We will be traveling to Tokyo, Takayama, Kanazawa, Kyoto and Osaka in May and staying in budget to moderately priced hotels. I have read of a service that delivers luggage between hotels so you do not have to haul your bags from place to place on trains. Is this a fairly standard practice? Is it reliable? What is the cost? What is the procedure to use this service? All information is appreciated. Thanks.

Any hotel can arrange this reliable, relatively inexpensive service. I'm not sure how much we paid, but all we did was fill out a form with the name and address of the desired destination. We transferred bags from Tokyo to Kanazawa and from Kanazawa to Kyoto with no problems.

Works perfectly. Hotels have the papers runs between $12-17-18.00 charge goes by distance. If you want bag by next day say your in Osaka and you want it next day in Takayama you have to have it ready to go in the morning. In other words you would need a small overnight bag for your needed items. Only once did I ever get it delivered the same day and that was Osaka-Kyoto. Trains are crowded so you save a lot of hassle

Its called the takuhaibin service. Have the bell desk in hotels make all arrangements for you. Just be sure you have the address to your bags destination but even if you don't the bell desk can find the address for you. You will pay the bell desk for the service. At smaller places you must pay cash as they will not put service on your hotel bill but larger hotels will. Very reliable and I use it all the time when I travel in Japan and I have been there more than a dozen times. All explained here:

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2278.html

Aloha!

Question about this: even though I've used the service, I've never used it the way I'd like to for our next trip.

Is it possible to forward luggage from our first hotel all the way to our last stop (last hotel) and have the luggage held for the 10 days in between? I'm guessing if this is allowed there's an extra charge ... and maybe needs to be negotiated with the receiving hotel in advance?

I did it 7 days out from arrival most hotels have a storage room

Thanks everyone. This gives me peace of mind. From what I've read storage is a premium on trains not to mention carrying bags to and from the platform.

Will, just let your first hotel make all the arraignments. I do this all the time lol. The first hotel will call the last hotel and hold your bags till the time the last hotel can take your bags at no extra cost to you.

Just bow and arigato gozaimasu them profusely lol.

Aloha!

We used this service three times on our last trip. I intentionally planned a one or two night stop in between, taking an overnight bag with us. For example, we shipped from Tokyo to Takayama, knowing delivery would be the next day, and stayed one night in Hakone. When we got to Takayama our bags were already waiting in our room. We then shipped from Takayama to Kyoto, overnighting in Nara and Koyasan in between. Again, luggage ready and waiting in our room. I don't recall paying more than about $13 per bag. It was well worth it!