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.

Shinagawa is very convenient for transport. It’s a huge transport hub. You’re also just one stop away from the shiny new Takanawa Gateway development, which has some very cool new malls and art galleries. There’s some very cool looking cafes and stuff there.

Ueno is also not a bad base if you are in Tokyo and coming in from Narita, as you can get the Keisei skyliner to Narita in under 45 minues, and you're right on the Yamanote line. It has the benefit of being quieter and greener, which can be calming after a full-on time in the busier parts of the city. I used to recommend it to friends traveling with chilfren, or those who were older, when we lived out there. But those friends are now older and without kids, or even older now!! And I fear that in my mid fifties I now fit into the category that I was aiming it at 😂

@Tryingtokeepgoing I’m not quite 40 yet and I think Ueno is a pretty cool area to stay in. It’s quieter in the day but really buzzy after dark, especially when there’s a festival going on in the park. We spent an evening there during hanami matsuri this year and it was packed with younger people and the bars and izakaya in the surrounding area were also doing a roaring trade. It’s got something for everyone.

I am finally on the second thread and I have a list longer than both my arms and legs together of things I want to do and see and places to go. Ideally I would have gone for a month but unfortunately the company I work for were not so happy with this proposition so it will definitely be our taster Japan holiday.

@Pusspot Good news! The Shinkansen between Kumamoto and Kagoshima is due to resume on September 18th.

https://www.jrkyushu.co.jp/english/pdf/0827_kumamoto_futureservice.pdf

@Takoneko excellent news! Thank you for the heads up. I am really looking forward to that part of our trip, so delighted not to change our plans.

We’re going to buy our 21 day JR passes in the coming weeks (before October 1st), before the price increases. We’ve gone through the maths several times, and it will be a fair bit cheaper for our itinerary. We’re not taking any domestic flights though, and we really enjoyed travelling by train in Japan last time. The fare increment between 14 and 21 days is quite low, so it makes it better value for a longer stay.
The other thing I need to book in September is Sumo tickets (hopefully). Do you have any tips on where to sit? We aren’t able to sit on the floor, which I’ve heard is popular. Thanks!

@Pusspot

We did the whole booking scrum for September sumo tickets earlier this month and my best advice is to make sure you know which days you can go and snap up any tickets that you have a chance to get. Don’t hang about.

There will be a different link for chair vs box seats. There is also a link for pair seats in Kyushu but as a lot of those are also on the floor, I recommend just going to the chair seat link to give yourself the best chance. Just take the best chair seats that you can get. They are ranked S, A, B etc.

Our experience with September tickets was sobering. We were up 20 minutes before tickets went on sale (2am UK time) and we had two phones, two tablets and a desktop computer all loading the page and refreshing. The website began crashing more than 10 minutes before the sale started. It took us until 2:15am to get one page to load and we managed to get two B chair seats for day 11. I kept trying from other devices in the hopes of going on another day too and although I got in and it looked like there were still tickets at about 2:40am, every time I added them to my basket it would throw an error (probably because there weren’t any pairs of seats left together).

Traditionally, November is the easiest tournament to get tickets for, but so many tourists (particularly Americans) are happy to pay 10-20x the face value of a ticket to the scalpers nowadays, that it’s made the general sale a complete nightmare. I’m not looking forward to doing it all over again in a few weeks, although at least I’ll be in the right time zone this time.

Good luck!!

@Takoneko thank you, much appreciated. The scrum for tickets sounds hideous, but we will give it our best shot. We are fairly flexible on dates, because we could travel from Nagasaki or Kumamoto if we can’t get the dates that we are actually in Fukuoka.
It’s incredible how much money is spent by some tourists. I very briefly joined a Japan travel FB group, and the amount of dollars being spent with ticket agents like Klook was mind blowing. It seemed a bit unnecessary in my view.

I’ve seen people online saying that they paid $300+ per ticket on stub hub or similar to sit in the very back row and they felt like it was worth every penny. Those tickets have a £15 face value. That is crazy to me and I refuse to buy from the scalpers, however desperate I might be to go. They are ruining the sport for fans.

The best back up option are the tours with tickets through the likes of Viator or Klook. You’ll pay about £70 to sit in those same £15 seats but you do at least get a guide who meets you and takes you in and explains everything. We booked one of those with free cancellation for Tokyo in September and cancelled it after we got tickets in the general sale. They aren’t guaranteed seats though and sometimes a guide might not manage to get tickets that you’ve signed up for. The one we booked didn’t take any money up front and well reviewed ones are apparently pretty good at refunding if the tickets don’t come through.

@Takoneko that’s helpful - it would be good to have a free cancellation back up option.

We have made a rough plan for our time in Kyushu, but I haven’t had much time recently to flesh it out.
When are you leaving for your adventure?

I have reams now of links and things I want to do and see almost a year ago in Japan. In contrast we are going away for a weekend tomorrow and I have not even googled directions let alone taken out a bag to pack 😆

@Pusspot Three weeks left. Eek! I feel like I have lots of things to sort out before we leave.

That’s so funny. I am the same. I could spend years in Japan never reach the end of my to do list. I have hundreds and hundreds of places saved in google maps. 😂😂

@Takonekoit’s very exciting, and a lot to prepare for too. I’m looking forward to hearing all about your travels.

Yes. Ueno has some nice old style kissaten. I like Shang’s, which is between Ueno and Akihabara. It feels like an old kissa but the coffee is much better than most kissa.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/16EWAXEgpFYkEMge6?g_st=ic

Coffee Tei in Ikebukuro is also good. Good coffee in an old style kissa.it’s usually very busy. Lots of couples go there.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dij5hskq7gJ5831BA?g_st=ic

The Yanaka district (Nippori Station) has some nice traditional kissa, too. Can’t remember which ones I’ve been to so won’t post links.

I had no idea sumo tickets were so hard to get. Last time I watched one of the main six tournaments was 2004. Watched Asashouryu win in a tie break on the last day of the summer tournament. Can’t remember who the other wrestler was but I do remember everyone throwing their cushions in the air. It was a lot of fun. I don’t remember tickets being hard to get. I think I may have bought them on the day at the ticket office.

If tickets for the main six tournaments are impossible to get, it might be worth trying to get tickets for a jungyou regional tournament. It’s a lot of the same wrestlers doing one day tournaments on the road. Here’s a link to the schedule:
https://www.sumo.or.jp/EnJungyo/schedule/

@Remoter33 OMG, what an experience!! Peak Asashoryu was an absolute force of nature.

Before Covid you used to be able to get tickets on the door. Now you’re lucky to get them at all.

We actually already have tickets for a couple of jungyo events in October and December, plus we’re hoping to get tickets for Chiyomaru’s danpatsu shiki in January and the all Japan amateur competition in December. We went to jungyo in Nagano this spring and had a great time. I made sure I had a cheer towel for the local boy (Mitakeumi) and got into the spirit of things.

https://www.fukuoka-now.com/en/news/kyushu-recovery-discounts-start-in-october/

@MondayYogurt Thanks for sharing. I will keep an eye out for any discounts that we can make use of. We’ll be in Kyushu in November and December.

@MondayYogurt thank you, that’s good to know. We will be in Kyushu for two weeks in November.

I am super jealous of anyone going in November - June is so far away and I want to be there NOW!!!

Parts of Japan now suffering typhoon weather. Level 5 flooding in Nagoya today.

@MondayYogurt I’ve seen that. Lots of NHK warnings have been pinging on my phone. We fly out next Thursday so I’m keeping an eye on it. Our first 10 days are in Tokyo and I’m preparing myself to have to work around the weather. Apparently schools have had to close there due to the extreme rain.

It is the season for it but this seems severe. Hope you stay safe.

Thanks! I’m pretty risk averse, so if the advice is to hunker down in our hotel for a few days then that’s what we’ll do. I definitely won’t be heading out into the countryside with landslide and flood warnings in place. We’re not on a tight schedule and our plans are pretty flexible, so if needs must we can change our route.