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The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/dubear on 2024-04-14 07:54:30.
Trip Date: March 21-April 8
Interests: Coffee, Tea, Food, Anime, Gardens, Castles, Museums, Sakura
Priorities: trying good coffee, eating good food, minimizing waiting in lines, buying some chef knives, one piece, pokemon, Sakura.
Route: Tokyo > Nagoya > Kyoto > Yasugi > Hiroshima > Yufuin > Osaka > Hakone > Tokyo
Expenses (rounded to nearest $10):
- Transportation within Japan: $1300
- Luggage Forwarding: $80 (2 carryon sized luggages 3 times)
- eSim: Ubigi - $26 for 2 10gb plans
General tips to newer travelers or first timers to Japan:
- Get an IC card regardless of JR pass or not, physical or Apple pay, either work. There were some people who said IC cards were unnecessary, but we traveled using the booths for the first day, and after getting our Pasmo (for me) and loading a Suica onto my wife’s iPhone, traveling was immensely easier. No need to spend time calculating how much fare to pay, just tap in and tap out and it’s auto calculated.
- Make sure your card/phone actually scans/beeps when you enter/exit stations. If you accidentally enter or exit without scanning, your card will have an error, and you will need to speak to an attendant to fix it. They will ask you for your last entry/exit station.
- Ubigi eSim: while I rarely had service outages, I never got the advertised 5g speeds and was stuck on 4g the whole time. Apparently this is a US Pixel specific issue (I have Pixel 7Pro). My wife has an iPhone 13 and she had 5g the whole time, but she had to change some privacy settings in order to use her web browser (apps worked fine). We both got the 10gb/30day plan and I had 800MB of data left while my wife had 2.8GB. I did all the navigation but I wasn’t watching videos or using social media unless on wifi.
- Prioritize what you want to do. Sometimes you may end up spending more time at a location than you expect, or maybe there is a longer wait for something, or maybe you just missed the subway/got on the wrong train.
- Google maps is wonderful for train/metro/subway, and a little more confusing when it comes to buses. My wife and I rarely used public transit before this trip so our time in Kyoto was very stressful because google maps would not match up with the bus lines perfectly and the colors/”platforms” were sometimes incorrect. Don’t pack the first 2-3 days of your trip with tons of locations to travel to because you’ll be using these days to learn the transit system.
- Learn some Japanese and Japanese culture/etiquette. There were definitely areas where we felt like some business owners and residents were weary of tourists. But knowing simple things like where to wait, how to say how many seats you need, or just simply being mindful of those around you will go a long way.
- Don’t be “those tourists”! You’re visiting someone else’s home. You should respect the rules of the house even if you were raised differently. I read plenty of reviews on google for places that were negative because “no one spoke english”. If you see people lined up for something, you should assume that it’s because they are waiting to get into the place/train/bus you are trying to get to. I could go on and on, but rude/ignorant tourists were by far the worst part of our trip.
- If you want to avoid the crowds, you will have to go early (or late) to popular tourist spots. The downside to going early is that a lot of the shops are not open yet.
- For those that are lactose intolerant, some places advertise oat milk/oat lattes. My wife had 2 incidents (out of 20+) where she believes they were using oat FLAVORED milk. If you’re really sensitive to dairy, just stick to black, or bring your own non dairy creamer, or use lactaid every time.
- Google translate works best when you understand how the Japanese language structure works. I have completed Pimsleur Japanese 1 and 2, I have been doing DuoLingo for almost a year, and I watch anime regularly, so I was able to start understanding how to word things better when using the translate functions. Sometimes I would type something into translate and they would give me a confused look, and then I would reword my questions using different words/sentence structures and then it clicked for them.
- Cards or cash? I see this asked often and I see a varying degree of answers. My personal experience is that I was able to use cards at a lot more establishments than I was expecting, especially since I went to more rural areas. I have a Chase Sapphire Reserve and Amex Platinum card and they were allowed at probably around 90% of the businesses I visited. If you have a physical IC card, you need cash to reload it. For 18 days, I brought 300000 Yen (Chase bank’s currency exchange was not bad) and I used about 135,000 Yen, over half of which was used to reload my IC card.
This was a re-do of our canceled 10 year anniversary trip that was planned for 2020. I was really bummed because that trip was timed PERFECTLY with the sakura blooms. I had hopes for this year as well, because all the reports up until the week before our trip were forecasting late March blooms again. Unfortunately, we missed the blooms and were, instead, given rain and strong winds for the first half of the trip. I booked our Ryokan stays first based on availability and pricing which is why the route may not look optimal to seasoned travelers. My initial concept was to book Ryokans as “rest days” in between the more active days of the trip and to also use the longer train/bus rides as down time. I wanted to end with Osaka/Tokyo as I had plans to purchase some chef knives and do some shopping and wanted to get a feel on the prices during my initial stay in Tokyo to see if I should buy in Osaka or not.
Days 1-3: Tokyo
Notable Coffee:
- *Glitch - 8/10:*this is made for people who prefer light/medium roasts with fruity and floral notes and enjoy drinking coffee black. My wife and I prefer darker roasts in the chocolate/nutty family with some milk. So while we didn’t particularly enjoy our brews, we definitely appreciated the time and effort they take to make you a special cup of coffee. It can take a while if you come at the wrong time because they walk everyone through their coffee process so if you have a bunch of people lined up in front of you who like to ask questions and don’t know what they want, it will be a while.
- Fuglen - 10/10: apparently this is a tourist hotspot and is especially popular with Chinese/Taiwanese tourists. There is a guy who seems to regularly sit in the front in a military outfit (he was there both times we went). The coffee jelly was AMAZING (best I had). This was the first time my wife could have non dairy milk (oat) with her coffee and she loved it. It was in the top 5 coffee spots in Japan for us. The waffle was good, but we didn’t get it the second time we visited.
- Kielo Coffee - 9/10: Another spot with non dairy milk and it was really tasty. The vibes were nice as well - chill and relaxed.
Notable Food:
- Himuro Ueno - 8/10: our first meal in Japan after landing. They went a bit heavy on the beansprouts for my wife’s miso ramen. Gyoza was excellent. Eggs were amazing (theme for the trip)
- Tonkatsu Hasegawa - 10/10: I believe you need reservations to dine here, but I saw a couple people walk up and try to get seats (not sure if they were successful or not). Best Tonkatsu we’ve ever had. We never ate katsu for the rest of the trip because we were certain it would not live up to this place.
- 銀座すし和 - 9/10: our first sushi spot in Japan. It is underground and there is only 1 person running the whole thing. He speaks no english and there is no english menu. It takes about 10-15 minutes for him to finish 1 person’s order. We both ordered the medium sized meal (for 1.5 people) and everything tasted fresh.
- Boulangerie Jean Francois - 10/10: we made the mistake of stumbling across this bakery at the basement level of Ginza 6. I say mistake because we loved their baked goods so much that we compared every other baked goods to this place. Their cinnamon rolls, butter croissant, regular croissant, and curry bread were the best we had.
- Yasubee - 8/10: Known for their Tsukemen, but they have ramen options as well. I was confused because they price the small, medium, and large serving sizes all the same. I got the large size (maybe it was XL?) Tsukemen and my wife got a medium ramen. They go HARD with their noodles… I only finished about 80% of my meal and I actually had to sit for 45 minutes after my meal at a starbucks because I was in such a massive food coma. Amazing noodle texture, and the eggs.. Holy moly people weren’t kidding about the eggs in Japan.
Touristy Spots:
- Square Enix cafe - 7/10: our only cafe experience and it will probably be our last. I know it’s not as well done as, say the Kirby cafe, but as much as I LOVED Final Fantasy 7, this was just not worth the price. The drinks were very tasty, but you don’t get a lot of it (ice takes up most of the space). I’m glad I experienced it, but themed cafes are just not my thing.
- Sensoji Temple - pretty cool temple grounds with cool gates. Lots of vendors all around the temple area. Easy to get to and worth a stop if you’re in the area.
- Nakamise Dori - right next to Sensoji Temple, so you might as well walk around there after. Tons of food and souvenir vendors but you’re probably better off buying things at Don Quijote price-wise.
- Gundam Factory - they decommissioned th...
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