What I Wish I Knew Before Traveling to Japan (and other tips) Part 1
I’ve had quite a few questions about my experience in Japan, how I was able to afford it, and what were my hiccups during my 2.5 week stay (Sept-Oct 2015). So here is my guide to traveling in Japan. This isn’t the only way to travel Japan, just what I did and what I would do differently. This was the first trip I planned myself, and I learned so much along the way. Some of these tips are universal for traveling and a lot of it is common sense, but there are a lot of nuances to Japan that knowing ahead of time will make the trip easier. It’s kinda huge so I’m breaking this into multiple parts.
Before You Leave
Time and plan your trip based on your currency. At the time of my trip and while writing this, the US dollar was quite strong against the yen (Approx. $0.85 to ¥100). This made everything in Japan cheaper for me! If I bought something for ¥1000, I really only spent around $8.50 instead of $10.00 (sans any exchange fees I experienced). This is an easy cost saving measure and definitely helped me afford the trip.
Check Japan’s holidays. I aligned my time in Japan with my friend who lives there and some other friends who were also visiting in order to be able to hang out together. This meant that I ended up being in Tokyo during Silver Week (basically Golden Week in September and it’s apparently a newer thing) and the last big sumo event of the year. This meant that everyone in Japan was also on vacation. Many places to stay were booked way ahead of time, some things I wanted to experience were sold out, and everything was crowded.
Don’t travel with too many people. For our first week, there was 5 of us, and it was difficult to find nicer sit-down places to eat for the entire group without long wait times. 1-3 other people is a much more comfortable group to travel with. 2 people will make it really easy, especially if you’re rooming together during your journey.
Save more than you need. I put aside $4000 but I planned on only spending $3000 and that worked out very comfortably for me. That was my entire budget, including flight, rooms, travel, food, excursions, and souvenirs and I didn’t worry too much about my spending habits in Japan. I only barely went over the $3000 because of it. Don’t plan your trip based on the budget I set for myself. I sat down and looked at everything to figure out my budget based on many factors. Your experience or situation may be different. Have a Financial Spreadsheet I planned everything financial using Google Sheets, which I opted to use over Excel because I could access it on my tablet over Wifi. I didn’t do anything fancy, but I tracked all my expenses I purchased beforehand and estimated expenses to plan my budget. I also fronted money for others coming with me so I used it to track what I was owed and when I was paid back. Note: Never front money expecting to get it back, even with friends or significant others you trust. Just because I was paid back in full doesn’t mean you will be. If you can’t afford to not be paid back, don’t loan money out in the first place. Plan your route beforehand. You don’t need to plan to the hour or anything. It’s easy to plan based on specific things you want to see. When I planned, I wanted to visit Akihabara, go to a Pokemon Center, see Fushimi Inari Taisha and Daibutsu, feed deer in Nara, eat Takoyaki in Osaka, and a ton of other places and things. I then ranked them based on how much I cared and planned my trip around that. I didn’t actually know a lot about where everything was, so finding out things like Daibutsu was actually on the edge of Nara Park (where the bowing deer are), and Nara being at the end of the same train that would take me to Fushimi Inari Taisha, my days started coming together. Plan to visit things near each other on the same day. It will save you money, time, and energy. Japan-guide.com was a great resource for me when I was planning on where to go.
Passport! You’re going to need to make sure you have a passport before you leave. In the United States at least, they cost a couple hundred dollars and take about 6 weeks to process. I had one from 2008 so I didn’t have to worry about this before I left. Do this step early/first if you haven’t.
Buy a plane ticket early. I don’t have a good plan for plane ticket purchasing. I just used one of those flight booking sites to find the flight I wanted then booked through the actual flight company. My ticket was less than $1000 when I purchased it, but friends of mine got some for $700. My biggest suggestion is to start looking very early and just check back often until you find a price point that seems right/in your budget.
I recommend flying into Narita, near Tokyo and planning your trip from there. It’s a major airport and a great place to start. My ticket had one layover each way in LAX and were about 16 hours each way, including the layover. The flight from LAX to there was about 12 hours, and 9 hours on the way back. They fed us well while on the plan there as well!
Hostels are great; Ryokan are expensive.
A big cost saving measure for me was choosing hostels as my stay of choice for the majority of my trip. I used hostelworld.com and booked my hostels months ahead of time. Read each hostel’s terms before booking. I booked private rooms with my significant other and they were very comfortable and decently priced. We paid around $30-35 per person per night.
I also used Rakuten to book a hotel in a city where hostels were not available. We booked a Sunroute hotel and the beds were garbage and the rooms were smaller than the private hostel rooms, and we paid $40 per person per night. Ryokan are traditional Japanese style resort-like hotels. Often have onsen/hotsprings on the property, traditional rooms, and fancy traditional food. I wanted to stay in a Ryokan but between our schedule and the price ($100+ per person per night), it was just not viable. Ryokan are places to relax and enjoy the ryokan itself, and we were only using the rooms to sleep, so it just didn’t make sense for us. Another requirement I had where I was staying was free Wifi but that was easy to find. It seemed fairly standard to have wifi at hostels and hotels. Some even had free computer to access. Every hostel we stayed at also had a washing machine to utilize, which I didn’t realize would be the case so I didn’t pack as lightly as I would have if I had known that. Buy a JR Pass! Unless you don’t plan on doing much traveling at all in Japan, definitely buy the Japan Rain Pass. If you plan on going to multiple cities during your trip, you will want to take the Shinkansen (Bullet train) and that can get expensive fast. The JP Pass is a one time ticket purchase for foreign visitors only that allows for however many weeks you purchased for (1, 2, or 3 weeks) to ride any of the JR lines as much as you want. It’ll seem like a big purchase upfront, but if you compare, it’ll save you a lot of money. I almost didn’t buy one because I had forgotten about it and glad I was reminded by a friend. Tokyo and Osaka were really set up for the JR Pass, Kyoto not so much but there were a couple trains that got you part of the way to places.
Pay ahead as much as you can as early as you can. Buy your major expenses months ahead of time: plane tickets, put reservations for your rooms at every location (pay all of it if they allow that and you can afford it), buy your JR pass.
Learn a little Japanese and have resources with you. This goes without saying, but knowing the basics of the language will help you out quite a bit. Information booths at stations had strong English speakers staffed, and many signs are in both Japanese and English, but once you get into the cities, ymmv and I think it’s good to always be prepared. Hiragana, Katakana, and certain Kanji will help your experience greatly. There are many resources online that can help you towards that but here’s a few words I noticed in Japan that I think it would be wise to remember. お手洗い (otearai) – bathroom/toilet I saw this at a few shrines without any English nearby. May also see ( トイレ – toire) which means the same thing but I’m not sure if I actually saw this at any point. 入口 (iriguchi) – Entrance and 出口 (deguchi) – Exit These also did not always have English accompanying them but they’re super recognizable and easy to remember. Google Translate App is fantastic but requires having an internet connection. You can photograph text and it will translate it for you with relatively good success. You can also have someone speak into it in Japanese if you’re on the Japanese Keyboard and use text-to-speech button. Super worth it and free. I also have a Kanji Learning App that allowed me to look up kanji as well. I believe I paid $0.99 or something for it on a sale. There are a lot to choose from but make sure it doesn’t require an online connection to use. Paired with the Chinese (Simplified) – Handwriting keyboard on my iPhone I activated, I could literally write the kanji with my finger to look up the translation through this app. I have had a lot of Japanese under my belt but it has been years since I actively studied. I had forgotten a lot but I had no problem in Japan as far as language goes. Being able to ask and understand directions in Japanese is a major plus, in case you are lost and need to figure out where you are and no one speaks English. Figure out your phone situation.
Free Wifi isn’t everywhere like you’d think. Most of the connections are actually paid subscriptions that are hosted at various venues. T-Mobile works in Japan without having to do anything as far as I’m aware, but I don’t know what other service providers have. I unfortunately had Verizon, which had an expensive plan for international so I opted out. I also have an iPhone so android may be different. I would do research beyond this either way.
You also get a sim card or rent a portable Wifi device but the little research I did quickly made it seem rather expensive, so instead I downloaded two apps that helped me while I was in Japan. Travel Japan Wi-Fi allowed me to download offline maps of major cities that I could use to find free wireless access points. It has a limit on how long you can use it (3 weeks or something) but it was enough for me! Japan Connected-free Wi-Fi made it easy to connect to these wireless connections. I recommend having both on your phone. The night before, I would look up the locations of all the places I wanted to go and took screenshots of them on the map. Right before I left my lodging each day, I would open up Maps on my phone and load the map of the area. GPS works without needing any cellular connection. Between all these, navigating for me around cities was a breeze. But not everyone is good at reading maps, so choose whichever you can afford and makes sense for you. Also, activate the Japanese and Chinese (Simplified) – Handwriting keyboards on your phone. I highly recommend them and I previously stated how they can be utilized effectively. Wear comfortable, easy to slip-off shoes. I, on average, walked 10 miles a day while I was in Japan. I also visited a lot of temples and shrines and they require you remove your shoes when entering. Depending on your itinerary, you may be taking your shoes off a lot. Having comfortable and easy to wear shoes is a must. Pack light and make sure your bag has wheels. There is a lot of walking in Japan. You may need to walk a ways to get to your hotel. Try to bring one bag with rollers for everything you need. I did great with a roller bag and a messenger bag (to carry things in while experiencing Japan).
I made the poor choice of bringing a duffel bag and it was a heavy pain in the ass to carry. Part of the way through the trip I actually bought a roller bag to ease the pain.
If you are going to buy a lot, bring extra luggage or plan to buy some. ... Or budget to buy luggage in Japan. I actually brought some bubble wrap for padding which made itself very useful but confused customs as I came into Japan. I had to explain I was buying fragile things in Japan.
As a big nerd, I bought a few videogames, figures, artbooks, and pokemon plushes from the Pokemon Center while I was there. I also bought souvenirs for my family and some candy for coworkers and friends. I made sure I had the space necessary to get everything back home safely. Videogames don’t take up much room unless they have cardboard boxes, but can be kind of heavy. Especially ones in CD cases (so that goes for music as well). Plush toys are large but light. Figures have huge boxes usually but are light. Removing the box will save space but diminishes the value of the figure and won’t protect the figure. You can break the box down and reassemble it if you want but usually the plastic the figure is in is the same size. Artbooks and print materials can be very heavy. Plan purchases throughout the day based on how long you are willing to carry the items you’ve bought as well.
Bring your 3DS if you have one!
You can’t go wrong. You can pass the time while you wait for the plane, on the plane, on any sort of public transportation, and when relaxing. You will get tons of Streetpass in Japan so you’ll also have something quick and easy to do (Streetpass games) if you don’t want to actually play full games.
I believe the fishing streetpass game has special islands for Streetpass from different countries, and nearly everyone you pass will be from Japan so you’ll get tons of that. I basically only played Streetpass when I was in Japan. I was too busy for anything else.
And Arrive Early at the Airport Better to be too early than late. Arrive at least 2 hours ahead of time, just in case there is a hiccup or it’s strangely busy. You probably won’t need that much time, but you really don’t want to be late. Rescheduling flights is a nightmare and costs money. And you’d probably have to change dates on your hotels and the plans of your entire trip.