-play plan if you want to go straight round. ### Can I play alone? Yes, through the one-player booking systems on the major booking sites, which group you with other players. Turning up alone and asking for a slot is much less reliable. ### Should I tip the caddie? No. Tipping is not part of Japanese service culture, and the caddie fee is already on your bill. --- *Course policies on dress, walking, carts, baths and tattoos are set individually and change. Everything above is the common pattern rather than a guarantee, so check the course's own site before you travel.* --- Source: How to Play Golf in Japan: Etiquette, Dress Code and What to Expect — Japan Voyage Golf