The Anxious Gaijin

Travel tips beyond Tokyo and Kyoto

[theanxiousgaijin]

The Bathroom Situation

I’m back from Japan, and it’s time to discuss something extremely unglamorous, inspired by some pretty unpleasant experiences.

Before my first trip to Japan in 2009, one of the common stories I saw in guidebooks was that some public restrooms either didn’t have toilet paper at all, or you’d have to buy it from a vending machine. This concerned me. My anxiety comes coupled with stomach issues, so bathrooms are not something I want to have to worry about.

 But when we went, I didn’t see any evidence of that. We weren’t just in Tokyo, either. The phantom toilet paper vending machine didn’t materialize in Kyoto or Okinawa. I assumed it was a problem of the past, and could be forgotten.

Until I read an article about Nagoya’s city council debating providing toilet paper in public park restrooms, and discovered that apparently, the Land that Time Forgot is a major city.

So! What do you do when you encounter this situation? Especially if there isn’t a toilet paper vending machine? The answer is not, “Just don’t wipe.”

In Japan, a common way of handing out advertisements on the street is in the form of specially branded tissue packs, commonly referred to as “pocket tissues.” They’re ubiquitous. Being a foreigner does not always dissuade the unlucky employee from trying to hand them to you (though sometimes it does). And apparently, rather than carry your own toilet paper should the worst happen, pocket tissues are the common solution to this problem.

I should have guessed, considering that nearly every Yakuza game has a sidequest where you bring pocket tissues to someone stuck in a public restroom.

The other horror story you might have heard about is the dreaded squat toilet. 

Little more than a glorified hole in the ground, to those of us used to the comfort of sitting while we do our business, it can seem a little daunting. Especially if you’ve heard tales of how fancy western style toilets are in Japan, with their heated seats and adjustable bidets.

Here’s the good news: western toilets are extremely common, in no small part because they’re safer for the elderly and the disabled. Which means that even in the public restroom on a dank mountain, at least one stall will have a western style toilet, even if it’s just the accessible stall, or the unisex bathroom. Usually.

One last bathroom note: there are almost never paper towels in Japanese bathrooms. There’s either an air dryer, or nothing. And often there’s no soap either. What are you supposed to do?

Carry a handkerchief or a hand towel like the locals. In the summer, you’d want to do that anyway, because the humidity is killer and sweat towels are a thing. You can get ones with cute pokemon designs! And it’s... probably better for the environment? I’m not actually sure. Most people also carry hand sanitizer.

[theanxiousgaijin]

Content Update

You may have noticed it’s been a bit since I last posted! Truth is, I’m on my way to Japan, and I’ve been spending the last few weeks preparing the trip. I should have lots of new content when I get back in November.

[theanxiousgaijin]

Currency Guide and Money Handling tips

First things first: Japan is not a tipping culture. There are situations where fees might be added on, often as “service charges,” but they’ll be on the receipt, so you don’t have to do math. The only situation I know of where tipping is expected is at high class ryokan, and as I’ve never been to one, I can’t advise.

Compared to the US, Japanese money relies a lot on coins. The coins go up to 500 yen, which is $4.44 as of this writing, with 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, and 500 yen coins. All of the coins except the 5 yen coin show the value numerically, rather than just in kanji. That’s how you identify the 5 if you can’t read numbers.

For bills, you have 1000 yen, 2000 yen, 5000 yen, and 10, 000 yen. That said, the 2000 yen bill never really caught on, so you’re only likely to see it if you get money from the bank. It’s best to get comfortable with them, and with making change, as cards are often only usable in malls in major cities. I know I hate carrying large amounts of cash, but not only is it normal in Japan, it’s safe to do so. Assuming you aren’t spending your evenings in shady bars in Roppongi, anyway.

But maybe you don’t believe me, and really don’t want to walk around with a ton of money at a time. If you’re near a 7-11, you can get cash from their ATMs every day, 24/7, and know they’ll take your card. A lot of ATMs in Japan don’t take foreign cards, but 7/11 has your back. It might add up in bank fees though, so that’s something to look into before leaving. Also, you have to withdraw a minimum of 10,000 yen. 

Getting money from ATMs, fees and all, might actually be cheaper than getting some at your bank beforehand though, depending on your bank. The ATMs generally give the market exchange rate. Your bank will not give you that. I think they took off a whole 5 yen to the dollar for me once, which adds up on larger amounts. Unless your international ATM fees are giant, it’ll save you some if you wait. The airports are full of 7/11 ATMs, so skip the currency exchange counters.

Finally, you almost never hand someone money directly. Generally, there’s a tray on the counter, which makes it easier for the cashier to count and handle your coins. For some people (like my boyfriend) learning to look for the tray and put your money there can be one of the hardest adjustments, because they’re not expecting it. But just because there’s a tray doesn’t mean you should throw your coins into it. Be kind to your conbini cashier!

[theanxiousgaijin]

Other kinds of JR Pass

With the national JR pass, you can go all over Japan for cheap. But what if you’re just looking to explore one prefecture or region, and the national JR pass doesn’t make financial sense?

Luckily, all of the different JR companies offer some kind of regional pass for a lower price than the national pass, but not all regions are covered. Notably, there doesn’t seem to be a pass covering the region traversed by the Tokaido Shinkansen, namely the route from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka, cutting off Nagoya and Shizuoka, among others.

Another odd feature is that while some of the passes cover consecutive days like the national pass, others cover a few days, but they can be nonconsecutive. For example, the JR east Nagano-Niigata pass is good for five days over a 14 day period, while with the national pass, your week is your week.

Some of these passes make financial sense, and some really don’t. For example, the JR Tokyo-wide pass. It’s good for three consecutive calendar days, and it costs 10,000 yen, which is a bit under a hundred dollars. For a region that small, you would have to try really hard to take enough trains to run you more than $100.

On the other hand, the JR East Nagano-Niigata pass is 17,000 yen. It takes an hour and a half shinkansen ride just to get there from Tokyo, so the trip there and back alone is probably making your money back. In addition, a number of cool tourism spots are most easily accessed by shinkansen, so you don’t have to worry about shelling out a ton for a short hop.

All of the regional passes have their own odd terms and conditions, so it’s best to do your own research to see if a given one meets your needs. But as a general rule of thumb, it’s uncommon for the ones that focus on a city or just beyond a city to be worth the money. If shinkansen are involved, that’s when you start to make your money back.

As always, Japan Guide breaks down what they all cover. If you have questions about whether a specific pass is worth it, please ask!

[theanxiousgaijin]

My Boyfriend Thought, Pt2

In 2016, we took our second trip to Japan together, using the national JR pass. Our plan was to fly in to Tokyo, and take the first train to Osaka that we could the next morning. But to get the most use our of our JR passes, my boyfriend had an idea: why not stop at Nagoya along the way? Spend the morning seeing Nagoya Castle, and then get back on the train to Osaka? From there, why not also visit Osaka Castle on the same day?

It’s important to note that we:

Had never been to either city before

Had never been to a castle before

Researched very little about Nagoya aside from the castle

The first problem manifested in Nagoya station. We had luggage with us, and had planned to leave it in coin lockers at the station. But there was something we hadn’t counted on: the G7. It was happening at roughly the same time, and in response to potential threats of terrorism, all of the coin lockers at Nagoya station were closed. The coin lockers at the castle were also closed, for the same reason. The only place they weren’t closed? The subway station nearest the castle, for some reason.

The next problem: while the subway station was very close to the castle as the crow flies, in actuality Nagoya Castle is in a large park, with the main entrance around a full km from the station. Once inside, the grounds we were able to tour at the time included a reconstructed palace, and a ferro concrete reconstruction of the main keep, with a museum inside. It was all a lot bigger than we expected, though I should note that: another palace was unveiled to the public not even a week later, and the main keep is currently closed, as they work to rebuild a more accurate version.

One of the cool things about Nagoya Castle is that they have ninja and samurai shows on the grounds periodically. They start as short historical action shows, and wrap up with local tourism information. The ninja show had some english, as well as a native english speaking ninja, called Sora, so it’s not totally inaccessible. Shout out to Sora-san who is presumably living his best life.

We wanted to be back on the shinkansen around lunchtime, so we trekked back to the subway station to pick up our luggage and head to Nagoya station. I was set on eating miso katsu, one of Nagoya’s local foods, so we spent a while tromping around in the basement of the Takashimaya that’s part of the station.

Once we got to Osaka, something became immediately and painfully clear: Osaka’s subway stations are gigantic! It’s hard to explain without having been there, but while stations in Tokyo tend to try and lay tracks parallel, at least at the stations, cutting down the walking distance, in Osaka we often had to walk the entire length of multiple platforms to make a transfer, or just to go out a door close to where we wanted to be. They’re very long.

The last thing we didn’t take into account? The park Osaka castle is in is even larger than Nagoya castle’s. Osaka castle doesn’t have a reconstructed palace, so it’s just a tower with a museum inside, but all told, it was a lot of walking and standing. I think we walked somewhere between 10 and 12 miles that day, which I don’t think most people are equipped to do without warning.

[theanxiousgaijin]

Trip Planning Part 2

So you have a flight booked to Japan, and you know vaguely what city or cities you’ll be going to. What next?

The next major expense is hotels, and for that, you need to have what days you’re going to be in which city, if there’s more than one, hammered down. We like to make google docs for each trip to keep everything we want to do organized. Then it’s easier to determine what days everything we want to do in a given place is closed, for example, and how open hours match up.

If you aren’t even that far, I really suggest Japan Guide, which breaks down major attractions for pretty much anywhere in Japan. It doesn’t have everything, but if you really have no idea what exactly you’d like to do, it’s a great start, and has all the info you need, even if a given attraction doesn’t have an English website.

Here’s an example of part of one of our google docs:

Generally we start off sorting things by location, and then break them down like this. Though, sometimes there are things you can’t account for. For example, we ended up not going to Togakushi, shown above, because it turned out that it was the off-season, and the bus we needed to take didn’t go all the way there. This was on the bus schedule somewhere... but we couldn’t read it. The only other clue was some tweets from the ninja museum, which twitter at least roughly translated. So it’s good to have some alternate activities.

Where you’re going determines what kind of train or plane pass might make sense for you, so it’s important to figure that out before anything else, and then cross reference your proposed plans with a guide of the different pass types. From there, it might make sense to add or subtract some destinations, depending on the pass that seems to fit your needs best. It doesn’t make sense to get a national JR pass if you’re mostly staying in one prefecture, for example.

Once you have your locations sorted, it’s time to find hotels. I’ve written about some of the different types before, but it’s worth noting that if you’re not sure what kind of hotel you want to stay at, you’re going to need to use multiple websites. The cheaper hostels aren’t listed on the main aggregators. You’ll have to check hostel world. But for general hotel searching, I really recommend tripadvisor.

The most important feature of tripadvisor is that it shows you how much the same hotel room costs at other sites, and sometimes it’s cheaper. Plus you can filter by neighborhood and attraction. It’s important to note though that there are usually additional fees per night, and while they used to list them here, they don’t anymore. So check for that when you go to check out. Sometimes the fees make something else a better deal.

Another big thing to look for? Japan still has smoking hotel rooms. Whether the room is smoking or non-smoking is generally clearly labeled, so don’t get the wrong type by mistake. Sometimes the only remaining cheap room at a given hotel will be a smoking room, and if you don’t smoke... I promise, the smell is not gone. You will struggle. Don’t do that to yourself.

[theanxiousgaijin]

Trip Planning, Part 1

My boyfriend and I have a system for planning our trips to Japan, and for those who might be overwhelmed and unsure of where to start, I thought it might be helpful to go through it.

First, you need to pick dates, or at least a rough range. When it comes to finding flights, they tend to be cheaper if you leave and return on a weekday that isn’t friday. If that’s not feasible, either leaving or returning on a weekday will help, even if the other day has to be a weekend.

Google flights can show you the lowest price for a wide range of dates. Once you pick dates, it can also show you what it considers the “best” flight, which optimizes travel hours and price. For flights to Japan, often the cheapest option will be a budget chinese airline, or an airline that takes you over Europe and Asia, rather than over the Pacific. That takes about twice as long, so it’s really a question of whether saving $200 matters more than spending 35 hours traveling.

I also like using Kayak, which if you set flexible dates, can show you the optimal departure and return dates, and you can filter out certain airlines and times of day.

For flights to Japan, the optimal prices tend to appear around four months before your intended travel dates. There are exceptions and flash sales, as you can see reflected in the prices above, but you definitely want to be looking far in advance.

If possible, I suggest looking at multiple nearby airports. We’re based in Pittsburgh, so that’s where we tend to leave from. But we’ve also flown out of Cleveland twice. We tried to leave from Dulles once, but a big Nor’easter hit, forcing a change of plans. Leaving from Cleveland saved us $200 a person on one occasion, so it can be worth it.

Prices are more difficult, because they really depend on where you live. If you live in California, you probably have access to cheap direct flights to Tokyo and Osaka. If your nearest airport is Detroit, there are direct flights to Nagoya. Chicago, New York, DC, and Texas all have direct flights to Tokyo, which can take $200 or $300 off the price. But in general, don’t settle for anything over $1000. Odds are good you can do better. Our flights have ranged from $670 to $850.

Some of this is going to depend on where you want to go. If you want to spend your trip in Kyushu, it’s probably going to make the most sense to fly there, rather than taking the shinkansen from Tokyo. That takes all day. The good news in, there are a few budget airlines in Japan, and often the major airlines have special package deals for foreigners flying inside Japan, which could be cost effective if you want to visit multiple disparate cities. For example, Japan Airlines has the Oneworld Yokoso pass.

One more thing: some discount airlines don’t list their flights on search engines. In some instances, it might be cheaper to book your connecting flight through southwest or Spirit, and your direct flight to Japan separately. It all depends on how much trouble you’re willing to go to to save money.

[theanxiousgaijin]

Featured Destination: Himeji

If you know anything about Japanese castles, you’ve probably heard of Himeji. Home to what is widely considered the finest example of period architecture, Himeji knows what you’re here for: the giant white castle.

Himeji is easily accessed on the Sanyo Shinkansen, though it’s important to note that not all of the trains stop there. The Sanyo has english time tables, so it’s easy to look that up yourself. If you’re getting a train ticket in a major city, the JR service centers generally have someone who speaks enough english to take care of that for you as well.

As cities go, Himeji is on the smaller side with a population of around 500,000. The city is basically laid out around two major features: the castle, and the main JR station. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, the city was firebombed during WWII, leveling it almost completely. The castle was the only structure that survived, causing people to refer to it as “The Miracle Castle,” and making it even more of a symbol of local pride. The JR station was built on what was once the outermost border of the Himeji Castle grounds, and you have an amazing view of the castle the entire walk there.

The castle itself took us the entire morning to tour, and we didn’t even buy tickets to the nearby garden. There is a lot of walking, mostly uphill, and I don’t believe it’s wheelchair accessible, which is common for a lot of the original castles. If you’re lucky, one of the volunteer tour guides will offer to give you a more in depth tour, explaining some things that either aren’t translated on the placards, or aren’t written there at all. Just knowing the names of Japan’s Three Great Uniters will probably impress.

I suggest going in the morning. Tourism traffic had definitely picked up by the time we left, and it can get crowded in those original wooden structures.

The city also boasts Engyo-ji, an ancient and venerable temple founded in the 900′s, where scenes from The Last Samurai were apparently shot, if you’re into that.

Himeji has a reasonable functional foreign tourism page, available in a variety of languages. The english page seems to be understandable, if somewhat flawed, grammatically. It has information on the local sites, descriptions, hours, and prices of local restaurants, and most importantly, transit directions. It even notes which restaurants have english menus, in an extremely thoughtful move.

Himeji castle is one of the big things to see in Japan, and the city is making it pretty easy to enjoy the rest of what they have to offer. Considering how train scheduling can make leaving difficult, I’d suggest trying to spend a day there. The regular flow of tourism means english isn’t uncommon, but outside of the castle, it’s not a crush. I know I’d definitely like to go back.

And if you like eel, it’s kind of a local specialty.

[theanxiousgaijin]

Traveling in Japan with Tattoos

It’s fairly common knowledge that there’s a bit of prejudice against tattoos in Japan. I’d long assumed this was just because of the association with the yakuza, which is definitely part of the story. But I also recently learned that the Ainu, Hokkaido’s indigenous people, used facial tattooing as a part of their culture. As is often the case with indigenous groups, their cultural differences were not exactly embraced when Japan decided to annex Hokkaido.

So Japan has a complicated history with tattoos. How does that affect you, if you happen to have some ink?

The main area is in public bathing, or going to hot springs. A lot of these places have zero tolerance policies for visible tattoos. But that’s the key: visible. If your tattoo is small enough to cover, either with some of the awesome tattoo covers they sell over there, a moleskin, or something else, it might as well not be there.

I know this firsthand. My mom has a tattoo of a fish on her chest, small enough that my hand could cover it completely. She put a moleskin over it, and it caused exactly no problems at the onsen we went to. On the other hand, once it came off, she got stares and dirty looks on the train whenever it was visible.

But what if you can’t really cover your tattoos without covering huge chunks of your body?

Believe it or not, there are some hot springs and public baths that are accepting of customers with tattoos, and there’s currently a project to compile all of them into a database, found here. In some cases, tattoos are only allowed if you’re obviously foreign, which is a weird double standard. But the Japanese government keeps taking steps to crack down on tattoo artists, so while interest in tattoos for fashionable purposes has grown, the government is not making it easy.

I’d like to say things are easier in Tokyo, but it was Tokyoites who gave my mom dirty looks on the train. So if you’ll be uncomfortable with stares, just try to keep them covered. But at the same time, the culture is changing and growing more accepting. So don’t put yourself too far out.

[theanxiousgaijin]

My boyfriend thought, Part 1

This is the first part in a series on some of the trip planning fails that my boyfriend orchestrated, back when we were young and foolish, and had no idea on a practical level how much walking we were signing up for. Sometimes things look closer together on a map than they’ll feel on your poor, swollen feet.

This first truly bad decision comes from our first trip to Tokyo, in 2015. I’d been to Japan before, he had not.

We devoted a day in the schedule to Harajuku and Shinjuku, because they’re relatively close together. The idea was, we’d have crepes at Takeshita-dori for breakfast, walk to the Nezu Museum, walk back and have lunch in Harajuku, walk to Meiji Shrine in the nearby park, and from take the subway to the Sword Museum. I think we ended the day at the Metropolitan Government building.

Let’s map this, to give you an idea of what fresh hell this was.

It was roughly 1.6 km one way to the Nezu museum, so 3.2 km round trip. We had the option of riding the subway one stop to cut down the distance, but this idea was rejected.

Google can’t accurately map the distance to Meiji shrine, but if you just compare the scale of it to the nearby areas, you can tell it was more than one minute. Mapping it against a location of close to the same distance, we get 800 m. Adding that to our existing distance, we’re at 4 km.

The sword museum has moved from its original location in Shinjuku, so the map is pointing to the old address, which is now a bar.

Keeping in mind the fact that google can’t calculate through the park, I tried to use an equivalent location for distance, and it adds 1.3km. So we’re now at 5.3 km.

We ended up taking the subway to Shinjuku station, but this didn’t actually save us much. To get to the Tokyo Metropolitan government building from the sword museum would have been 1.1km. But Shinjuku station is so large that we ended up walking a full kilometer just from there to the building, and then back again, so we add 2 km, to get 7.3 km. In miles, that’s about 4.5, not taking into account that we might have strayed from the most direct routes, and with only rough estimates for the inside of Yoyogi park. I believe by the end of that day, google fit told my boyfriend we’d walked 7 miles.

It was August. August in Tokyo is hot and humid, and a typhoon settled over the city for most of the week. If you’ve followed the news, you might know that this summer in Japan has killed people. This wasn’t at that level, but it was still terrible.

Maybe this would be easier for you. I’m not in fantastic shape, and have no shame admitting it. But you’re going to get lost in a place you’ve never been before. You’re going to be jetlagged, and adjusting to different food. I suggest making lighter plans, and adding stuff on if you find you have time and energy left, rather than loading your schedule up so you’re running around.

One of the important lessons of this trip was that just because the maps say you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Like the time we hit two castles in two different cities in a day, and ended up walking over 10 miles. But that’s a story for another post.

[theanxiousgaijin]

Hotel Type Breakdown

A common myth is that Japan is expensive. While it’s true that getting there by air is a nontrivial expense, there are actually a lot of affordable lodging options, some of which don’t really exist in the US. That’s what I’m going to focus on. If you want to spend a ton of money on a ryokan, that option is always there.

Capsule Hotels

If you want/need only enough space for you to lie down/crouch, capsule hotels are available for as low as $30 a night. Two things to note: they’re often men only, so that’s something to check beforehand, and your luggage doesn’t go in the capsule with you. Generally, it’s stored in a secure area behind the front desk. So if you’re traveling very light and very cheap, and don’t have claustrophobia, this might be ideal for you.

Bathrooms are communal, as you’d expect.

Hostels

Hostels can be even cheaper than capsule hotels, and generally you have either an actual bed or a futon, rather than a pod. But they come with a lot of the same drawbacks: you’re sleeping with a lot of people you may not know, and generally that means your luggage is just kind of out there as well. Some hostels offer foot lockers for valuables, but that’s not consistent.

It’s not uncommon for hostels to offer private rooms for larger groups, either, if you want to stay with all of your friends in one place. They tend to charge per person though, so depending on the circumstances, a conventional hotel might be cheaper.

Bathrooms are usually communal, though sometimes you can get a private one, depending on the place.

Airbnb

Ah, Airbnb. They’ve had quite the time of it in Japan. Most recently, they’ve complied with the new homesharing law, which requires anyone hosting through Airbnb or similar services to apply for a licence. This requires a number of hoops, like getting landlord approval if you don’t own your place, and submitting to fire safety inspections, among other things. It also limited the number of days you could share your home per year, with some municipalities setting even tighter regulations.

For example, I’m assuming Kyoto’s hotel lobby is responsible for homesharing only being legal during three months in the winter in that city, AKA when no one is coming to Kyoto.

The good news is that only compliant listings are on the website, so you can book with reasonable certainty that it won’t become illegal before your trip. The bad news is that there are much fewer listings than before, and when supply is less than demand, prices go up. That’s just how capitalism be. Still, for a large group, renting a whole house might still make the most sense, and they tend to be more available. If you own an ancestral home, you don’t need landlord approval because you are the landlord. But apartments are just a rough time right now.

Business hotels

In most cities, you can get a decent business hotel for $60-$80 a night, even in Tokyo. You will have: no floor space, a bathroom barely big enough to accommodate the average american, a mini fridge, and a bed that may or may not have been given a mattress made of cement. It’s a gamble.

That’s the whole tub, by the way. It’s not cut off.

If you’re taller or wider than average, you might want to spring for a western hotel, just to be more comfortable. Or, you could look at user photos on Trip advisor. I’ve personally contributed multiple bathroom photos, because sometimes, they can surprise you.

Someone thought a bathroom door made of clear plate glass at a perfectly normal hotel was a good idea.

[theanxiousgaijin]

Featured Destination: Nagano

In my experience, outside of Japan, Nagano brings to mind the 1998 Winter Olympics, if the name triggers any recognition at all. Within Japan, Nagano prefecture is a popular ski destination, by virtue of its location in a mountain basin.

It’s also super easy to get to! The Hokuriku Shinkansen was constructed for the Olympics, running from Tokyo to Kanazawa, and with expansion further west in progress. It’s only about an hour and a half ride to Nagano city, and all train speeds are covered under both the national JR Pass and the Nagano-Niigata JR East pass.

But why go?

Well, first of all, the Olympics mean that English language infrastructure is pretty decent, even though it’s a city of less than 400,000 people. They put English in the trains, buses, and stations for the Olympics, and never got rid of it.

By virtue of being a smaller city, you don’t feel constantly smashed in crowds, but service professionals are still used to dealing with foreigners, despite there not being a lot at once. For example, in Tokyo, conbini workers would ask us in Japanese if we wanted our bentos heated up. In Nagano, they would just point at the microwave and we could nod or shake our heads.

There are also some of the benefits of a small town, in that a few locals approached us, asking why we’d come to Nagano and recommending local specialties.

Want shopping? Nagano’s downtown area is pretty compact, which makes it easy. Also, all of the nerd shopping is on the same floor of a mall. We didn’t know that until we passed the mall on the bus.  It’s not as expansive as it would be in a larger city, but that might be ideal. I noticed that the secondhand stores had lower prices than we generally see in bigger cities.

History sits right alongside. Tiny shrines and temples are wedged between buildings, and the main road leads to Zenkoji temple, which was built in the 7th century. The city was actually established around it.

A short distance along the Hokuriku Shinkansen and smaller local trains, there are a number of smaller cities with history and art museums, like the Hokusai museum, castles and ruins, like Matsumoto castle and the Ueda castle ruins, which I’ll talk more about in future posts.

Local Foods

Shinano Soba

As you may or may not know, soba noodles are primarily made of buckwheat, cut with a certain amount of wheat. Shinano soba is known for having a higher percentage of buckwheat than the average, without falling apart. For the noodle fan, they’re a must try.

Sauce Katsudon

A cross between tonkatsu and katsudon is an idea so good, it might be brilliant. Essentially, sauce drenched pork cutlet over cabbage and rice. It’s delicious. I regret not having it more than once. And in a fit of smart marketing, the main chain that sells it is called Sauce Katsudon.

Oyaki

Some older ladies at a ramen restaurant saw us and forcefully recommended the local dumpling: buckwheat dough wrapped around vegetable filling. I got a potato oyaki, and my boyfriend got a pumpkin one. My potato oyaki basically tasted like butter, and that’s not even close to being a problem. Apparently the pumpkin oyaki was super earthy. Oyaki shops lined a huge stretch of road leading to Zenkoji, so they’re easy to find.

As an added note, Nagano is the first Japanese city my mom ever experienced, and she loved it. It’s a good city to introduce someone to Japan with, without overwhelming them. Also? Nice hotels are very cheap. We stayed across the street from the station for less than $70 a night, in a very nice hotel. The room had multilingual smartphones that you could borrow to get directions or make calls. You won’t get that in Tokyo.

[theanxiousgaijin]

Bringing Medications to Japan

I have anxiety, and I take a daily controller medication. My first trip to Japan after starting it, I scoured every source I could find to see if it was allowed, or if I needed to follow some special procedure to bring it in with me. Japanese law is stricter than American law about some substances, and some ingredients in our common painkillers, allergy medications and cough syrups are controlled substances over there.

Here’s the good news! For most prescription medication, less than a month’s supply doesn’t require any special procedures. Common anxiety/depression controller medications and hormonal birth control are included in that. If you’re on anything that’s a controlled substance here though, it’s a controlled substance there too, so you’ll need to check your dosage, as they have quantity limits. Beyond the quantity limit, you need an import permit.

The official policy of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is here. The page contains some dead links, which is super unhelpful. But the page contains a doc with commonly asked questions, and an example of how to fill out an import permit, as well as where to send it and how to apply.

For narcotics/psychotropics, there are a few extra hoops to jump through, found here. They make this one harder to find, so if your medication is a controlled substance, save the heck out of that link. It includes a link to a table showing the allowable amounts of the active ingredient.

One thing that’s helpful is that both pages provide email addresses to contact if you have any questions. They have English speakers who can tell you for certain if your medication is okay or not, or if it requires special processing. I have done this. It takes time to get a response because of time zones, and I was punted to a different department, so this isn’t something to do the day before you leave.

[theanxiousgaijin]

Other kinds of JR Pass

With the national JR pass, you can go all over Japan for cheap. But what if you’re just looking to explore one prefecture or region, and the national JR pass doesn’t make financial sense?

Luckily, all of the different JR companies offer some kind of regional pass for a lower price than the national pass, but not all regions are covered. Notably, there doesn’t seem to be a pass covering the region traversed by the Tokaido Shinkansen, namely the route from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka, cutting off Nagoya and Shizuoka, among others.

Another odd feature is that while some of the passes cover consecutive days like the national pass, others cover a few days, but they can be nonconsecutive. For example, the JR east Nagano-Niigata pass is good for five days over a 14 day period, while with the national pass, your week is your week.

Some of these passes make financial sense, and some really don’t. For example, the JR Tokyo-wide pass. It’s good for three consecutive calendar days, and it costs 10,000 yen, which is a bit under a hundred dollars. For a region that small, you would have to try really hard to take enough trains to run you more than $100.

On the other hand, the JR East Nagano-Niigata pass is 17,000 yen. It takes an hour and a half shinkansen ride just to get there from Tokyo, so the trip there and back alone is probably making your money back. In addition, a number of cool tourism spots are most easily accessed by shinkansen, so you don’t have to worry about shelling out a ton for a short hop.

All of the regional passes have their own odd terms and conditions, so it’s best to do your own research to see if a given one meets your needs. But as a general rule of thumb, it’s uncommon for the ones that focus on a city or just beyond a city to be worth the money. If shinkansen are involved, that’s when you start to make your money back.

As always, Japan Guide breaks down what they all cover. If you have questions about whether a specific pass is worth it, please ask!

[theanxiousgaijin]

The JR Pass

On my public transit rundown, I got a question that came as no surprise: what about the JR Pass? On travel forums, questions about when to use a JR pass are among the most common, so I thought it deserved its own post.

What is the JR Pass?

Actually, there are several different kinds of JR pass, broken down by region, but when someone refers to just “The JR Pass,” they mean the pass that for periods of one, two, or three weeks, allows the bearer unlimited use of all Japan Rail trains, including the Shinkansen, for no additional cost. No buying additional tickets or IC cards. Just flash the pass to the attendants at the ticket gates and go.

Only people in Japan as temporary visitors are eligible for this, referring to the specific visa type you need.

There are two shinkansen that aren’t covered on the JR pass: the Nozomi and Mizuho. Nozomis run along the Tokaido-Sanyo line, from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka, and Mizuhos cover from Shin-Osaka to the southern terminus of the Sanyo line. They make the fewest stops, so they get you there fastest. Not to worry though, there are plenty of other trains on those lines that you can take, and it won’t be that much slower.

How much is the JR Pass?

It used to be that you had to buy the JR pass before going to Japan from a travel agency, so there were slight price variations. Now, in some cases you can buy it when you arrive in Japan, but it’s a little more expensive.

For the seven day normal class pass, it’s 29,110 YEN at the time of writing. According to the current exchange rate, that’s’s $262.13.

Is the JR Pass worth it?

That depends! The price of a one week JR pass is about the same as just buying roundtrip shinkansen tickets from Tokyo to Osaka. If you plan on doing that and using a lot of JR trains to get around, then it might make sense. But let’s say you’re staying in the Shizuoka area for most of your trip, and you flew into Tokyo. Unless you take a lot of far away day trips, it probably would cost less to just buy individual tickets.

JR is also not just one company. It’s split into regions. JR East offers rail passes that cover much smaller areas at lower cost, which might make sense. JR West does something similar. 

On our last trip, we took advantage of one of the JR East passes to go to Nagano prefecture. The pass covered several days of riding the Hokuriku shinkansen back and forth, and allowed you to pick non-consecutive days, so we could chill for a day without feeling like we were wasting it.

On the trip before that, we got the nationwide JR passes, and over the course of the trip, rode the train from Tokyo to Fukuoka and back, with stops in between. We definitely got our money’s worth, but it was also exhausting.

I’ll talk more about region-specific JR passes in my next post!

[theanxiousgaijin]

Courtesy of Yakuza 0 comes a typical plastic food/ticket machine setup. At some places, not much has changed. And this game is set in the 80′s.

[theanxiousgaijin]

These screenshots from Yakuza 6 illustrate what I talked about in Finding Food Part 3. If you can’t read Japanese, places with menus in this style are probably too high a bar to clear, though I’ll note that you can get by with just katakana on a few menu items. That’s true in some cases, so if you have the time, I suggest getting hiragana and katakana under your belt. It opens a lot of doors.