Japan Planning Thread Part 2

[Takoneko]

This is a thread for anyone planning a trip to Japan. All budgets and styles of trip are welcome.

I got so much out of the first thread and would love to be able to continue the conversation with everyone who has been so helpful.

I fly tomorrow morning!

First Thread

@Pusspot I love JAL. They’ve really spoiled most other airlines for me. Is it one of the JAL Boeings? If you are flying economy then they are my absolute favourite economy class seats. Their airbuses are newer, but the Boeings on international routes use the “Sky Wider” seats, which are very comfy.

I don’t know if you’ve booked seats already but if you haven’t then it’s free on all JAL flights (even if you booked through another airline). I’ve booked my JAL flights through Finnair before and whilst I couldn’t reserve my seats at booking for the JAL legs, I just logged into the JAL website/app and booked them for free right after.

@Takoneko I booked our Cathay Pacific seats, but I couldn’t log onto the JAL website (it was down). You’ve reminded me to sort it out, so thank you. It’s only four and a half hours from Hong Kong, but I’m hoping they will feed us! I’ve heard good things about them, but it was above our budget to book with them direct.

@Takoneko it pained me to pay for our seats with Cathay Pacific! I don’t usually bother, as we generally only travel short haul, but the thought of being stuck near the toilets or middle section persuaded me. I will try and find out the type of aircraft.

@Pusspot They will definitely feed you. They provide meal service on all international flights.

The JAL website and app can be a bit temperamental. If you have a middle name you have to enter your first name as firstnamemiddlename with no spaces. It took me a few goes and some googling to get it to find my booking the first time I used it.

I also really hate paying for seats.

@Takoneko thank you for the tip! will log on later.

Totally get where you're coming from @NellyBarney , even in the anime One Piece there's random close ups of cleavage and women are hugely objectified!

Thanks for your suggestions, really appreciated.

I think we'll give kabukicho a whirl and see how we go, it's very much part of the culture after all, alongside the temples and tech!

And I'd completely forgotten about the government building, great shout.

Our hotel is in Chiyoda, right next to the imperial Palace which seems a fairly good place to be.

For those flying Cathay, don't forget that they have unlimited egg tarts and pot noodles available throughout the flight - even in economy!

We've just got back from our trip with our two DCs aged 11 and 13 - in the evenings we went for karaoke in Shibuya but had to be out before 11pm with the kids (which was fine with us). We also went to a couple of izakayas in Tokyo that were fine with kids coming with us earlier in the evening, around dinner time, but an izakaya that had been recommended by friends in Takayama was very clear on no kids allowed at all.

We also went to a fun robot waiter shabu-shabu place on the top floor of Uniqlo/Gu/Daiso store at Marronier Gate 2, Ginza (the one near the Yurakucho JR station). That had unlimited soft drinks and alcohol, or wine for 99 yen (50p!) a glass - also all you can eat food (you order from an ipad on the table and there's a veg buffet and you can choose all your own dipping sauces) and soft serve for dessert. That might work well for the older ones wanting a drink and the younger one not.

For what to pack, these really helped me as we were just there in mid-July and I had no idea how hot and sticky it was going to be vs what everyone else would be wearing:
https://www.thetokyochapter.com/what-to-pack-month-by-month/
https://www.thetokyochapter.com/what-to-wear-in-japan/

@Xiaoxiong Was the food in the shabu shabu place nice? I know exactly the one you mean. We ate in the Kura sushi next door and the toilets for the whole floor are in the shabu shabu place so when I went to the loo I bumped into the robot waiters.

We really liked the food! The big salad bar of veg and tofu was replenished frequently, they had a variety of broths which were excellent and the kids loved that they could create as many of their own dipping sauces as they liked. I think because it was so busy there was a lot of turnover on the buffet so everything was fresh (you know how sometimes a buffet can get a bit sad/stale).

There was also unlimited chicken nuggets and potato wedges to snack on while we waited which DS2 maintains was one of his top 5 things he experienced in Japan <facepalm>

We also went to Zakuro which is a fancier and more traditional shabu shabu place with Japanese friends elsewhere in Ginza - that was truly excellent food but without the zany cheerfulness of the robot waiter one:(https://tabelog.com/en/tokyo/A1301/A130101/13002261/)

Sounds great! I’ll keep it in mind in case we’re in the area again.

I have been reading through the whole discussion over the last week or so as we are off for our first Japan trip in October
Our itinerary is more or less finalised but we have a 'free' day in Kyoto (we're staying 3 nights) and I was wondering if it's doable to take the train (our hotel is 5 mins from the station) and visit Uji and Nara in one day? Or would it be better just to focus on one of them?
Thanks for any advice :)

@99victoria From Kyoto station? If so, then very doable. The JR Nara line connects all three stations in one line so Uji is on your way to/back from Nara anyway. I haven’t done both in one day, but have been to both. Whilst you could spend longer in either, doing both in a day isn’t a nuts plan. They are both great places that you can get a good taste of in a half day.

That's great @Takoneko - thanks

i know this is a hard question but i
have no clue how much spending money to take for a two week trip . Not including hotels / internal travel but day to day tourist living , food , souvenirs etc . Also can i use my normal Visa card or do I need another .

@hattie43 It really does depend on what you’re doing on your trip. We spent approximately £50 per person per day on our last trip for two people in our late 30s.

We don’t drink much alcohol though. We were mostly eating 2 meals per day out (some of or hotels included breakfast) generally in small mom-and-pop places or in Japanese chain restaurants with the odd alcoholic drink here and there. Ramen bars, okonomiyaki places, little cafes, curry places, that sort of thing. Then some meals were street food, fast food (e.g. yoshinoya or mos burger) or convenience store buys.

We didn’t buy expensive souvenirs. We bought some baseball and sumo merchandise, I bought a few items of clothing in Uniqlo and muji, some makeup items for family and then the rest of the souvenirs were things like snacks, bath salts, stationery and other small consumable things.

I’m sure it’s possible to spend a lot more, but it’s also certainly possible to spend less. We frittered money on silly things like gacha machines, bought the most expensive tickets for the baseball game that we went to, upgraded some of our trains to the premium car etc. However, if you wanted to eat in high-end restaurants, drink in fancy cocktail bars and buy designer items or expensive gadgets and anime figurines as your souvenirs then I’m sure you could spend three times that quite easily. Theme parks can also push up costs.

Your Visa card should be fine, both mine were. I always like to make sure we have a few cards between us just in case though.

That’s really helpful thankyou . I am probably the same as you in terms of where to eat etc I’m not an alcohol drinker and only want cutesy Japanese souvenirs so not into designer shopping . I’m doing a solo trip this time and was planning on £1000 a week so it seems that should be sufficient .

That will be tons. I doubt you’ll spend that much if your travel style is similar to mine, but budgeting for that should give you a healthy buffer to do whatever you like.

Oh I meant to say in terms of money, a few things we did that was helpful - we opened a global money account with HSBC (this was done in about 5 mins) which meant we could move money into yen as and when we wanted without fees and then spend in yen like a local on Apple Pay. There is also a physical card that you then use to take cash out. Lots of banks offer these kinds of accounts now.

One of our teenage kids also changed spare holiday euros into yen at Travelex at the airport and had them put it onto a physical Travelex visa card, which he could then use to pay with contactless or take out yen at ATMs.

And finally, we loaded Suica cards into our Apple wallets which you can then top up just using apple pay within your phone. You can't get the money back once you've put it on your suica, so that meant that by topping up little and often we didn't end up with a huge balance on there at the end. Suica worked pretty much everywhere we went in Japan except Takayama, where most places were cash only.

That’s a good point about cards. I didn’t need one because my normal credit card has no fees on foreign transactions or foreign cash withdrawal so I just paid in yen with my normal U.K. cards, but my DP did something similar to you with a Currensea card. The rate he got was excellent, very similar to what I got with my zero fee visa, maybe even marginally better. It’s worth doing if your bank or credit card will charge you a fee for paying in yen.

Regardless of any bank fees, you’re still almost always better off paying in yen at point of sale. Your bank fees will usually work out a better deal than their rates. Likewise, at ATMs they might ask you if you want to be charged to your card in yen or £. Always choose yen.

My credit card doesn't charge me any fees for using it abroad and also I have a Revolut card which I can load cash onto as I need and pay in local currency without fees so I was planning to use that for most things.
We have a JR pass for our travel between Tokyo/Takyama/Kanazawa/Hiroshima/Kyoto but we were planning to use cash for local travel - bus/metro/tram. Is that practical? Neither my OH or I have an iphone so we can't get a virtual suica card. Would it be better to buy an actual card to use or is it fairly easy to just use cash?

Also, I've just noticed we've only got 1 hr for our flight connection in Hong Kong - this seems tight to me but I booked it with Cathay Pacific so presumably they think it's doable. It does look like we fly into and out of Terminal 1 so that reassures me a bit. Has anyone done this flight?

@99victoria Pick up a physical Suica card. We used cash to buy individual tickets back in 2008, before the IC system was rationalised and the different companies had to use each other’s cards. It’s not impossible but it is a faff. The network in Tokyo is made up of lines run by multiple companies and so you might need multiple tickets for one journey. In Kyoto where the buses were insanely overcrowded it looked quite stressful for the people fiddling with the change machines and working out their fares.

Have you already bought the jr passes? I don’t think a JR pass is cost-effective for your route. I’m fairly certain it would be cheaper to buy individual tickets and then you would be able to use the fastest Shinkansen, which you can’t use with the JR pass without paying a fairly hefty surcharge on top.

You can check it here though. https://www.jrpass.com/farecalculator

Has anyone flewn to Japan via a longer stop over in China? We are thinking of staying in Bejing for 3 or 4 days to see a bit of the wall and the forbidden city, then on to either Seoul or Tokyo. We loved how easy Japan was thanks to Google - so not sure how difficult China would be without it.

@QueenMabby How did the rest of your trip go? I hope that your journey home was uneventful and smooth.

How was your trip overall? Any particular highlights or recommendations)

Thanks @Takoneko- we got home on Friday night but I’d brought home a rotten cold!
Our trip was amazing. A bit bonkers at time but very interesting. A couple of thoughts:

I would recommend booking a hotel with breakfast. Very often places didn’t open until 10am and I can imagine finding breakfast could be quite tricky.

We shipped our luggage and it was easy and pretty inexpensive.

It was very hot but actually, apart from a 45 minute storm in Kyoto on afternoon, we had no rain. We paced ourselves well and alternated outside activities with things in the aircon! We did both TeamLabs Borderless and Planets. Both were amazing but I preferred Borderless.

I’m sure there’s be other things I’ll want to add but I think I’m still processing!