[viccro]

I’m sort of answering your question sideways, but: there are services in Japan that you can pay to deliver your luggage so that you don’t have to deal with it all yourself! It’s obviously more expensive, so that’s a trade off.

There are also coin lockers at many train stations — my plan for my upcoming trip, since we’re flying in and out of Tokyo, is to use that as a sort of “base camp”. We’re going to downsize the luggage we take with us on the train, by stashing at least one bag in a locker, and then come back to our additional stuff when we come back into town.