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Practicalities for visiting Japan…what do I need to know?
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vondallyFree Member
So three weeks to go before we visit for three weeks and a few queries…
Given everyone wants paying in cash what is the best way to carry the yen? Rather than a wadful…..
Getting a Japan rail card….anything else we need to consider?
Cheers
dc2.0Full MemberOnly ever travelled there on business but didn’t find it a particularly cash-centric culture. Some taxis didn’t take cards. I usually took a few hundred quid in yen and put the rest on cards.
Does your railcard also do local underground? If not get a suica card, just like an Oyster card. You can also use it like a pre paid debit card in quite a few places. http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/pass/suica.html
Have you checked if your phone will work over there?
thecaptainFree MemberJust carry a wad of the brown ones (¥10,000=$100 and indeed £100 these days) but note that cash machines are basically only operational during office hours, if you find yourself short of cash on a public holiday you are pretty much stuffed!
You can get a good deal on suica at the airport station (ie more credit on the card than it costs to buy). But maybe not really necessary if your pass covers rail. Not much advantage over cash otherwise.
Don’t expect people to speak english, lots do but plenty don’t.
MurrayFull Member7 Eleven cash machines are open 24 hours and accept foreign cards. Used for the SBSA fraud earlier this year because of this.
Trains are as good as their reputation.
vondallyFree MemberWe were going to buy a sim over there. Every accommodation bar one wants cash.
marpFree MemberNot an entirely practical tip, but will save everyones blushes.
Do not walk back into a restaurant wearing the toilet slippers!
chewkwFree Membernowthen – Member
Dont eat sea anemone sushi, whatever you doWhy? I thought they taste very nice. Everyone loves them?
batfinkFree MemberGet restaurant recommendations (from a guide book or wherever).
Lots of good restaurants are in office blocks/shopping centers, so if you don’t know they are there, there is little chance of you stumbling across them.
On top of that, the restaurants that have “frontage” all look exactly like the sort of place you don’t want to go (dark, pokey, plastic models of food outside, etc) so its easy to dismiss some really amazing places.
northernerindevonFull MemberAgree with all the good advice above.
If you are using the trains (assume you are seeing as you are getting a pass!), download an app called Hyperdia. It’s free for a month. You input the station you are travelling from and the station you are travelling to & it will tell you everything you need to know: the name of the train, the departure time and platform, any connections you need to make & your arrival time and platform. It never let us down once. It’s superb.
If you are travelling home from Narita airport, check your railcard dates! Ours ran out the day before so we had to pay to get to the airport on the train.
Other than that, jump in feet first and try everything (including sea anenome sushi!).
Trip Advisor has a useful feature that can display a restaurant name in large text in the local language: this helped us more than once as you can show it to a local and they can point you in the right direction.It’s an amazing country. Enjoy it!
vondallyFree MemberThanks, was looking athletics but did not realise it was only free fora month,
Food wise we are vegetarians….quarter of a century so no fish nor meat….going to be a challenge….
thecaptainFree MemberVegetarian? You’re ****. Just give it up for a month. Seriously. Or else be prepared to source and cook basically all your own food.
KitFree MemberVegetarian? You’re ****. Just give it up for a month. Seriously. Or else be prepared to source and cook basically all your own food.
You can find veg tempura in plenty of places, from what I remember, plus you get rice everywhere. Tofu/bean curd is pretty common too, although if you’re being strict then watch out for the sauces. There appears to be plenty of info online about eating veggie in Japan, so no, you’re not ****.
Your rail pass should get you on any JR (Japan Rail) run transport, which includes ferries. We used ours to get over to Miyajima (great place). And while there is an underground in Tokyo which your pass won’t work on, I found that I only needed to use it once in 4 days there since the overground JR trains got me pretty much everywhere I needed to. I used an app called Japan Trains. It was free and by the sounds of it did all the things that Hyperdia does – incredibly useful!
I took a prepaid credit card and could only get cash from the 7/11 machines. I did use my card to pay for things a few times, but yeah, mostly used cash. And lots of it; it’s an expensive place!
It’s a brilliant place, would love to go back 🙂
mashiehoodFree Membertravel, travel and do more, we bought the rail pass and used it for everything (buy first class its not that much more).
language – dont worry about it, we go along just fine
Getting lost – part of the fun
Weather – be prepared for everything
people – some of the most amazing, friendly, helpful people on the planet
safety – the standard stuff, we felt very safe in japanmattrgeeFree MemberOh and look out for the cover/seat charge. It is literally a charge to sit down, usually the price of a drink. We had two 400ml beers in a bar, came to 3000 yen / £24, half of that was the seat charge. Most places will tell you when you enter that there is a minimum number of drinks, a cover charge, seat charge or whatever they’re calling it, some places won’t.
We were spending around £120 a day on breakfast, lunch, dinner, entry fees to attractions, transport etc.
jamiepFree MemberI am vegetarian………. prepare yourself and accept that you will be eating a lot of noodles that have some fish- or meat-based product in their base broth even when you are having ‘veggie’ tofu
SchweizFree MemberMany Japanese toilets can’t handle a larger than average western dump. A halftime flush is recommended if you have sufficient sphincter control. As a vegetarian, this advice might be very helpful, specifically if you are laying down a billet with monocoque construction.
Andy_BFull MemberI’m not sure that you can buy a PAYG sim. Data is shockingly expensive on your UK plan. Use hotel wifi and take plenty of screenshots of your plans for the day including maps.
Get the app that lets you plan your train journeys and work out what you want and take a screenshot to the ticket office.
The Japanese are incredibly shy about speaking English. Learn to tell them that they are speaking very good English and they will generally continue to do so if they can.
Read ‘road to Hokkaido’. It’s by an American who tracked the cherry blossom and is a very quick and easy look at Japanese culture for a westerner.
brFree MemberVegetarian? You’re ****. Just give it up for a month. Seriously. Or else be prepared to source and cook basically all your own food.
Years ago when working in East Europe I had a new assistant turn up. That evening I took her over to the pretty much only place to eat in the town. As we walked in she said that she was vegetarian.
I then spent 15 mins in discussion with the waiter regarding what meal the chef could cook that he’d take the meat out of…
cornholio98Free Member7-eleven or the post office for cash (only the post office worked for me). Food was pretty easy as I just stopped anywhere and ordered by picture. There were plenty of dishes that don’t have lumps of meat but don’t ask about the noodle broth unless you want to be hungry all the time.
The phone must be 3G as they discarded the lower network already and getting a SIM card was more trouble than I could bear but it may be easier now.
I found it generally very easy to get around and do everything despite no one really speaking English.thecaptainFree MemberThere’s quite a lot of free wifi when you are out and about in Japan but you have to know where to look, eg all starbucks (a pretty good cafe over there, whatever you think of it in the UK) and mcdonalds (you don’t have to go in). Wi2 is also a fairly cheap network that I used a lot: http://wi2.co.jp/en/300/
Also see http://flets.com/freewifi/spot.html
SundayjumperFull Member“So three weeks to go…“
Snap ! Just a week for us, Tokyo & two days up north in Akita.
I will watch this thread with great interest.
thecaptainFree MemberIt’s a beautiful time to visit. Make sure you see some autumn leaves (which will require trips north/mountainwards at this time of year). Nikko might be a good shout, not quite yet though. http://weather.asahi.com/koyo/
dantsw13Full MemberThe problem with vegetarianism in Japan is that dishes not described as containing meat often still do.
Hyperdia also functions as a website, so don’t stress if your free month on the app runs out.
pondoFree MemberWill dig out my thread from the spring, many of the lovely folk on here were outrageously helpful. We hired a dongle which could not have been easier and made life super simple, hyperdia is a must-have and the japan rail pass is fantastic. Don’t need to worry about the language, people will go out of their way to be helpful even if you can’t speak. Amazing place, best holiday of my life.
vondallyFree MemberPondo…I started the thread in the spring, loved your photo of the flight…..just final practical things….
Prepaid card for money any recommendations?
manmurrayFull MemberRe SIM cards etc – we rented a MiFi/wifi box with unlimited 3G from these people: https://www.econnectjapan.com
Was waiting at the reception of our first hotel, dropped it in the post (in their envelope) when we left. Makes Google Translate somewhat easier when deciphering menus/signs etc. Wifi so you can connect multiple phones/devices. ¥8000 for 12 days.
5labFull Memberif you are veggies see if you can spend a day or two in a monestary – they’re vegans so all the food is veggie friendly – you have to get up at 5am to pray with them, but its a very cool experience
if you’re renting a car at all, you WILL need an international driving permit (as I found to my cost) – despite it being a pointless bit of paper
most rail cards don’t cover all bullet trains, which as it happens are eye-wateringly expensive
CountZeroFull MemberThe Japanese are incredibly shy about speaking English. Learn to tell them that they are speaking very good English and they will generally continue to do so if they can.
A friend of mine has a number of Japanese over every year working with her in her hotel/restaurant/tea room, and she in turn goes to Japan at least once a year doing cooking demonstrations at big swanky department stores, and she also gets significant numbers of Japanese visitors as well.
All of the Japanese I’ve met as a result have been perfectly fine speaking English, and have been very keen to pick up on colloquial English, but perhaps that’s because they’ve all been over here in the UK, and improving their English is part of why they’re here; even the visitors, but again, it may be because being away from home opens them up to being more relaxed about it.
it possibly helps also that my grasp of Japanese is incredibly poor, and having a Bakka gaijin mangling their language helps them feel a lot better!northernerindevonFull Memberbuy a first class rail pass, it’s not much more
Whilst this is true, the Shinkansen (bullet trains) are really pretty good in standard class. The main disadvantage of getting a green pass (first class) is that all your travel has to be reserved. Fine if every journey is planned to a tee but it really restricts you if you have a more vague plan and just want to get the next train or the one after your planned time. Save your money – it can be better spent!
Get a Suica card as described – really useful. Plus you can return them to any JR station and they will refund the card when you are done – think it’s 500 or 1000¥ – not much but all helps.
We were there a month ago & I’d love to go back. It’s a wonderful country.
Also the toilets are ace…. 😉
breadcrumbFull MemberI visited Sapporo several years ago. I found many Japanese would like to practice English with us. To the point of stopping us in the street.
All very friendly and helpful. Beer was very expensive though.
SammyCFree MemberRegarding being veggie, yes it is more of a challenge but that is part of the fun.
The key for us was to get the hotel receptionist to write out on a little card two phrases in Japanese:
“I am a vegetarian”
“I do not eat meat or fish”Apparently in Japan those two phrases have slightly different meaning to each other but together should be enough to get across what you need. Or more importantly what you don’t need.
HTH
vondallyFree MemberWe have gone standard, it is roughly 160 quid more for both of us for green class and we is kommon….and we have a rough plan but times are flexible…….
Still pondering over cash and card carrying g as do not want to get it by charges for using g cards.
donaldFree MemberIf you’re worrying about card charges just take cash. It’s not likely you are going to get mugged.
northernerindevonFull MemberTake cash. As has been mentioned its a really safe country – its weird to see Japanese people arrive in a pub or café, leave all their stuff on a free table then go to the bar/counter to order.
Just be sensible but don’t be paranoid.
10000 Yen notes are easy to transport around and can be changed into smaller denominations as required.
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