How to print without a printer in Japan?

Living in Japan, we are often faced with tough quandaries, for example: in a typical closet sized Tokyo apartment, having a printer at home can take up a valuable portion of your living space. But then without a printer, you’re often stuck in problematic situations, like last weekend when my girlfriend had some last minute changes to do to her resume and I wasn’t at work to print it for her.

7eleven Net Services

But no worries! In the land of the combini on every city block, 7eleven is here to save the day. After registering on the Netprint website from Fuji Xerox, you can upload any document (an Apple Word document will fail so save it as a PDF first) to the web application that will give you an 8-digit code that you can write down or send directly to your keitai. You can then walk-in any 7eleven in Japan, go to the printer machine, select ネットプリント and type that code. 20円 for a black&white A4 print, 60円 for a color A4 print.

11 thoughts on “How to print without a printer in Japan?”

  1. I did not know we could actually print that kind of document at 7-11 stores, really thanks for the tip ! It saved my life today :-) おかげ様で!

  2. This is a great idea but be warned, I spent about an hour registering on the Netprint site (it took so long due to my bad kanji skills) and uploaded my file etc. But it seems that it refuses to accept English files and will only take Japanese ones. I had even changed the file name to a Japanese one but it seems to be able to read the contents of the file and because it was all in English, it wouldn’t accept it. Looks like I’m off to Fedex to get my printing done instead.

    I guess if you’re printing pictures or Japanese documents, then by all means, this is an excellent service.

  3. there is no such limitation, I’ve printed english documents many times
    sometimes it can be a little picky with file formats, that’s all, I suggest saving as PDF for better compatibility (it’s written in the post)

    also, if you are struggling so much with Kanji, download FireFox and the Rikaichan extension

  4. Awesome! Thank you so much!
    Even though the machine had a USB port which no other sites seem to mention and I could have used, after i eventually signed up – fantastic.

  5. I have sort of the same problem. In Sweden at the moment but need to get a photo to my friend in Tokyo for an application that have it’s dead-line on Friday. I would have sent it by snail-mail but certain vulcanos got in the way…
    The photo needs to be printed on photo paper (the glossy thingy). Does anyone know if that would be possible at the 7-11 stores or can things just be printed on normal papers?
    Thanks for anything

  6. printing a photo is actually much much easier than printing random stuff on normal paper
    you can send your friend the photo file by email and he can take it on a usb thumb drive / memory card to any number of photo-print booth and get a pretty good print at any size needed in less than an hour
    I believe it’s also possible at 7eleven (not sure though) but the results might not be as good

  7. This is indeed a life-saver solution, I wish I live in Japan too, because in Malaysia 7eleven doesn’t provide service like this T_T and I will be wondering in cyber cafe in the midnight wish that they provide printing services lol …..

  8. I knew we can bring a thumb drive (or most forms of removable media) to print out, but I didn’t know “NetPrint.” Thanks for the information.

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