IQOS TEREA and Ploom in Japan: The Lineup You Cannot Buy at Home

Japan sells IQOS TEREA, glo, and Ploom at the same convenience stores, in flavors none of the three companies sell in other countries. If you already use one of these products, Japan has more choice than your home market does. If you come from a country where heated tobacco is restricted or banned, start with the next section — it lays out exactly what you can buy, carry, and take home.

Where IQOS, glo, and Ploom are legal — and where they are not

Japan places no restrictions on buying, carrying, or exporting any of these products. Anyone old enough to buy tobacco in Japan — age 20, not 1811 — can buy a device or a pack of sticks at a convenience store, an airport shop, or a brand store, and take it out of the country in carry-on or checked luggage.

That is not true everywhere else.

Country	Status	What this means for you
Japan	Fully legal	Buy, carry, and export freely
Hong Kong	Banned	Import, sale, and possession are all illegal, even for personal use
Singapore	Banned	Devices and sticks are both prohibited, including for personal use
Australia	Import restricted	Bringing one in without a permit is not allowed
United States	Not officially sold	TEREA is not on the US market; only the older IQOS 3 system is sold, and only in a few pilot cities
Canada	Legal, limited flavors	TEREA is sold in three provinces, tobacco flavors only

Hong Kong. Full ban since April 30, 2022 — import, sale, and possession are all illegal, even a single stick for personal use.1 Since April 30, 2026, simply carrying sticks or a device in public is also an offense, from a HK$3,000 fixed fine up to HK$50,000 and six months in prison for larger amounts.1

Singapore. Banned since 2018. Import, sale, possession, and use are all prohibited, and the law names “heated tobacco products such as IQOS” directly.2

Australia. Import is blocked without prior written permission — a permit a normal tourist won’t have.3 In practice: leave it in Japan.

United States. TEREA is not officially sold in the US at all — the FDA is still reviewing Philip Morris’s application, filed in October 2023. What’s on sale right now is only the older IQOS 3 with HEETS sticks, in a few pilot cities (Austin, Jackson, and some military bases).4 Owning a device is legal; buying TEREA sticks in a US store is not currently possible.

Canada. IQOS ILUMA and TEREA are sold legally, but only in Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta, and only in plain tobacco flavors — no menthol, no fruit capsules.5

Three heated-tobacco systems, one country

Three different companies sell heated tobacco in Japan, and each runs its own device and its own stick brands.

System	Made by	Current device	Stick brands
IQOS	Philip Morris Japan	IQOS ILUMA i	TEREA, SENTIA
glo	BAT Japan	glo Hyper Pro	Lucky Strike, Kent, Neo
Ploom	Japan Tobacco (JT)	Ploom Aura, Ploom X Advanced	Mevius, Camel, EVO

IQOS ILUMA only works with TEREA or SENTIA sticks — never HEETS. ILUMA heats tobacco by induction, using a heating element built into the stick itself. The older IQOS 3 uses a metal blade inside the device instead, which is what HEETS sticks are built for. Put a HEETS stick in an ILUMA, or a TEREA stick in an old IQOS 3, and it will not work correctly.

glo and Ploom use their own separate blade-heating designs, so their sticks are not interchangeable with IQOS or with each other.

None of the three are vapes. A vape heats a flavored liquid. Heated tobacco heats real tobacco leaf packed inside a stick. For liquid vapes sold in Japan, see our guide to vaping in Japan.

Flavors you won’t find at home

Convenience stores in Japan don’t sell one or two kinds of heated-tobacco stick — they sell dozens, on the same shelf.

Plain tobacco and menthol. This is the baseline lineup, similar to what most countries already get under the TEREA, glo, or Ploom name.

Flavored capsule sticks. This is the part that’s different. Each stick has a small capsule built into the filter — crush it partway through smoking, and the taste switches to something stronger. IQOS sells this line as TEREA Pearl; glo’s version is called Neo; Ploom’s is called EVO. A few TEREA Pearl flavors on shelves right now:

• TEREA Oasis Pearl — tropical fruit
• TEREA Blossom Pearl — strawberry
• TEREA Stellar Pearl — citrus, released January 2026

SENTIA, the budget line. Alongside TEREA sits a second, cheaper IQOS stick line: same devices, milder tobacco taste, ¥50 less per pack. Worth knowing the name before you get to the shelf, since TEREA and SENTIA sit side by side and first-time buyers often mix them up.

None of this is a small lineup. As of July 2026, Japan has close to thirty TEREA variants on sale at once, plus around twenty SENTIA, twenty-three glo, and twenty-eight Ploom variants — and the count shifts most months, as older flavors get discontinued and new ones launch. The Pearl capsule flavors, and most of this range in general, are simply not part of what Canada sells under the same TEREA name.

What devices and sticks cost in Japan

Prices below are current as of July 2026.

Devices

Prices for the IQOS ILUMA lineup and Ploom Aura match each brand’s own published pricing.913

Product	Price	In USD*
IQOS ILUMA i One (compact, all-in-one)	¥3,980	~$24
IQOS ILUMA i	¥6,980	~$43
IQOS ILUMA i Prime	¥9,980	~$61
Ploom X Advanced	¥980	~$6
Ploom Aura	¥2,980	~$18
glo Hyper Pro	~¥2,970	~$18

These aren’t just different price points — what actually separates them:

• IQOS ILUMA i One — holder and charger combined into one body. Smaller to carry, but you plug the whole device in to recharge instead of pocket-charging it between sticks.
• IQOS ILUMA i — the standard model, no touchscreen.
• IQOS ILUMA i Prime — the standard model plus a touchscreen and a pause function.
• Ploom X Advanced — the older generation, two selectable heat modes.
• Ploom Aura — the current generation: four heat modes, a lighter body, and a newer heating method JT calls Smart HeatFlow.

Sticks (pack of 20)

A pack of TEREA sticks for IQOS ILUMA. Japan sells around thirty flavors of TEREA at once.

TEREA and SENTIA prices match IQOS Japan’s own published list.8 Japan is also raising heated-tobacco tax in two steps this year, in April and October, so the prices below are likely to move again by autumn.10

Product	Price	In USD*
TEREA	¥620	~$3.80
SENTIA	¥570	~$3.50
Ploom — Mevius, Camel, EVO	¥530–580	~$3.25–3.55
glo — Lucky Strike, Kent, Neo	¥450–580	~$2.75–3.55

SENTIA is IQOS’s budget stick line, made for the same devices as TEREA — milder tobacco taste, ¥50 cheaper per pack.

*Converted at roughly ¥164 to $1, July 2026. Use this for a rough sense of cost, not for budgeting to the dollar.

Where to buy them in Japan

Convenience stores. 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, Lawson, and the rest sell TEREA, SENTIA, glo, and Ploom sticks right next to the cigarettes, and most stock a few devices too, not just sticks. Buying sticks works the same way as buying a pack of cigarettes: look at the display board, find the number next to the pack you want, tell the clerk that number, and pay. Our guide to buying cigarettes at a Japanese convenience store covers every step and any small variations you’ll run into store to store. One rule doesn’t change either way: you have to be 20 or older to buy any of this.

Brand stores. Convenience stores — “konbini” in Japanese — only carry a handful of entry-level devices. For the full lineup, go to a brand store instead: IQOS Store in Ginza (Tokyo) or Shinsaibashi (Osaka), or the IQOS counters at Narita and Osaka airports — our guide to duty-free prices at Japanese airports covers what TEREA costs there and the multi-carton discount. Staff there can set the device up for you on the spot and let you compare models side by side. JT runs its own version of this for Ploom, including a Ploom Lounge in Osaka.

Ploom Lounge in Osaka. JT runs this brand store, and it has its own free smoking space for customers.

Cafes with free samples. Doutor Coffee Shop runs a dedicated heated-tobacco-only smoking room in around 140 locations nationwide, part of the official “IQOS Spot” program.6 Inside, you’ll typically find a self-serve box of free TEREA or SENTIA samples sitting alongside IQOS branding and promo material — take a stick if the box has stock, no staff interaction required. What’s in the box varies by location and day, so it’s a nice bonus to run into rather than something to plan around. Pronto, a coffee-and-bar chain, runs a similar setup in some of its branches.

For a place built entirely around trying flavors, there’s the IQOS Signature Cafe in Ginza. The ground floor is a showroom and shop, open to anyone. The lounge upstairs, where you sit down with a coffee and work through different flavors, is for IQOSPHERE members only.12

Why heated tobacco is everywhere in Japan: etiquette and the 2020 law

Two things explain this: one cultural, one legal. The legal one matters more.

The cultural reason. In Japan, avoiding trouble or inconvenience for the people around you carries real weight in daily life — often called meiwaku. Cigarette smoke and ash on clothes are exactly what this norm discourages, and heated tobacco is marketed as the cleaner option: less smell, no ash, no visible smoke.

The legal reason. In 2018, Japan passed a revision to the Health Promotion Act. It took full effect on April 1, 2020.7 From that date, restaurants, bars, and cafes had to go smoke-free indoors by default — with one exception. A business can open a room limited to heated tobacco only, and unlike an ordinary smoking room, customers are allowed to eat and drink inside it.7 Regular cigarettes get no such exception.

A Tokyo notice board announcing the April 2020 indoor smoking ban. Next to it, the official sign chart — including the "designated heated tobacco smoking room" sign a venue can still use.

That single rule is why chains like Doutor and Pronto built heated-tobacco rooms instead of just banning smoking outright, and why so many cafes now post a “heated tobacco only” sign at the door.

Step outside that room, though, and none of it applies. Our guide to Tokyo street smoking fines covers the outdoor rules — on the street, a heated-tobacco stick gets fined exactly like a cigarette, regardless of what’s allowed indoors.

Bringing sticks home — what’s actually allowed

Whether you can bring any of this into your destination comes down to the table earlier in this guide, not to anything Japan restricts on the way out — Japan doesn’t limit how much a traveler carries out in personal luggage for personal use.

Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia. Already covered above: don’t bring any of it. This isn’t a duty limit you can go over and pay extra for — it’s a prohibited item, and it gets confiscated at customs.

UK, most of the EU, and other markets where these products already sell legally. Normal personal-import and duty-free tobacco allowances apply, the same as bringing home cigarettes. Check your destination’s customs limit for heated-tobacco sticks specifically — some countries count them separately from cigarettes rather than folding them into the same allowance. Our guide to duty-free tobacco allowances by country has the exact numbers for nine countries.

United States. The normal personal-use tobacco import limit still applies here, same as it would for cigarettes — this isn’t a loophole for bringing in unlimited sticks. What’s different is what happens after you land: there’s nowhere to restock TEREA once you’re home, since it isn’t sold in US stores. Bring enough to last the trip home, or plan on ordering more from an overseas retailer once you run out.