Pharmacist by day, crazed fangirl and anime addict by night. This blog will feature mostly one piece, but also my many other loves including (but not limited to!): attack on titan, digimon (mostly taiyama), fairy tail, boku no hero academia
After years of talking about how much we wanted to visit Japan, my friends and I are finally taking the plunge.
Similar to many others, the biggest concerns we had were budget, taking enough time off of work, and not really having any idea how to approach it.
I have spent an exorbitant amount researching the interwebs and scouring reviews so if it helps anyone else, I am putting together several guides of what I thought was important to know with a focus on how to be budget-friendly.
*Please keep in mind this is for a group of friends visiting together from the US, so certain things may not be as applicable to solo or couple travelers or other countries, but many things should cross over.
GENERAL CHECKLIST with TIMELINE (links to more detailed posts on each topic to come)
~One year before
Decide on a general season/month that the group wants to go
Start figuring out who is fairly committed to going (you don’t need a final headcount yet but want to start narrowing it down)
Start SAVING (a dedicated Japan fund with 100 to 150 dollars per month can help ease the strain off big purchases you may need to make later on)
It’s not for everyone, but signing up for a good international travel credit card can help save some money
Expenses at this stage: none (you should be saving instead!)
~6-7 months before
Decide on a very basic itinerary. By this I mean an estimate of about how many cities you want to go and how much time you want to spend in Japan overall. This is necessary for the most important step, which is picking a flight
We chose a 14-day trip, and knew that we wanted to split our time between Tokyo and Kyoto/Osaka
Keep an eye on airline prices the general month/season you want to go
Follow-up post on tips for cheap airfare to come but the highlights include: being flexible with the exact dates, setting up a price alert, going off-season, using travel rewards from a credit card
I did a lot of research on whether or not to fly into one city and fly out of the other but ultimately decided that the most cost-effective thing to do was fly in and out of Tokyo and use a JR pass to go back and forth between Kyoto/Osaka and Tokyo
Although it may be cheaper to fly mid-week, in the end it was a better use of our work PTO to fly out on Saturday and come back on the weekend. This also helps cushion the trip for travel time and jet lag
FINALIZE DATES AND A FLIGHT AND STICK TO THEM
A significant amount of planning for Japan depends on which dates you are going so you can’t keep switching them around
Most flights will be non-refundable and you don’t want to waste money having to change them around
An oft forgotten tip, CHECK YOUR PASSPORT NOW and make sure it is not expiring in the 6 months after your flight to Japan. If it is going to expire (as was the case for my BF), start getting your docs together and submit a renewal sooner rather than later
Expenses at this stage:
Airfare: ~$1000 (this varies widely but coming from the US, but this was our budget. We ended up getting it a lot cheaper using AA points)
IF you need to renew your passport, about $150 for passport photos, fees, and shipping
3 to 6 months before
Once you have your dates and your flights, you can really get the ball rolling. You will also start to finalize your true headcount now as people start buying tickets
Build out a slightly more detailed itinerary (not what you’ll be doing every day, but just in general what cities you want to spend each day in). We had a few restraints that helped us pin down our itinerary:
I wanted to save money by only doing a 7-day JR pass. Even though we were going to be in Japan for 14 days, the JR pass is really only cost-effective when you’re using it on long trips. So that means that we would activate our JR pass on the day we were planning to travel to Kyoto from Tokyo. From then, it would be active for 7 days, and we would need to get on a bullet train back from Osaka to Tokyo on the 7th day. So we knew we would be spending 7 days in Kyoto and Osaka and 7 days in Tokyo.
Specific events/festivals. For example, a couple people in our group wanted to attend a concert on a specific day in Osaka
If you are going during cherry blossom season, this will also affect which dates you spend in which cities
Pick where to stay (do not delay on this)
This was one of the most stressful and difficult things for me, to be honest. Balancing budget vs location vs amenities and space is really difficult. The good thing is there are a lot of good guides out there depending on where your budget is
In general, your options are hostels, low-budget hotels, very nice hotels, and airBnB
Ultimately airBnB seemed like the best pick for our group. The hotels seemed to be relatively tiny in Japan and we wanted to be able to stay somewhat nicely for a cheap price so an airbnb allowed us to all split the costs at one place.
Even after deciding on airBnB, we spent HOURS and DAYS choosing which one. If you are going during a hot season, airBnBs will get booked like hot cakes! As soon as you find a good one, you need to put a reservation in very quickly.
What helped us narrow it down was that we knew we wanted 2 bathrooms for the 6 of us. We also stuck to a budget of about $40-70/night/person. Being near a train station was important to us as well. I focused on keeping costs low here since we wouldn’t be spending much time in the place
I used google maps to make sure that the location we were choosing wouldn’t be too far away from major destinations we wanted to hit using public transportation (~40 mins or less)
Expenses at this stage:
Lodging: As mentioned, we had set our budget at about ~$55/night/per person which comes out to $715 for 13 nights. We scored some good thrifty deals and ended up at less than $600/per person for this.
1 to 3 months before
If there are any tours or tickets to events you want to do, I’d recommend booking them around 3 months out, especially if it’s going to be a busy season. I saw a lot of tours get sold out before I could get to them
We read stellar reviews for Mario go-karting around Japan and picked a date far in advance for this as we did not want to miss it. Will update on how it is once we go!
If you want to do the mario go kart, you will also need to get an International Driving Permit before you leave for Japan (you can get it for $25 at the AAA in the US)
We also booked a couple ‘experiences’ through Airbnb
If you haven’t yet, purchase your 7-day JR pass (this needs be done before you leave for Japan as well and shipped to you)
Purchase either a Wi-Fi hotspot or SIM card
This is when you want to start really doing your research and picking out generally which areas of town you want to spend each day in.
Though I am a bit OCD, I did not want to pack my schedule or plan every detail as I think that takes the fun out of traveling. I just picked big spots I did not want to miss and tried to figure out the most efficient ways to group them together. I really didn’t want to waste precious time in Japan figuring out things we could have researched before
This can take a lot longer than you expect!
Start familiarizing yourself with Japanese language and commuting
As mentioned, I wanted to make sure I had a basic understanding of things to minimize getting lost and other hassles
I used Youtube a lot and also took this time to download Google’s amazing google translate app
Expenses at this stage:
Tours/Experiences: These range between $40-$100. How many you do will depend on your budget and your time.
If doing mario go-kart, it cost us $95 for the longest time slot and an additional $25 for the international driving permit.
Wifi Hot Spot: ~$50/for 7 days
JR pass: ~$270 for a 7-day pass, ~$455 for 14-days
Less than 1 month
Aside from being super excited, now’s the time to start making sure you have all the items you’ll need in Japan
Some things I made sure I got were a GoPro, a pretty backpack to take around that would fit the items I need, any outfits, an external battery pack, a universal adapter (confirm first if your electronics run on 110 v or not)
Keep researching/learning Japanese
Keep print outs on hand of important documents (passports, addresses, maps) in case your phone dies
Do some research on exactly what you need to do when you get off the plane. I realized that I had no idea where we would need to go to take the bullet train from the Narita airport to Kyoto. This will make your first hours in Japan less stressful
Exchange dollars for yen (A surprising amount of places do not accept credit card in Japan so I wanted to have about 50,000 Yen on hand in case of emergencies, and also wanted to limit how many times I needed to pull from ATMs to avoid the fees)
Confirm with your bank account/credit card company that you will be out of the country. Try to make sure you use a credit card that does not have foreign transaction fees
Expenses at this stage vary depending on how much you’ve traveled in the past and how many new things you may need to purchase.
Oof, that was a huge word dump, but that should cover at least the necessities (unless I missed something which I’m sure I did). We haven’t actually gone to Japan yet so it will be exciting to see what works out as planned and what goes totally the opposite. Once I make more detailed posts, I will link to those within here and remove all the details from here.
Can 2018 be the end of fanwars? The end of comparison of groups? The end of hate altogether?
This should be a reminder that it doesn’t matter who has more daesangs on display. It doesn’t matter if your faves are popular or not. It doesn’t matter. None of it does.
What matters is love. Support. Kindness.
What matters is that our idols are human too. They feel sadness, lonlieness, and worthlessness as well as happiness and laughter. They can be in a stadium with 20,000 people yet feel alone standing on that stage with their members; their fans right in front of them.
