Japan planning thread

[Takoneko]

I’ve just booked the hotels for my third trip to Japan next year and about to start planning the itinerary in earnest.

Japan threads pop up here quite a bit and I think people spend a lot of time on planning for Japan trips. I thought it might be nice to have a shared thread where we can pool questions, tips and share research for anyone who has a trip coming up.

All budgets and styles of trip are welcome, whether you’re going hiking, temple-hopping, skiing or visiting theme parks, maid cafes and arcades and whether you’re going to hostels or 5 star hotels. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to enjoy Japan. It has something for everyone.

We’re a couple in our late 30s and our trip will be mid-budget, probably up to about £3.4k per person with food and spends. We’ve splashed out a bit on direct JAL flights and have upgraded all our hotel rooms to at least king size beds in hotels that are in really well connected locations. They are all mid-range Japanese business hotel chains rather than luxury hotels though. (Candeo, Daiwa Roynet and Sotetsu Fresa). We like Japanese food but we’re definitely more likely to be eating eat in mom and pop restaurants and mid-range Japanese chains than in fancy kaiseki places. Any recommendations for mid range restaurants with relaxed atmospheres would be very welcome.

We plan to use the Sanyo-San’in rail pass in the second half of our trip and would be really interested to share ideas for places to visit with anyone else who is planning on using that pass (or who has used it in the past). At the moment we are thinking Iwakuni, Miyajima, Kurashiki and Onomichi from Hiroshima and Himeji and Uji from Osaka, but we are open to other ideas. I speak passable tourist Japanese and we are ok with going to places that don’t cater to English speakers and muddling through with broken Japanese and Google translate.

Ooh I am very glad to have found this thread!
My daughter and her boyfriend have moved to Japan for 8 months, we are going to visit next April, so will read this when I get a moment!

@SunnyTimes3 Just be aware that that is an incredibly packed itinerary. @XelaM is clearly someone that enjoys being constantly on the go (which clearly works for them) but be aware that the Kyoto day in particular takes sightseeing to the level of an extreme sport. Those places are not close together and I’ve never seen anyone suggest doing all of them in one day before. My travel companions struggled to keep up with my pace on my last trip (so I’m generally not a slouch) and I know I couldn’t live with that pace.

Purchases of over a certain amount (from memory about ¥5000) can be bought tax free. If they are consumable goods then they will be sealed in a tax free bag. If they are non-consumables like clothes/shoes etc then they don’t have to be sealed and you can use them in Japan as long as they leave the country with you when you leave.

Thank you @Takoneko I won’t be buying anything expensive but a lot of it.

I was looking at the import tax and it said to declare collective purchases over £350 or you will pay tax on the whole amount. I can’t work out if I declare my purchases would I only pay tax on the amount over £350. If anyone knows the answer to that one I would be happy to know the rules.

The Border Force website is the best place for information: https://www.gov.uk/bringing-goods-into-uk-personal-use/arriving-in-Great-Britain. Your personal allowance is £390 worth of goods. If you bring in more than that, you pay tax and duty on the full amount, not just the amount above £390.

If you anticipate spending more than £390, you could always get your travelling companions to buy things for you and have them pay for and bring the items back into the UK and then you pay them back.

Are you travelling alone?

If you’re travelling in a group, remember you get a £390 allowance each but it can’t be pooled.

If you go over the allowance then you pay tax on the whole amount, not just the amount over £390.

Any tobacco or alcohol products are calculated separately and don’t contribute to that total.

Thank you. That’s what I thought (although £390 not £350). I’m alone so will declare and pay.

Unless you're bringing back just a couple of items of a few £100 each (so way over the limit) why on earth would you even go through all the hassle of declaring it?? I can't imagine how much of a headache that is!

Just take the price stickers off! Customs are really not going to be sitting there getting you to provide receipts for every individual item. That's if you even got stopped in the first place, which is rare.

It's only going to be a red flag if you've got multiple clearly high value items. They're not interested in souvenirs/gifts.

I don't know the value of the stuff I bring home but it's over £390 for sure! I didnt even know there was a limit the first few times I went! But it's all small things that could easily have not cost much.

I actually don't understand why tax is even payable. Different if you were bringing stuff back to sell but if it's just for yourself or gifts why you should you even have to pay tax? It annoys me.

Some people are more "by the book" than you, @DancingLions. It's not really a hassle to declare - I've done it plenty of times as I don't want to risk it! Taking stickers off things, even gifts, is pretty suspicious though - maybe I've watched too much of those Border Patrol TV shows!

@HighlandsExpat when you declared did you just hand over receipts or fill in a form? If you declare do you have your suitcases searched? Or are the receipts sufficient? I don’t want to be at the airport for hours.

@DancingLions i half wish I didn’t know about the tax. My purchases won’t be expensive and I don’t fancy getting out every tiny item from my case and missing my connection. It’s a faff totting up receipts as I shop in the first place. Thanks for the RL experience view.

Also what is the risk? If you don’t declare and found to be due to pay tax do you just pay the tax or is there a penalty?

If there’s nothing high value and it’s clearly souvenirs for gifts and personal use (by which I mean it doesn’t look like you’re buying in bulk to resell) then I think the chances of you having an issue is infinitesimally small.
How much over the £390 are you realistically likely to go? If it’s only slightly over then nobody is going to be bothered with that. If it’s loads over or lots of the same thing then you may get questioned. If it’s the usual assortment of Japanese snacks, trinkets, face masks, wagashi and the odd Uniqlo jumper, nobody is going to notice if it totalled £450 rather than £390. I don’t even tot up those kind of things. I’m confident that I was well under my personal allowance in April but if I did run slightly over on a future trip, I’m not sure I’d even notice. Obviously I’d know if I’ve bought high value items, but I don’t keep a running total of small value souvenirs. I don’t think I’m unusual in that.

If you’re caught the .gov website says you will be asked to pay the duty rather than a penalty. However, they are likely to delay you significantly. Likewise declaring items at the border can be slow.

If you’re going to be significantly over the limit then I would just declare in advance and pay the duty online and save yourself the bother of getting delayed at the airport.

I agree with Takoneko. When I say I usually go over, it's not by loads. Maybe £150 over? Give or take. Hard to say as I've never added it up! And it is an assortment of lower value items. Some are clothes which if you just take the tags off, nothing to say you didn't take it with you in the first place. I wouldn't bring receipts home with me, as they're of no use to me. Not exactly going to be returning anything!

I fly several times a year (thought not as far as Japan) and 9 times out of 10, there are no officers at all at the green customs channel. On the odd occasion there is, they obviously don't stop everyone. It's just random.

It's of no benefit to them to try to "prove" you're a bit over the limit. Lot's of time and paperwork for them for what really? They're after people with significant amounts of contraband.

Haha I'm usually a "fly and flop" holiday type of person but we wanted to do the most we could in Japan. To be fair, you could spend a whole day walking around each shrine or temple garden, as the gardens are huge, but you could also cut your time at each temple a bit shorter and not do a full tour of each garden (clearly we're not very zen people 😂).

In Kyoto we:

1. started at the Fushimi Inari Shrine - walked around and then had lovely tea there in the rest area (highly recommend as the setting and tea is beautiful);
2. then we walked to the Tofuku-ji Temple (it's a 15 minutes walk from the Fushimi Inari Shrine) and spent time walking around the zen garden and the beautiful bridge;
3. then we took a taxi to the Kiyomizu Temple and walked up there (loads of food and little shops on the walk up to the temple which we tried). We saw the sun set from the famous elevated stage which was beautiful;
4. then we walked to Gion and saw two(!) Geishas on Hanamikoji street;
5. then we took a taxi to the Yasaka Shrine which was beautifully lit up with lanterns in the evening and again there was street food around there;
6. lastly we took a taxi to the bamboo forest (just to tick that box to be honest as we only had 1 day in Kyoto) and it wasn't that great to do in the dark, but we weren't the only ones wandering around the forest in the dark 😄;
7. then we walked to the train station and took a train back to Osaka.

So instead of using trains like we normally did in Tokyo and Osaka, we did rely on taxis to get us round some parts of Kyoto and we didn't get to do EVERYTHING I had planned on my list (but only because we overslept and arrived in Kyoto much later than I had planned).

@XelaM I feel tired just looking at that list. 😂😂

I can’t imagine doing a day that full on the day after USJ and the botanical garden and then getting up the next morning for a Shinkansen all the way to Hiroshima. Bravo to you for squeezing it all in. No wonder you overslept!😂😂

In reality my bits and bobs won’t hit the £390 so I’m going to relax about it. My first 5 days are planned out but I’ve saved two days with no plans other than to wander around Tokyo.

I personally think having a couple of days of free time a great idea. I think it’s good to leave space in the itinerary to just relax and enjoy being in Japan.

How long is your trip for in total? Where else are you going besides Tokyo?

@Takoneko 7 days - 1Kyoto, 1Osaka rest in Tokyo. An upside of being alone is every day will feel just right as it will be what I want to do. Downside is wanting to share the experience.

@SunnyTimes3 That sounds great! Japan is really well set up for solo travel. Solo dining in particular is much more common. Only having to please yourself also sounds really freeing. What are you planning in Tokyo?

@Takoneko that is good news as I’m after good recommendation for some casual and a couple of upmarket solo dining options. My plans for Tokyo are not clear yet I’m reading this thread with interest. My hotel is in Shibuya so that’s my base.

@SunnyTimes3 We really liked the Gyukatsu Kyoto Katsugyu restaurant that we went to. It’s a mid-range gyukatsu chain. Deep fried steak didn’t sound great to me but it was really delicious and much lighter than it sounds. The one we went to wasn’t in Tokyo but they have branches there. That was the best meal I had in terms of bang for your buck. The beef was delicious and I think we paid less than £15 each with drinks. There was plenty of bar seating for solo diners.

In Osaka, be sure to try an okonomiyaki place and get some takoyaki as a street food snack.

Ichiran ramen is a pretty famous ramen chain geared towards solo diners, but we didn’t try it on our trip. We just popped into one of the little independent ramen places by our hotel and had a great meal. Some of our travel companions went to an Ippudo Ramen (another popular chain) one night and raved about it though.

We also had a lot of fun at Kura sushi. By japanese standards the sushi isn’t high end, but compared to UK sushi it’s amazing and the prices are great. I loved the salmon with onion.

@SunnyTimes3 share it with us!

Japan is great for eating alone. Agree with okonmiyaki in Osaka. Absolutely delicious. I love going for yakatori in an izakaya. Tons of them around. Sit at the bar, ice cold beer and delicious skewers cooked in front of you. No one blinks an eye at you being alone as many people are. Japanese curry is amazing, again numerous options. Same with ramen.

I don't know if you like sweet foods but the cakes, deserts, crepes etc are out of this world. Some of them are actually works of art.

It's nice to have some time to mooch about in Tokyo. Most people are on a strict itinerary where they just rush from one tourist attraction to another. But it's really lovely to have some time to just enjoy it at your own pace.

I would say think about what you really enjoy/like and do your research. So for example, I'm into crafts, needlework etc. I spent a couple of hours in fabric town (Nippori). Brought back the most beautiful Japanese fabrics for just a few pounds.

Anything you can think of that you like will be there somewhere but it's worth knowing where before you go.

@ Dancing Lions I love a ceramic (big fan of Leach pottery which is derived from Japanese method and design). Can you recommend anywhere great in Tokyo or Kyoto to shop? I see there's a craft centre in Kyoto.

@DancingLions I almost lost my mind in Nippori Fabric Town. DH could hardly drag me away. I was straight back there the next time we went to Tokyo - incredible! Japan is amazing for anyone who's interested in any sort of craft.