Tattoo seals: where to buy them in Japan, and what size you need

What a tattoo seal is

In Japanese it is a タトゥー隠しシール, a tattoo-hiding sticker, or a ファンデーションテープ, foundation tape. It is a thin, opaque, flesh-toned film with a strong adhesive, sold in packs of three to ten, in sizes from a palm to a sheet of paper. It stays on in hot water, which a bandage does not. The colors are made for Japanese skin, so the range is light to medium; on darker skin the patch shows as a patch, which is fine for the rule but not invisible.

Baths that accept a seal do not want to see the tattoo. Every rule on this site that allows one says the same thing in different words: the seal has to cover it completely. Ink showing past the edge counts as uncovered.

What size to buy

This is the part the blogs skip, and it is the part that decides whether you get in. A bath that takes a seal sets a limit, and the limit is the size of its own seals times the number it allows, usually two. Across our listings the limit runs from one seal of 8×10 cm to a 30×30 cm tattoo, and the same chain can allow one thing in one town and another in the next. The common allowances:

• APA Hotels: two seals of 10×12 cm, free to overnight guests, at the front desk.
• Route Inn: two seals of 11.4×20 cm, sold at the desk. The most generous chain allowance on this site.
• Dormy Inn and Onyado Nono: two seals per guest in three sizes up to 11.8×17.2 cm, where the property stocks them.
• Ooedo Onsen Monogatari: two of the hotel’s own 10×14 cm seals, 220 yen each; seals you bring are not accepted.
• Small independents: often a single 8×10 cm seal, and sometimes you have to bring it.

So: measure the tattoo in centimeters, then look up the place. The cover seal page lists all 157, sorted by the size each allows, smallest first. If yours is bigger than the limit, a seal will not get you in, and the answer is a place with a private bath or one with no rule at all.

Where to buy tattoo seals in Japan

At the front desk. The easiest way, when it works. More than forty places in this guide hand seals out free or sell them, at prices from 200 yen: every APA hotel with a bath gives staying guests two a night, Daiwa Roynet sells them for 200 yen, Ooedo for 220. The catch is that you get the hotel’s size, and some, Ooedo among them, refuse any seal you did not buy from them. Each listing says which.

Amazon Japan. The widest choice, and the way to get a size the hotel does not sell. Amazon Japan delivers to hotels, so order a few days ahead to your first night’s address, with your name and check-in date on the order, and tell the hotel a parcel is coming. Some sellers ship abroad too. Prices seen on 18 September 2026:

• SEIWA LL size, ten sheets, 11.4×20 cm, about 1,140 yen. The same size Route Inn uses; two of them cover most of a forearm.
• Foundation Tape color-matching set, five sheets in five shades, about 500 yen. Buy this first to find your shade, then the size you need.
• Foundation Tape large, five sheets and extra large, three sheets, about 1,490 yen each.
• Skin cover sheets, 0.02 mm, large, about 1,380 yen. Thinner and less visible, less tough.

Drugstores and Don Quijote. Tattoo seals are sold over the counter in Japan, and Don Quijote is the shop most often named for them. We have not checked shelves ourselves, and their online stores did not show stock when we looked, so treat a shop as a maybe and a front desk or Amazon as the plan. If you do ask in a shop, the words are タトゥー隠しシール (tatū kakushi shīru).

These Amazon links are ordinary links; this site earns nothing from them.

How to put one on

Wash the skin with soap, rinse, and dry it completely: a seal on damp or oily skin lifts in the bath. Peel the white backing, lay the sticky side over the tattoo with a margin all round, and press from the middle outward, smoothing bubbles toward the edges. Most seals then have a clear top film to peel away; do that last, slowly. Put it on at check-in, not at the bath door: a warm, sweaty body in a changing room is the worst place to apply one.

A well-applied seal lasts a day or more, long enough for an evening and a morning bath. It comes off in a warm shower with soap, edge first. Skin that reacts to plasters can react to a seal, so try one at home before the trip.

Where a seal does not help

Some baths ban the sticker along with the tattoo. This guide has two dozen records where the operator names stickers, cover seals or body paint in its refusal, among them Candeo Tokyo Shimbashi, Ocean Spa Fuua in Atami, Almont Hotel Sendai and Nakaya in Echigo-Yuzawa. Turning up with a seal at one of those means being turned away at the door. They are recorded, unlisted, on the area pages.

And a seal is only ever an answer for a tattoo it can hide. For a sleeve or a back piece, the places worth your time are the 95 with nothing to cover and the 331 with a bath of your own.