Japan Planning Thread 3

[Takoneko]

Hi!

This is a new Japan Planning Thread for when our last one is full.

Feel free to ask any questions here related to travel in Japan, regardless of budget or style of trip.

@Takoneko we were told (by a colleague from Kyoto) that the economy means fewer Japanese are holidaying in Japan. And like you say, the weak yen has made it very favourable for foreign tourists like us. And there have been a few places I’ve been to where I could have forgotten I was in Japan because it was filled with westerners (we’ve largely met Germans, Italians and Americans in Kyoto). We were in Kyoto yesterday and definitely doing tourist places, and no Japanese people in sight. Thank goodness for this thread which persuaded us to stay in Osaka and day trip to Kyoto, which meant we could limit our exposure.

Nothing against Europeans or Americans. I love meeting people from different countries. But I’m one of those selfish tourists that wants to do the tourist stuff without too many other tourists there. Kyoto was next level touristy! You couldn’t move for westerners in geisha costumes 😂

@Actnaturally Tohoku is very different. We’ve seen very few foreign tourists up here so far. The main exception being a relatively small number of people at the stations who are clearly here for skiing and snowboarding.

Toyama and Fukui were also pretty devoid of foreigners, with most of the tourists at the attractions being Japanese.

Kanazawa was largely foreign tourists, but in more manageable numbers than Kyoto. Japanese people are being priced out of the places that are most popular with foreigners from higher-wage economies.

Let's do the cost of living comparison:

Japan:
The Japanese average salary is 4.8 million yen, which is £22,500, their monthly take home is £1,575, and average rent is £375. Therefore, rent is 23.8% of earnings.

UK:
The UK average salary is £39,039, monthly take home is £2,606, and average rent is £1,374. Therefore, rent is 52.7% of earnings.

Then you have to think about daily costs:
Electricity and Gas
Japan: £75
UK: £137

Water
Japan: £15
UK: £53

Petrol:
Japan: 80p
UK: 157p

Average commute cost:
Japan: free - company pays
UK: £450pcm / £5,400 pa

Train trip into the city from suburbs:
Japan: £6.75
UK: £31 (off peak return)

Healthcare:
Japan:
£100 per month - no waiting list, better than UK private
No GP - go straight to specialist on the day on a walk in basis
-Visit to ENT for a strong cold/flu: £15
-Open heart surgery with 21 day hospital stay:
£550

UK:
Free at the point of use -
-Visit to GP for a strong cold/flu: phone call after online triage
-Open heart surgery:
9 month waiting list with 3 day hospital stay - discharged from ICU to home

Lung Cancer 5 year survival:
Japan: 45%
UK: 21%

Heart attack:
3 month mortality rate
Japan: low
UK: 2x Japan

House prices
(40 min commute from capital):
Japan: £165,000
UK: £404,000

Elite private school fees:
Japan: £17,900 pa
UK: £42,000 pa

University fees:
Japan: £2,500 pa
UK: £9,790 pa

Average student debt:
Japan: £7,140
UK: £50,350

And fun stuff:
Eating out - £15+ gets you a great meal but even £3 gets a bowl of noodles.

Winter sun: (Dec-Feb)
Tokyo: 5.8 hours per day
London: 1.6 hours per day

Days of rain:
Tokyo: 100 per year
London: 150 per year

I lived and worked there many times over the last 30 years, for years at a time (new grad, mid career, with family, etc). My last stint ended last year. The UK has many compelling reasons for residence, but the cost of living is not one of them!

Sorry, didn't tag you in my post @Takoneko

@FrauPaige There's clearly very good quality of life here, like I said. I think you are using the average (mean) salary for Japan and median for the uk. The median in Japan is a few thousand £ less, but I don’t disagree that the cost of living here is pretty good.

Just not as good as it sounds to people from relatively high wage economies. My salary would be unthinkable for a Japanese teacher. Headteacher salaries in Japan are only about half what I earn as an assistant head in London. I try to remember that I’m very privileged in that regard when travelling here.

@Takoneko

I believe the average salary you cite for Japan is circa £19,000? So let's do the comparison again:

Japan:
Average annual salary: £19,000
Monthly take home: £1,348
Average rent: £375
% salary spent on rent: 27.8%

UK:
Average annual salary: £39,039
Monthly take home: £2,606
Average rent: £1,374
% salary spent on rent: 52.7%

Better now?

Rather than feeling sorry for the locals, most British visitors are envious and would be keen to relocate, if their skills were transferable.

Btw, at my daughter's international school in Japan, the head was on £100,000. As you say they earn half your salary, are you on £200k as an assistant head in London?

@FrauPaige A HT at a private international school will have a very different salary to a principal in a typical school. Google suggests that typical HT pay is somewhere around 8-10 million yen in Japan. My salary is around 17 million.

I’m not sure why you’re being so combative though. This has been a nice, positive thread for the whole time it’s been running. All that I was saying is that a direct comparison between pounds and yen is misleading when wages are so much lower.

Apologies if I’ve come across in a way I didn’t intend. I have no desire to get into an argument… I just like talking about Japan travel with people.

@Takoneko Im pleased we made the effort to go to Amanohashidate. It was a tourist area, but it seemed more Japanese tourist than any other. And it was absolutely beautiful. The 7.5 hour trip from Kawaguchi was nowhere near as awful as it sounded. Travel in Japan is so smooth, cheap and easy! And buses have been a great call @Specialnameforanoutingthread . So easy to chuck luggage in the boot and the seats are so comfortable! Buses have been our preference travelling between places with luggage. The Shinkansen we found we had to book ahead for big suitcases and ours didn’t fit overhead. We had a slightly uncomfortable journey with our suitcase at our knees. Good job it was so fast! And there is a lot of legroom to be fair.

@Takoneko
No desire for an argument at all! My apologies if the data felt a bit stark - it wasn't my intention to cause alarm.

Japan is a great place to visit, and even better to work and live in.

I’ll step back and let you get back to the travel tips. Enjoy the rest of your trip!

@FrauPaige Thanks!

I love Japan too. We’ll be spending about five and a half months here between this autumn and next spring (in two stints). I’m very excited about it and feel very lucky to be in such a privileged position.

@Takoneko What a fantastic holiday! You lucky thing!

@Citygirlrurallife I’m glad to hear you’ve enjoyed Kyushu. We will be spending three nights in Nagasaki in November. It looks fabulous. I have ruled out Yakushima now, as we just don’t have enough days. I think we will spend three nights in Kagoshima instead. We will hire a car for that bit of the trip. Would you say that a car is needed for Nagasaki too? We really enjoy train travel in Japan, although I’m open minded about hiring a car for the whole nine days in Kyushu.

Just finished up a sightseeing cruise around Matsushima Bay. It’s really beautiful here. On a lovely sunny day like today I would 100% recommend it. It’s one of the three great scenic views of Japan for a reason.

What is Japan like in August? Is it too hot, realistically the only time we can go.

@Takoneko Matsushima Bay looks wonderful. You’ve covered a big area on this trip. Have you found that the Sakura is blooming a bit later in the more northerly part?

There’s plenty of sakura in Sendai and Matsushima today.

It wasn’t blooming yet in Kakunodate yesterday and we’ll be too early for Aomori, where we are headed tomorrow. Morioka is just starting to bloom in places but not really there yet. A lot of the places in the far north won’t bloom until later in the month. We saw lots on our travels between Tokyo and Fukui though.

We’ve covered a lot of ground, but because we’ve been using the Shinkansen so much it’s less time on transit than you might expect. The regional rail passes really are very useful for that.

@Takoneko the Shinkansen really are fabulous. An absolute highlight of our trip last year (and we’re not really interested in trains as a rule!)
It’s interesting to hear about the later Sakura, because we may visit for a third time in late Spring 2027, on our way back from New Zealand. It’s just a loose idea at the moment, but we’d like to see Hokkaido.

Oh I loved Nagasaki and wish we’d had a few more days there. We hired a car for a day to pop up to Arita and the pottery villages and decided not to do Huis den Bosch so you might want a car for those (though train is easy for the latter) otherwise no you don’t need a car

I’m glad we did have one for our road trip Kagoshima - Takachiho - Yame - Nagasaki, just super flexible and we got to places that would have been quite a mission by public transport. One of my absolute favourite being Minato Shrine in Nobeoka at sunset. Shame about Yakushima, maybe I’m biased but I utterly fell in love and would personally swap 2 of the Kagoshima nights for 2 there if it were me again. Book a full day island tour with Yes Yakushima. But then I would also like a full week there to properly explore.

re tourist v westerners, I feel like we really stick out in Kyushu! There are westerners around but not many at all and in Yame in particular the Japanese were surprised we were there on only our 2nd trip to Japan - Yame is very sleepy but so so lovely, we ended up one night being invited to drink sake under a 200yr old Sakura tree with a Japanese man and his dad and friends, he was the only one who spoke English but we all got by, didn’t even get our phones out for translation, it was genuinely wonderful. To that point, less western tourists means less English being spoken. We’ve managed but I do advise learning some Japanese before going to Kyushu

@Citygirlrurallife thank you - that’s really helpful. I think hiring a car for a day to Arita and the pottery villages is a sensible idea. We will look into that. We’re not going to Huis Den Bosch, as we go to The Netherlands quite often!

As we haven’t booked our Kagoshima hotel yet, we could do a split between there and Yakushima, but I would want two nights in each, which means taking a day from our next destination. I’m dithering!
I’ve been practising Japanese for quite a while. Duo Lingo/You Tube, so it’s a bit narrow, but I can say and understand very basic phrases.
I’m looking forward to sticking out as a western tourist, as we mostly visited the popular (tourist drenched!) cities on our first trip.
Thanks for sharing the photo - it looks wonderful.

@Frazzledmum239 I’m going in August with my 15 DS - same as you, it was the only time we could go and I didn’t want to wait until after GCSEs next year for a various reasons (which includes being impatient!). So will be braving the heat and humidity. Lots of early morning starts I think, to at least beat some of the heat but with a teenager that plan might not work out so well, we’ll see.

I would just like to say thank you to everyone that has contributed to these threads, not least @Takoneko- amazing work. I’ve spent more time reading the posts on here than I have my Lonely Planet book. Probably more helpful too!

Apologies if this posts twice but my first one isn't appearing here...

The Rest is History are doing a fascinating series on the deep history behind the mythology of the Samurai.

Sadly as I thought we are being refunded for our Japan flights. We were connecting via dubai. Luckily hadn’t paid for anything else all free cancellation. Going to rethink for next year but unfortunately it’ll be June / July. Loving catching up on everyone’s trips. Be interested to hear how “bad” the summer actually is. Enjoy your trips everyone

@shannie I’m really sorry to hear that. I hope you are able to make it happen for next year.

The weather today was pretty woeful where we were but luckily we had a car for the day.

We were up in Aomori. The dreadful weather meant ourdoorsy things were a bit of a washout (Hirosaki castle will need to wait for another trip) but I really enjoyed the Nebuta museum and the Aomori Museum of Art. The apple-based foods are to die for too.