We spent two weeks there, visited Tokyo, Kyoto, the ancient capital Nare, the mountain resort of Hakone and the ancient Buddhist monastery on Mount Koya-san.
I used to think that organizing a trip to Japan was very difficult: it’s not clear how everything works there, where to go, except Tokyo, how much it costs. How to get around the country is also unclear: foreign tourists need an international license to drive in Japan. And there is left-hand traffic, serious fines, toll roads and parking lots.
Turns out Japan is great for independent travel.
Japanese English is very different from the pronunciation we are used to. There is no “l” sound in Japanese, and it is customary to break a pair of consonants with a vowel sound. The word fork is pronounced “foku”, bus is pronounced “basu”, beer is pronounced “biru”.
Select travel time
I do not advise you to go to Japan during the May holidays. At the end of April and the beginning of May there is Golden Week, when national holidays are 6 days in a row. At this time the whole country has a weekend and everyone goes traveling. Train tickets are sold out, accommodation becomes more expensive, and temples, parks and museums are crowded.
Summer is not the best time to travel either. It rains in Japan in June, and then tropical heat until September. It is good to go in May just after the Golden Week: at that time domestic tourism is reduced because everyone goes back to work. There are fewer tourists and prices are lower everywhere. If I were planning a trip again, I would go in the middle of May.
If you want to see the cherry blossoms, plan your trip for late March to early April, but keep in mind that this is also the time of the tourist rush in the country. Japan has a forecast of cherry blossoms by region, you can see how the cherry blossoms bloomed in 2018 and plan a trip for around the same dates next year. October and early November is “Momiji” in Japan, the red maple leaf season.
During spring and summer in Japan, there is always something blooming besides sakura trees. This is Lake Ashi in the mountain resort of Hakone
Book accommodation
In Tokyo, choose neighborhoods near major subway stations. Ginza, Ueno, Tokyo Station, Asakusa, Shinjuku, and Shibuya are excellent, making it easy to get around the city. In Kyoto, it is ideal to live in the Sanjo subway station area.
In addition to regular hotels, hostels, and Airbnb.com apartments in Japan, you can stay in ryokans, lava hotels, and capsule hotels. Let me tell you about each option.
Regular hotels and hostels in Japan are the same as in the rest of the world. It is convenient for tourists to stay in chain hotels like APA Hotels: there are many of them in all major cities. The rooms are small, but they have everything you need. Business hotels are aimed at workers who come on business trips and do not spend a lot of time in the room. It is also suitable for tourists.
All Japanese hotels usually check-in strictly from 15:00. For early check-in you have to pay half the price. Sometimes there are hotels with check-in from 13:00, such as the Shinjuku Prince Hotel in Tokyo. We stayed there on the day of arrival only for this reason: our plane landed at 8 am and we didn’t want to wait for 6 hours.
There are plenty of apartments on Air BBB, but they cost more than hotels, especially if you rent the whole place. If you rent an apartment in an old neighborhood, prepare for an old house with small rooms and tiny bathrooms.
In a capsule hotel, guests live one at a time in a small capsule room in which they can only sit or lie down. Bathroom and toilet facilities are shared, capsule rooms are usually divided into male and female rooms. Things can be deposited at the reception desk. Inside the capsule there is a clock, alarm clock, light setting. Some have a TV built into the wall. Upon check-in, a guest kit is provided: a Japanese yukata robe, towel, disposable toothbrush, toothpaste, comb.
A separate type of accommodation is the so-called lav-hotels, or “love hotels”. Originally they were intended for dating, but now they are popular among tourists as well. Love hotels are usually spacious, with huge beds and unusual room design.
There are also traditional Japanese hotels – ryokans. In them you have to sleep on special futon mattresses, which are spread out on the floor. Of the furniture in the room, there are small tables where you sit on the floor. Shower and toilet are usually shared. Often ryokans have onsen, a hot spring bath.
When you check into a ryokan, you will be asked to take off your shoes and given special Japanese slippers, similar to flip-flops. Guests are also usually changed into a special home robe, a yukata.
In the evening, the table and seats are removed, and special mattresses – futons with warm blankets – are laid out in their place. Japanese houses (especially traditional ones) most often do not have central heating. Therefore, they are cold most of the year
Make a program
I like to organize trips on my own. Before my vacation, I studied the website japan-guide.com. It’s enough to make almost any itinerary in Japan, especially if you’re traveling for the first time and want to see the main sights.
Anyone visiting Japan for the first time is usually recommended to visit Kyoto in addition to Tokyo. Kyoto used to be the capital of Japan and is now known for its temples, cultural attractions and geishas. If you are traveling for two weeks, divide them roughly equally between Tokyo and Kyoto.
From Tokyo, you can go to the cities of Nikko, Kamakura, and the mountain resort of Hakone for a day. One day should be spent in a Disney theme park, there are two of them in Tokyo: Disneyland and Disney-Sea.
From Kyoto you can take a train to Nara, another ancient capital of Japan, now famous for its park with tame deer. From Kyoto you can also take a 15-minute train ride to Osaka, which is the third largest city in the country. There are few tourist spots there, but you can see the five-story samurai castle and the Universal amusement park, which is comparable to Disneyland.
Our experience. In 12 days we traveled the route Tokyo – Hakone – Kyoto – Nara – Mount Koya Monastery – Tokyo. All transfers, hotels, train schedules and sights were entered into a google table. The table changed many times, including during the trip itself.
Buy a JR Pass
The main mode of transportation in Japan is railroads. There are many different railroad companies in the country, the largest is called Japan Railways. Travel is not cheap. A ticket for the high-speed Shinkansen train from Tokyo to Kyoto costs 13,910 JPY one way: Main site for finding routes and tickets in Japan
“Japan Railways. These include high-speed shinkansen trains, some express trains between cities, and electric trains to Nikko, Nara, Arashiyama and other attractions around the main cities.
“J.R. Pass” is a personalized document. When activated, your first name, last name and passport details will be written on it. In Tokyo at Shinjuku Station, we went to the Japan Railways information desk. We were shown the rules for using the pass and asked several times if we wanted to activate it from today’s date. Then we had to fill out a short questionnaire. In exchange for the vouchers, we were given beautiful passes with our passport data on the back.
The first time we went through the control with the J.R. Pass, they put stamps on the pass. From then on, we just had to show it to an employee at the station every time we went through the turnstiles.
Schedule moves to book tickets
In Japan, everyone books trains in advance. If you’re buying a JR Pass and plan to travel around the country, I suggest selecting on the Hyperdia website in shinkansen that fit your schedule advance. Make a list of when and what time you want to make your train reservations. Print it out and take it with you.
When you activate the J.R. Pass, ask a staff member to reserve you tickets on this list. This is done in one minute. Afterwards, you can change the tickets without any problems.
You can travel without reserved seats. In trains, all cars are divided into reserved cars (they are more expensive) and regular cars. You can sit anywhere in the regular carriages, if there are free seats. If you plan to travel on weekdays and not on holidays or weekends, you can certainly relax and not book anything. We hit six Japanese weekends in a row, so we booked shinkansen a week in advance. Then did the exchange once: no problem and no line, in 2 minutes.
What you need to know about money
The currency of Japan is yen. It is most convenient to travel with dollars: cash or on a card. There are many exchangers in Japan, the exchange rate is acceptable everywhere, there are even automatic exchangers, it is safe to change money.
Japan is a cash country. Most people pay everywhere with bills and coins. There are hotels that do not accept cards, especially in small towns, but in Tokyo and Kyoto we had no problem paying with a card almost everywhere. To buy subway tickets, pay for the bus, buy water in vending machines you need cash, and most often small coins. After a couple of days, we were already carrying a huge amount of coins.
How to pay. In Japan, there is a special ritual for paying for anything. When you pay at the cash register, you should put your money or card in a special tray in front of the seller. But the seller will return the change, receipt and card from hand to hand with words of gratitude and a slight bow.
This is probably the same reason why Apple Pay is not popular in Japan. In two weeks, I’ve never seen anyone pay with their phone, and I haven’t tried it myself.
Tax-free. Japan has a conveniently organized tax-free service for foreigners. The 8% discount is given right at the time of purchase if you have your passport with you. Tax-free is practically everywhere, even in the grocery store “Seven-Eleven”. You don’t have to stand in any queue at the airport, like in Italy. Prices in stores are usually indicated without VAT, so at the cash register the total amount may turn out to be 8% more than you planned.
Tipping. In Japan, it is not customary to leave a tip – they simply won’t take it. In some tourist restaurants, service is included in the bill, but this is rare. It is understood that the service is always of the highest standard and does not require additional payment from the client.
You have to pay in cafes and restaurants on the way out. Ask the waiter to bring you the bill, take it and go to the cash register. The cash desk is usually at the exit.
Order a wi-fi router
There is public wifi almost everywhere in Japan. It’s usually free at museums and other attractions, and it’s safe to use. If you want to save money, use open networks and skip this point.
If you don’t want to connect to a new wifi every time, rent a router for the duration of your trip. The wifi will definitely come in handy for plotting travel routes.
The Google Maps app does a great job of plotting routes around Japan, including subways in Tokyo, buses in Kyoto, and long-distance transfers
You can rent a router right at the airport: at the exit of Narita Airport there are dozens of information stands of companies that provide Pocket Wi-Fi service.
I ordered the router in advance from the same website, japan-rail-pass.com, where I got my pass. The envelope with the router, charger and return policy was waiting for me at the post office at Narita Airport. The router was already charged. For the whole 12 days, we didn’t even think about where to find wifi.
To return the router, you have to put it in a mailing envelope, seal it and drop it in the red mailbox. We did this on the way back, at the same Narita Airport. The return envelope was included with the router from the beginning.
To send luggage across Japan
In Japan, it is customary not to travel with suitcases, but to send them from one hotel to another. For this purpose there is a convenient delivery service called “Kuroneko Ta-ko-bin”. All hotels in Japan work with it. If you plan to move from one city to another, it is convenient to send suitcases by delivery, rather than carry them with you.
If you are staying in hotels, using Kuroneko is simple: go to the front desk with your suitcases and ask for them to be sent to another hotel.
Suitcases are usually delivered in 24 hours. If you send your suitcase this morning, you can pick it up the next morning.
We used this delivery service twice. The first time we sent our suitcases from our hotel in Tokyo to Kuroneko’s office in Kyoto, near the station, and went to the mountain resort of Hakone for the night with our backpacks.
What else you need to know
Traveling in Japan is safe, convenient and interesting. There are a lot of tourists, and all the navigation is specially made so that everything is clear to everyone. If you do get lost, they will tell you where to go and what to do.
Bentos – beautifully packaged sets of food – are sold everywhere. There’s sushi, rice, fried vegetables and fresh fruit… Thanks to bento, there’s no need to eat bento in Japan. Everyone in Japan eats them all the time, and they’re a must on trains.
It’s the same with food: if you don’t know what you want to eat, just look at the cafe window. Most places display plastic models of their dishes with prices in the window that are as plausible as possible. Many menus have photos, so there are usually no language problems.
If you know English at a basic level, you will be able to navigate the streets, transportation and other public places. It is difficult to get lost: there are plenty of signs everywhere.
Memorize
- Don’t fly for the May holidays.
- Buy airline tickets strongly in advance.
- Visit Tokyo and Kyoto.
- To save money, stay in chain hotels.
- Be sure to buy a J.R. Pass.
- Bring dollars or a dollar card with you.
