Trip Report: 14 days

I'm not long back from my first ever trip to Japan and absolutely loved it. This subreddit featured heavily in my planning so I figured I'd pay it forward and post an update of what I did in case anybody else finds it useful.

General Tips / Comments

1. Get a suica card – if you're on iphone you can add this directly to your wallet and top up remotely in seconds. My friend who had an android said you can only get them if you're joined to the japanese android store – unsure how true this is, but my friends without iphones had to get a physical suica card and head to a terminal to top theirs up. Either way, these cards make navigating japanese trains a breeze – you just walk up to the gates, swipe your phone or card, and do the same when you leave the destination station and it knows how much to deduct. If you don't have enough on your card there is a little "fare adjustment station" next to the exit gate.
2. Google made navigating the trains super simple also – if I was, say, heading to "Teamlabs – Planets" I would just put that into google and select by train. It'd show me where to walk, tell me what train to get on, what stop to get off at, what the next train was, etc. Between this and the suica card it made travelling so trivial. This really is how public transport should be done.
3. Klook was very useful for longer haul trains, such as going between Tokyo / Osaka / Kyoto. Buying them here gave us a QR code so we could, again, just use the E-gates.
4. Airalo – I bought an E-sim on this app. It was around £20 for 20gb of data if I remember correctly. In my whole 2 weeks of japan I used around 8gb of data. My UK provider was going to charge me £9 per 150mb of data used – so it was obviously hugely cheaper to use this. Buy it in advance but just activate it once you land.
5. Japanese people seemed to be hugely helpful and friendly. My wife accidentally dropped her passport on the bullet train – we went Osaka > Kyoto, but the train kept going to Tokyo. The worker behind the desk at our Kyoto hotel went out his way to phone around, source it, and asked them to leave it in Tokyo station lost and found for us, which we collected on our way back to Tokyo. I imagine in any other country a bag with cards and stuff in it would have been pilfered. In Japan the staff were too polite to even open it to see what was inside – we had to get the hotel worker to phone them back and request that they do open it to see if my wife's passport was still present.
6. Google translate is super helpful. Japanese people speak a varying range of english, and all of them speak infinitely more english than I speak Japanese (despite trying to learn some!). We had some conversations with non-english speakers using google translate, which lead to some nice interactions with people we otherwise couldn't have communicated with.
7. I found Japan surprisingly affordable / cheap. When we went we got ~200 yen per £1. My friend who was with us said last time he went to Japan he got roughly 140 yen per £1, so I suppose that factored in a lot. A nice bowl of ramen was like £7, each plate of sushi at kura sushi was around 80p, cocktails universally seemed cheaper than beer which was weird but welcomed.
8. I stupidly made no effort to look up the weather when we booked this trip. It was 33 degrees pretty much every day. I'm Scottish and more accustomed to like 8-12 degrees in September. Needless to say we were grotesquely sweaty the whole time. I read (unsure if this is true) that Japanese people don't sweat as much. Anecdotally I thought this may be true as even when they were fanning themselves or looking hot there were no visible signs of sweat, whereas we were literally sweating through our t-shirts like cretins.
9. Something I found unusual, but is not a complaint, is how few places seemed to be open during the day. In British culture you'd often stop off for a single beer during the day to have a break or cool down if it was hot, etc. In Roppongi we really struggled to find anywhere like a bar that was open before 5pm. Weirdly when we moved from Tokyo to Osaka and Kyoto we found them to have much more food and drink options during the day.
10. There are lots of etiquette rules and some posts here made it seem a lot more hassle than it is, or like you needed to memorise them. As with most things, if you just copy the locals you'll figure it out. Be quiet(ish) in public spaces, stand on the same side of the escalator as them, don't eat whilst walking if it can be avoided, etc.
11. Tax free – if you show your passport and you're not in the country for longer than a certain period of time (a couple of months??) you get things tax free. Consumable items must get sealed up in a bag, but things like knives, suitcases, etc. don't. Then at the airport on the way home you just go to the tax free bit, they scan your passport, and that was it. They didn't check any of our stuff as it was sealed away in our hold-luggage.
12. Luggage Forwarding – If you go to reception of your hotel with the Japanese address of your next destination you can pay a nominal fee (we were like £8 per bag) to forward them on. This saved carting multiple bags through the subways, on trains, etc. We used this at every opportunity and don't regret it. The form is in japanese but the reception staff were always happy to help us fill it out.
13. Laundry – all our hotels had washing machines you could use for £2.50 or so. I travelled very light (a hold-all with 6 T-shirts, 5 pairs of boxers, 5 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of shorts, a pair of jeans and a jumper). As it was so hot I never wore the jumper or jeans, and the 3 grey T-shirts didn’t see the light of day as I’d have sweat through them in seconds. So really I wore 3 T-shirts, 2 pairs of shorts, and underwear between doing washing every 2/3 days. You can travel super light! I’d caveat this by saying…
14. Uniqlo! The clothes here are better quality than like H&M or next or whatever, but much cheaper. T-shirts are like £9, I got a waterproof jacket for £35, and nice cotton shirts for £15. I bought a suitcase and then filled it with clothes to take home and even then wish I’d bought more!

My Trip

• 17th – 20th Tokyo;
• 20th – 25th Osaka;
• 25th – 27th Kyoto;
• 27th – 28th Hakone;
• 28th – 30th Tokyo.

Tokyo

For both our Tokyo stints we stayed in APA hotels – one in Roppongi and one in Shinjuku. The hotels themselves were clean and nice. The rooms were TINY but I assume this is just a Tokyo thing. The Roppongi one was more bearable as there was under-bed storage, so even if the room was small, it wasn't cluttered. The Shinjuku one did not have under-bed storage so the whole room was taken up by the double bed, the desk, and our suitcases. Literally if I wanted to pass my wife I had to stand on the bed to get round her. This wasn't an issue as I guess it's just part of the Tokyo experience and we were out our rooms much more than we were in them.

• Sumo Wrestling – this was probably the highlight of the trip. Sumo tournaments run every odd month of the year I believe. We used the "buysumotickets" website to get our tickets. We honestly thought this would be a novelty and we'd just go have a look then leave. How wrong we were! Your ticket covers you for a full day and there are 4 divisions (???) spread out throughout the day. The "buysumotickets" guide says the latter two divisions begin at 3pm so maybe head for that sort of time. Had I known how much we were going to enjoy it we would have gone for the full day. The actual bouts are very short (like 10-20 seconds) with a lot of ceremony inbetween, but it's all really enjoyable. You can have beers or snacks whilst you watch, and the crowd was very into it. There is some thing where both sumos have to begin at the same time, so if one sumo doesn't, it's a false start. There seemed to be a lot of posturing and at the last minute one sumo would stand up and just walk to his ring-man (or equivalent!) and get a towel and just wipe himself down. This was quite fun after we understood it as the crowd gets really into them mugging each other off, and some sumos would do this multiple times. Regardless – would highly recommend this.
• Mario kart – I wasn't sure what to expect with this as my friend booked it, but this was also great. We did it in Shinjuku and it wasn't like a race or zooming about, it turned out to essentially be a lovely site-seeing tour by kart. There were outfits you could wear, but due to the heat we just stuck some open shirts over our t-shirts. A lead car (an actual car) drives, and you follow in single file. Japanese drivers seemed very courteous and we had no issues. The "scary" part was if lights went red when only half of you were through, then you had to try navigate some busy junctions to catch up with the lead car (which pulled over very quickly to wait). You need an international drivers licence for this, and to take your own licence from your home country. This was such a fun way to just see large parts of the city with a breeze. We did this with "Japan Kart" and I would highlight recommend it.
• BBQ Eden – We were just wandering around Shinjuku and looked up and saw what appeared to be a bbq near a glass balcony on a restaurant, so we sauntered up and it was a little place with 4 tables, each had its' own bbq food and you ordered raw things to cook. This was a cool experience, the food was good, and the view was great.
• Kill Bill Restaurant – Gonpachi Nishi-Azabu. This restaurant was cool to look at, the staff were friendly, and the food was good. The service wasn't amazing – my friend ordered the set menu which had like 8 dishes or something. Throughout the night our waiter finished their shift twice, so we went through 3 waiters. Each time we got a new waiter they completely forgot about our friends set menu / the food he still had to get. We had to keep prompting them and what should have been like an hour meal ended up taking 2 hours or more. This is a minor criticism as the food and decor were good, and we had no issue spending "too much" time here.
• Golden Gai – We wandered her for a look. It was our first experience of small japanese bars, but they were pretty cool. These streets were worth a look but, again, we seemed to come too early as only one bar was open. We had a drink and moved on – I imagine this could be a cool area in the evening.
• Teamlabs Planets – This was the first Teamlabs we did. It was very cool – you start walking through ankle deep water, and the whole thing is quite sensory. Whilst I would recommend it (the dome-shaped room is especially cool!), we did all 3 teamlabs, and I'd probably say this was our least favourite. There was nothing wrong with it, I just preferred the others.
• Teamlabs Borderless – This was my favourite of the Teamlabs ones. Unlike Planets which is a little more curated and guided, this is just a huge maze of different rooms with different exhibits and a lot of which you could easily miss as they're hidden. Some of them did genuinely leave me awe-struck. If I could only do one on my whole trip it would be this.
• Jomon Roppongi – I would highly recommend this little restaurant! We walked past it a few times and it was always busy and looked very traditional. We booked it one night as we walked past for the following night. We had some sake, ramen, and skewers. The food was great, the atmosphere was lovely, would definitely come again.
• Shibuya Crossing – very cool to see! We were looking for a vantage point to appreciate it more and were originally going to go to a first floor starbucks, but realised the second and third floor was an all you can drink bar called something lounge. We paid £12 for an hour and a half (IIRC) and you could just use a beer tap, grab unlimited snacks, or go into the fridges containing different beers and wines. This was a cool way to enjoy the crossing.
• Skytree Tokyo – This was better than I thought it'd be – at the base of the Skytree there happened to be a japanese Oktoberfest event going on, so we had some beers then headed up. As all of our travel was by trains which were predominantly underground I felt you don't really get a feel for how vast Tokyo is, but going up here at night changed that – as far as you can see in every direction is Tokyo.
• General sight-seeing – we went to harajuku, shinjuku, roppongi, akihabara, etc. Seeing all the different areas and how different they are was fun!

Osaka

Grids Hotel – Right next to Namba Station, decent sized rooms, 5 minute walk from Dotonbori. This was a good hotel, and more spacious than the Tokyo APA ones.

• Taste Osaka Food/Drink Tour – This was not bad! It was like £90 per person and I just didn't feel it was worth the money. Went to a few bars and had a few snacks and drinks, got some info from the tour guide who was a nice enough guy, but yeah just didn't feel like this was worth more than the sumo or mario karting, etc. It was nice enough to do night 1 to get a lay of the land, and we did admittedly go into some tiny bars off the beaten path which was the whole point and I enjoyed, I just felt the value for money was less for this than the other activities we did, and if we had to give one activity a miss it would likely be this. It probably depends who you get in your group and we had two americans who were complaining about a lot of things about japan and they left early, then a nice irish / australian couple but they also left early as they were tired, so it was just our group and the guide. I imagine if you were in a really lively group this could have been more fun so your mileage may vary.
• Osaka Castle – was a nice walk around the grounds and the building itself is beautiful. We tried to go to the rooftop bar within the grounds but there was a wedding on so it was closed, so we didn't get to see that. Our friends went up to the top of the castle for a look and said that was good – my wife and I opted to continue walking around the grounds instead.
• Kura Sushi – A chain of conveyor-belt sushi places. I found the food to be MUCH higher quality than sushi back home and so cheap! Three of us racked up 40 plates on our first visit, the second time we only did 22, so we learned to constrain ourselves a bit more. Every 5 plates you put in the plate disposal bit you get a chance to win a gacha pod.
• Universal Studios – We trained from Osaka to Universal City to do this. We bought our tickets in advance, we also paid for access to the mario part of the park. Our ticket came with 4 random queue jumps – Harry Potter, Minions, Mario Kart, and Jaws. The Harry Potter ride was unreal, a mix of actual roller coaster and screens displaying stuff, I really enjoyed that. Mario Kart I thought was a let-down but my friends enjoyed it more than HP. Minions was surprisingly good too, I thought it would be a kids ride but it was a VR ride in a large moving carts with a huge screen all round you – one of my friends got a bit of motion sickness doing this, but it wasn't super long so definitely manageable. The jaws ride was average, but a nice little jaunt in a boat. This was a very fun way to spend a day! Given that it was a theme park with no other options for catering, I found the food and drink super affordable. I found Japan was good for that in general – it doesn't seem like much price gouging or ripping off happens. A large coke was like £4 and a burger and chips meal was like £10 or £12. We also did the large rollercoaster that raises you and makes you face the ground the whole time – it was fun, but I'm a coward and don't like roller coasters, so probably wouldn't do this ride again haha.
• Nara – We day-tripped here too. This was a great change of pace from the hustle and bustle of the bigger cities. My wife found a load of sites she wanted to see and they mapped into a perfect circuit so we just walked that. Half way round we went to a famous knife shop and bought some kitchen knives that looked very cool. We got our names engraved on them for free included in the cost. This was at Kikuichimonjushirokanenaga honten. The bowing deer were very cool to see. We also ended up at a random little cafe run by an elderly couple and the curry we got there was really nice.
• Izakayas – My friend told us about Izakayas – which are similar to small pubs that do tapas style food. I think they translate to "stay-drink-place". We walked up from Osaka Castle to an area called Tenma which had lots of Izakayas and was less tourist heavy. During our whole trip to japan this is the only place we experienced the dreaded "no foreigner allowed" places. One had a huge japanese sign outside and at the bottom, the only part in english was "reservation required" – we opened the door and the barmaid pretty much sprinted over saying "sorry, no! Sorry, no!" and shut the door on us. It was pretty annoying, but what can you do. We then went to two Izakayas that were probably my favourite places we had food / drink of the whole trip. The first was Izakaya Joppari which had amazing food, the salmon belly and pork ribs were so tasty! The owner was friendly and chatted to us a bit. The second one was Izakaya Senkai (its' address is 1-chome-18-7 Tenjinbashi) it doesn't seem to come up when googling the name. We had a great time here – we were buying the owner some drinks and he really opened up to us and then started asking (via google translate) if we'd ever tried certain japanese food and every time we said no he made us (for free) portions of it to try! We stayed here for hours and spoke to some locals and this felt like a really genuine experience. I'd highly recommend going up to Tenma to try these places.
• Teamlabs Botanical Gardens – This was my second favourite Teamlabs. It's just a beautiful big scenic garden with loads of light fixtures throughout which gave the place a really ethereal feel. It is so big that it doesn't feel particularly busy, and it's nice just having a wander around at night time somewhere quiet and pretty. The only time I got bitten by mosquitos the whole trip was here, and I got bitten about 10 times.
• There is a large shopping street which caters to local restaurants (Doguyasuji Arcade) – this is worth visiting if you want to buy anything like knives, chopsticks, cups, etc. I went to a shop where a lady handmade signs for local shops and I bought a large canvas sign for a ramen shop which now hangs in my dining room, it's a really nice souvenir.
• Kushikatsu Shirotaya Nankai-dori Branch – This place was great – you just order skewers from the menu and they all come deep fried. They had a lot of vegetarian options for my wife. The owner seemed to be some sort of celeb – his picture was all over the advertising and some locals took selfies with him.

Kyoto

Hotel Musse – Pretty spacious rooms, but no under-bed luggage storage. As aforementioned the reception staff could not have been any more helpful, they were such a lifesaver when my wife lost her bag / passport. The location of this hotel is great too, would highly recommend.

• In general I found Kyoto to be the most bustling place we went, which surprised me. We really enjoyed our time here in general.
• Matsui Sake Brewery Tour – we booked this by email in advance of going to japan and I'm glad we did it. Very small brewery but the short tour was informative and enjoyable. At the end you get to taste 3/4 sakes with the option to pay to taste more, which we did. They even had sparkling sake which was like champagne, and I liked that a lot. Our tour guide (Hiro, I think!) was great. Would highly recommend doing this to try some sake and learn more about it.
• Fushimi Inari – This was cool to see and we arrived at 7am and it was still quite busy, we left at 9.30am and there were SO many people. If you want this to yourself you probably need to come at like 6am, but 7am was still pretty good. If you turn right at the first shrine you go through a bamboo forest towards a little graveyard which was quite nice to see aestheically.
• Philosophers Path – This was a nice riverside walk with buildings on the left and some nature on the right. We walked this pretty fast but probably should have taken our time to drink it in more!
• Kiyomizu Dera – The walk up to here was the busiest thing we saw in our whole time in Japan. A solid wall of people for like a kilometer. The temple itself was nice architecturally, so worth seeing. Might be another one for 6am?
• K36 Rooftop Bar – This bar is on the roof of a fancy hotel (Seiryu) and has amazing views of Hokan-Ji and Kyoto in general. I would highly recommend coming here – the cocktails are well priced and tasty, and the views are stunning. We planned to come here for a drink but stayed for like 4 hours just taking in the sunset. At the exchange rates we got, a cocktail was only like £8. I think there was a £5 or £10 table charge per person, but it was well worth it! We also had our only non-japanese meal of the trip here – a pizza, which was really good.

Hakone

We only stayed one night and stayed at the Yoshino Pax Hotel. The hotel had an onsen in the room which was little more than a wooden bath for 1 on the balcony. The roof of the hotel had a larger onsens separated by gender. This was actually a cool experience as the noise of running water is very relaxing, and the water was 40 degrees, so good for achy muscles after lots of walking. You do need to go in naked with strangers (unless you rent the private one for an hour), which is counter to our British sensibilities, but it was a good experience.

All we did in Hakone otherwise was go to the Pirate Ship cruise across lake Ashi which was good but it's quite trek to get there – A train from Hakone to Gora, a mountain train up the mountain, a cable car and a lift thing, and then a bus home. It wasn't difficult to take all these modes of transport – just forewarning you that it's not as simple as jumping on one train and you're there, which the rest of our trip was like.

We went out for dinner and had some drinks at a Gora Brewery / Pub. It's a little walk out of town and the brewery itself was very cool, and the beers and pizza were great. The only pain is it was dead the whole time we were there, the pub could seat about 60 people and we were the only 4 customers. It was a little more expensive here than other places we'd been.

Summary

We did a lot more things I haven't named, but that was more ad-hoc things, just wandering into pubs or going to see random sights, so I didn't take note.

I think this is one of the best holidays I've ever been on, everything about it was great, and I'd love to go back.

I'd possibly spend less time in Osaka as that seems to be mainly for shopping / eating / drinking, which is good, but I think one less day in Osaka and one more day in Kyoto would have been better.

I hope this helps anyone considering whether or not to go!