When Is Jalan's 10 Great Days? Coupons Start on the 15th

The day the coupons first moveThe 15thReleased early, from around 10:00. The campaign is called “from the 20th”, but there are three peaks

The campaign runs the 20th to the 29th, ten days. The coupons, though, arrive in three waves inside it: some are released early at about 10:00 on the 15th, bookings and the full set open at about 10:00 on the 20th, and more are added at about 10:00 on the 22nd.

Jalan is a Japanese booking site run by Recruit, and the coupon pages are in Japanese with prices in yen. Going only on the 20th loses everything handed out on the 15th. For anyone who would rather not chase a Japanese-language coupon window at all, Klook sells Japanese stays in English with no date to catch.

Check first: which of the three you can make

You are free at 10:00 on the 15th, the 20th or the 22nd
You hold a Recruit ID and can sign in
You know whether you are booking a room, a Jalan Pack (transport plus room), an activity, or a rental car
You have the destination down to two or three candidates
If a rental car is involved, the booking is likely to come to JPY 22,000 or more

Miss the last line and not one of the rental car coupons is usable. Every one of them carries a minimum booking value, and the lowest of those starts at JPY 22,000. For a single day’s hire that is a threshold most bookings do not reach.

Kurokawa Onsen at night, lanterns lit along the river — Kurokawa Onsen lit up at night. Room bookings are the core of the coupons, and they are also where the most coupon types can be combined. Photo: MaedaAkihiko / CC0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Three releases inside the ten days

The campaign’s name translates as “from the 20th every month: Jalan’s ten great days”, and it does run the 20th to the 29th. The name is accurate up to that point and no further, because the coupons appear in stages inside the window.

DateWhat happens

STEP 1The 15th, around 10:00Early release of part of the coupon set. Some of these are gone by the 20th if you did not claim them here. Bookings are not open yet, so the work is claiming coupons and drawing up candidates.

STEP 2The 20th, around 10:00Bookings open and the full set of coupons is available. Jalan’s own recommended procedure is to claim and book together at this point. The best-value rooms go first, so arrive with the shortlist already made.

STEP 3The 22nd, around 10:00More coupons are added. This is the second chance if the 20th produced nothing, and the moment to judge whether a booking made on the 20th is worth redoing.

STEP 4The 29thThe window closes. Anything capped by a number of bookings, as the rental car coupons are, can stop working well before the 29th.

Missing what goes out on the 15th and not going back for the additions on the 22nd cost about the same. Because the name says “from the 20th”, it is easy to plan for one visit and lose both of the others. All three start at 10:00, which at least makes them easy to put in a calendar.

Four coupons stack on a room; a car gets one

Rooms, Jalan Pack, activities and rental cars each have their own page under the same campaign. The largest difference between them is whether coupons can be combined at all.

ProductWhat can be combinedCounts and minimumsHow it lands

Rooms and hotelsJalan coupon + property coupon + regional coupon + special coupon, 4 kindsValues and quantities vary by coupon and by roundGoes furthest, because they stack. Jalan states up to about 36%

Jalan Pack (transport plus room)Jalan Pack coupon + property coupon, 2 kindsAs aboveIncludes the airfare, so the same percentage is a larger sum

ActivitiesHandled on a page of their ownAs aboveLow unit prices, so some rounds never reach the minimum

Rental carsOne coupon per booking, 1 onlyJPY 9,500 / 7,800 / 6,100 and others. Minimums start at JPY 22,000Large face values, clearly stated terms — but capped at the first 50 or 15 bookings

Taken from Jalan’s own explainer and the Jalan Rentacar ten-days page (listed in the reference block below). Values and quantities change from round to round. Checked on 2026-09-20.

On the lodging side four coupons stack. Claim one and stop and you leave behind what could have been layered on top. Read the discounted figure on the booking screen, and if less has come off than you expected, go back and check whether a combinable coupon is still sitting there unclaimed.

Rental cars work the other way round: one coupon per booking, but the face values are printed. The high-value band is JPY 9,500, JPY 7,800 and JPY 6,100; the New Year early-booking band is JPY 6,700, JPY 5,900 and JPY 5,000; the last-minute band is JPY 5,500, JPY 4,700 and JPY 3,800. Since the lodging figures are hard to read in advance, starting on the car side is one way to calibrate what this campaign is worth.

Where people trip up

A coupon you already hold can stop working

The rental car coupons are capped by number of bookings: 50 for the high-value band and 15 for the rest. Jalan words it plainly — a coupon you have already claimed can become unusable even during the campaign period. Holding one is not the same as having secured the discount.

Fifteen bookings is a tiny number set against the volume of car hire across Japan. Ten days of campaign and ten days of availability are two different statements. If you cancel, the coupon is returned provided you are still inside the booking period. It also cannot be printed out and used later; it exists only at the moment of booking.

Inflating a booking to clear the minimum loses money

The minimum booking values on rental cars run from JPY 22,000 up to JPY 55,000. Stretch the hire by a day to qualify for the JPY 9,500 coupon and that extra day can easily cost more than JPY 9,500. The top-up needed to reach the threshold outgrows the coupon it unlocks.

This is where Rakuten Travel’s days with a 5 or a 0 sit at the opposite end: the highway bus minimum there is JPY 2,500 including tax, which a single leg clears. Jalan pays more and asks for more. Which is better depends on the size of the booking, and a trip that runs up a large total — several nights, several people, something like the four days through the Yaeyama islands — clears Jalan’s thresholds more easily.

Do not budget from last month’s figures

Both the make-up of the coupon set and the amounts change round by round. The lodging and pack side has several kinds and the values move. The “up to about 36%” that Jalan publishes is a ceiling, and the rate that actually applies differs coupon by coupon.

Some items are outside the discount entirely. Accommodation tax is usually collected at the property and no coupon reduces it. Cutting the room rate does not change the tax per person per night, so to compare totals properly, add that back in separately before judging.

What happens once the 29th passes

You wait until the 15th of the following month. Counted from one 20th to the next that is about a month; counted from the early release on the 15th it is 26 days. Against Rakuten Travel’s days with a 5 or a 0, where the longest gap is five days, missing one round costs visibly more time here.

That difference in waiting is what decides which campaign you use. With departure three months out you can let two or three Jalan rounds go by and still be fine. With departure three weeks out, the next 20th may fall after the trip. Counting backwards from the travel date to see how many 20th-to-29th windows are left is the more reliable move.

The same structure is why the early release on the 15th deserves more respect than it gets. Claim the coupons on the 15th and the job at 10:00 on the 20th is only the booking. Start claiming at 10:00 sharp and the good rooms are filling while you do it. Ten minutes on the 15th shortens the contest on the 20th.

Which is also the argument for having the shortlist ready. Jalan recommends doing the claiming and the booking together at 10:00 on the 20th, and if you begin searching for a property at that moment, the best-value ones go while you are still choosing. For a solo stay at an onsen inn, the criteria for picking a quiet one; for a one-night trip, working backwards from an article with a worked total such as the Kanazawa two-day budget shows you in advance what the discount is worth in yen.

The onsen town of Ginzan in winter, wooden inns along the river under snow — Ginzan Onsen. Room bookings are where this campaign is fought; rental cars and activities sit on separate pages under separate terms. Photo: Sakaori / CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Common questions: the amounts, which day to pick, the rival campaign

How much do the room coupons take off?

The lodging and pack values differ coupon by coupon and move between rounds, so Jalan does not publish them as a list of face values. What it does publish is the ceiling, “up to about 36%”. The side with printed amounts is the rental car page, where all nine settings from JPY 9,500 down to JPY 3,800 are stated outright. Using those as a sense of the upper end is a reasonable way to budget the lodging side.

If I can only make one of the 15th, 20th or 22nd?

The 20th. That is the day bookings open, so claiming and booking can be finished in one sitting. The 15th is claiming only and the 22nd is checking the additions; neither completes a booking by itself. If it has to be one visit, accept that some coupons will be missed and be there at 10:00 on the 20th.

Is this better than Rakuten Travel’s days with a 5 or a 0?

They are designed differently. Rakuten Travel runs six rounds a month of 48 hours each, with lodging up to 20% off. Jalan runs once a month for ten days, with four coupons that stack on a room. For catching a round often, Rakuten Travel; for cutting deeper in one go, Jalan. With fixed dates, you simply use whichever one your dates fall inside.

SOURCES

Jalan News — explainer for Jalan’s ten great days (the three releases, what combines) ↗Checked on 2026-09-20
Jalan Rentacar — ten great days (face values, minimums, booking caps) ↗Checked on 2026-09-20

Source: the reference block above / Rakuten Travel’s campaign pages, for the comparison / Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Checked on 2026-09-20

When Is Jalan’s 10 Great Days? Coupons Start on the 15th