By the HalfKey team
Bicycle registration and parking on a 90-day Tokyo stay
A used bicycle stays in the previous owner's name until someone re-registers it, and that is a new number, not a name change. Station parking is paid everywhere, and the price of getting a removed bike back is set by your ward, not by Tokyo.
On this page
Buying a bicycle in Tokyo takes about twenty minutes. Ten of those minutes are the registration, and it costs 660 yen.
That registration is 防犯登録 (bōhan tōroku — "crime-prevention registration"). It puts the bike into a record held by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, under your name. Setagaya's bicycle page names the law behind it: the act on safe bicycle use and bicycle parking, in force since 20 June 1994, Article 12, paragraph 3, which makes registering a duty of the person riding. The police add one condition. Register in the prefecture where you ride.
Three levels decide how a bicycle works here: prefecture, ward, building. Tokyo sets the registration, its fee, and how long it lasts. Your ward sets where you may leave the bike and what it costs to get it back. Your building decides whether you have a space at all. Check all three before you buy.
What happens at the shop counter
Look for the sign reading 自転車防犯登録所. Bicycle shops carry it, and so do some supermarkets and home centers. You hand over the bike, a government-issued photo ID, and 660 yen, which is tax-exempt. You leave with a sticker on the frame and a card for your wallet, your own copy of the record. Keep the card. Every later step asks for it.
The registration lasts ten years, counted from the start of the year after you register. On a 60-day or 90-day stay you will never reach the end of it. That matters more than it sounds, and the last section says why.
The registration does not come with the bike
Here is the part that catches short-stay riders. Buying a used bicycle does not move the registration. The Tokyo body that runs the register states it directly: when the owner changes, you register a new number, and you cannot keep the old number under a new name.
So the record does not update when money changes hands. It updates when you walk into a shop with the bike. Until then the record still names the seller.
The whole point of the register is to match a bicycle to a person. The Tokyo police describe the purpose as stopping theft and returning stolen bikes. It works in one direction only. Someone reads the frame number, and the record answers with a name. If you bought the bike casually at a recycle shop, from a departing student, or through a listing app, and nobody re-registered it, the name is not yours. You are then the person who has to explain.
The fix costs 660 yen and one trip. Take the bike to a registration shop with your photo ID. Bring the seller's registration card if they gave it to you, or a 譲渡証明書 (jōto shōmeisho — a transfer certificate, a short signed note saying they handed you the bike). Tokyo's registration body asks to see one of those if you have it. Ask the seller for it while you are still standing there. After they walk away it is close to impossible to get.
Where you may leave it
Free parking near a Tokyo station is a short free window, not a free space.
Shibuya publishes its own list. The lot under the ward office is free for two hours, then 100 yen for up to twelve, with 127 spaces. The lot at the Hachiko exit is free for one hour, then 100 yen for twelve, with 193 spaces. Dogenzaka charges 110 yen for six hours after a free first hour. Cheap, if you use it.
Monthly spaces are the other option, and they change the arithmetic. Shibuya's Fukuras West lot takes subscriptions only, at 3,200 yen a month. Over a 90-day stay that is 9,600 yen. A recycled bicycle from Minato's Silver Human Resources Center starts at 9,000 yen, with the 660 yen registration charged on top. So parking near Shibuya station for a whole 90-day stay costs about what the bicycle costs. Budget the parking together with the bike, not after it.
Then the building layer. Ask the manager or the management company three things: whether the apartment has a bicycle space, whether it needs a sticker, and whether a short-stay guest may use one. If the answer is no, you are renting from the ward or a private lot, and that 3,200 yen becomes a real monthly line in your stay. Ask before you buy anything. This is a good use of the first conversation with your building manager.
When the bike is gone
A bicycle left outside a marked lot near a station gets taken away. Shibuya clears bikes from a 放置禁止区域 (hōchi kinshi kuiki — a no-parking zone) the same day, with no warning first. Outside those zones the ward tags the bike, then removes it the next day if it has not moved.
The fee to get it back is a ward fee, not a Tokyo fee. Shibuya charges 4,000 yen for a bicycle, the rate since 1 April 2023. Setagaya charges 3,000 yen. Same mistake, 1,000 yen apart, decided by which side of a boundary you parked on.
Do the arithmetic once and you will not do it twice. In Shibuya, 4,000 yen is more than a third of the cheapest recycled bicycle in Minato. Two removals is 8,000 yen, which is nearly the whole bike. Against that, 100 yen for twelve hours in a marked lot is nothing.
Collection costs a trip on top of the fee. Shibuya's storage yards open at 1pm and close at 7pm Monday to Saturday, and at 5pm on Sunday. You cannot collect a bike on your way to work. One yard sits under the expressway at Hatagaya 2-31, four minutes' walk from Sasazuka station. Another is at Ebisu 4-2-6. Bring the key and photo ID, because the ward asks for both.
If your bicycle disappears, assume the ward took it before you assume theft. Call the ward's abandoned-bicycle desk that same day and ask which yard holds it. Shibuya keeps a removed bike for one month after it posts the notice, then disposes of it. No shame in the trip. Just go early in the opening window.
Before you leave Tokyo
Your registration outlives your stay by years. It holds your name against an apartment you no longer live in.
Closing it is a separate form: 抹消登録 (masshō tōroku — deregistration, deleting your record). Tokyo's registration body charges 500 yen for it, the rate since 1 April 2025. Same kind of shop, same counter, bring the bike and your photo ID. Do it when you scrap the bike, hand it to someone, or move out of Tokyo.
If you are passing the bike to the next person, give them your registration card and write them a transfer note. They need both to put the bike in their own name. That saves them the exact problem you just read about.
If nobody wants it, the bike is not ordinary rubbish. Shibuya runs a free collection for unwanted bicycles. Other wards treat a bicycle as bulky waste, with a reservation, a fee sticker, and a set collection date, the same as any large item you leave behind.
Before you ride it home
- Register at the shop that sells it. 660 yen, photo ID, ten minutes. Look for the 自転車防犯登録所 sign.
- Buying used: ask for the seller's registration card or a written transfer note before you pay, then register the bike in your own name. A new number, not a name change.
- Ask the building manager about a bicycle space and a sticker before you buy anything.
- Look up your ward's removal fee now. Shibuya 4,000 yen. Setagaya 3,000 yen. Then use the marked lot.
- In your last week, deregister for 500 yen, or hand the bike over with the card and a transfer note.