Checked against official announcements from Japan Customs and the Immigration Services Agency (ISA) on 9 November 2026. The one detail their press release doesn’t spell out is whether you can still generate the required QR code on the spot if you haven’t used Visit Japan Web before you fly — plan to set it up in advance to be safe.

If you’re flying into Narita after September 2026, there’s a new machine between your plane and the immigration counter, and it’s worth knowing what it does before you land. It’s called a “joint kiosk” (共同キオスク), and the short version is reassuring: it’s built to make the line move faster, not to add a hurdle. The part worth understanding ahead of time is exactly what it speeds up — because for foreign visitors, it doesn’t remove the human officer the way it does for Japanese citizens.

What launched, and where it already existed

Japan Customs and the Immigration Services Agency jointly announced on September 18, 2026 that the kiosks would go live at Narita’s Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 on September 24, 2026. That wasn’t the first rollout — joint kiosks had already been running at Kansai Airport (Terminals 1 and 2, from April 1, 2025), Haneda (Terminal 2 from April 1, 2025, Terminal 3 from April 11, 2025), Narita’s own Terminal 3 (from April 7, 2025), and Fukuoka Airport (from December 1, 2025). The September 2026 update closed the gap at Narita’s two largest terminals, which together handle most of its international arrivals.

What the kiosk actually combines

Under the old process, a foreign arrival went through separate stops: a “bio cart” machine that captured a photo and fingerprints, a staffed booth where an officer checked the passport and a Visit Japan Web QR code, a separate electronic customs-declaration terminal, and finally a walk-through customs gate. The joint kiosk folds the first of those steps and the customs declaration into a single machine: you scan your IC passport and the QR code you generated through Visit Japan Web, and it captures your photo, fingerprints, and declaration information all at once.

The officer at the booth doesn’t go away for foreign visitors

Here’s the part that’s easy to assume away. For Japanese nationals, the new setup lets them walk straight through a gate using facial recognition, with no staffed booth at all. For foreign visitors, that’s not what changes. According to the official diagram released alongside the announcement, a foreign traveler who uses the kiosk still goes to a staffed booth afterward — it’s described as a “dedicated booth for kiosk users,” and an immigration officer still reviews the passport there in person. What the kiosk removes is the separate photo-and-fingerprint stop before the booth, and the separate customs-declaration terminal after it — not the officer who checks your passport.

The speed-up assumes you already did Visit Japan Web

The kiosk’s first step is reading a QR code “created through Visit Japan Web,” the Digital Agency’s pre-arrival registration service. The official announcement doesn’t say what happens if you show up without one — whether there’s a way to generate the code on the spot, or whether you’d simply be routed back to the conventional process. Rather than find out at the airport, the safer approach is to complete your Visit Japan Web registration (passport details, flight information, and customs declaration) before you leave home. It’s free, and it’s also what the older customs e-gates and declaration terminals have required for a while now, so there’s no real downside to doing it regardless of which terminal you land at.

It’s not everywhere yet

As of this kiosk rollout, the joint kiosks cover Kansai, Haneda, Narita, and Fukuoka — not every airport that handles international arrivals. If you’re flying into a different airport, you’ll likely go through the conventional multi-step process described above, which still works fine; it’s simply a few more stops.

Travel AI Rescue

Travel AI Rescue keeps Narita, Haneda, Kansai, and Fukuoka’s airport information one tap away, which is useful if your flight’s gate or terminal changes at the last minute and you need to check which kiosk setup applies there. It can also show a Japanese-language card for the rare case something about your declaration or paperwork needs explaining at the booth, so you’re not stuck searching for words in front of an officer. And above all, it can walk you through what Visit Japan Web actually needs from you — passport details, flight number, customs declaration — and flag anything missing days before you’re at the airport, not after. Passport details saved on the device stay readable with no signal at all, and there’s an offline check if your eSIM isn’t connecting yet. It works differently from an airport concierge service, and it’s with you around the clock — a bridge that gets you to the right step, in the right order, before you land. (The actual immigration and customs decisions are made by Japan’s Immigration Services Agency and Japan Customs.)

Sources

• Japan Customs and Immigration Services Agency, “Narita Airport Terminals 1 and 2 to Begin Operating Joint Kiosks” (成田空港第１・第２ターミナルにおいて、共同キオスクの運用を開始します). https://www.customs.go.jp/kaigairyoko/20260918.html (accessed 2026-11-09).
• Japan Customs and Immigration Services Agency, “Overview of the Joint Kiosk at Customs and Immigration” (税関・入管における「共同キオスク」の概要), PDF attachment to the above announcement. https://www.customs.go.jp/kaigairyoko/kioskgaiyou.pdf (accessed 2026-11-09).
• Japan Customs and Immigration Services Agency, “Joint Kiosk Rollout Schedule by Airport and Terminal” (「共同キオスク」導入空港における運用開始時期等), PDF attachment to the above announcement. https://www.customs.go.jp/kaigairyoko/kioskunyou_narita.pdf (accessed 2026-11-09).