The Japan Trip Resource Thread!

[neoboy259]

Hoolak, with all due respect, you probably won't get the most out of Tokyo and Kyoto in one week. A week wouldnt be enough to see that all of Tokyo has to offer.

Anyways, if you have a JR pass, you can use it to navigate throughout the JR Yamanote line, which stops at pretty much every major destination of interest within Tokyo. Out of your hotel list, I'd stay in Shinjuku- loads of restaurants/bars and shopping in that area, plus a branch of Sakuraya Hobby/Game store in the area Also transport links in the area are superb.

Can't help much with Kyoto as only spent a day there. There's a bus office outside the station where you can purchase day bus passes and pick up free maps/guides to the major attractions.

[kryss]

A week wouldnt be enough to see that all of Tokyo has to offer.

That really depends on what you want to see. You can do Ueno, Asakusa and Akihabara in one day, Ginza, Tsukiji and Hamarikyuu gardens in another, Harajuku/Omotesandou (incl. Meiji-jinguu) in a third.

By the way Hoolak, how are you doing Mt Fuji and Hakone in the same day? Just seeing it from the Hakone? Your hotel may have excursions there, it might be a good idea to check, though obviously your train pass wouldn't cover it. I don't think it would cover the Odakyu lines either, and one of the easiest ways to get to Hakone is the Romance Car from Shinjuku.
Hakone-yumoto is the closest train station, then there are 2 different trains and a ropeway to take you across the mountains. Very fun.

[Bleeders]

+1 for Shinjuku. We stayed there, very convenient, but not only that Club Sega Shinjuku-Nishi was only 4 minutes away!

[teddymeow]

The wife and I have just come back from our second time along with three friends. One of the guys we went with has a friend living in Yokohama and he met us in Tokyo and showed us some of the cooler shops you wouldn't know were there unless you had a detaied knowledge of the language. He took us to an amazing Izakaya in Shibuya which was underground but decorated with a waterfall at the entrance and streams throughout with low lighting and bird song playing and some absolutely delicious beer. Totally incredible...!!

We stayed in Asakusa which seemed a bit more "old fashioned" than where we stayed last year (sort of on the border of Roppongi in the ARK Hills centre). Saying that, our hotel was literally right next door to the Bandai offices so we got to walk past Power Rangers every morning - them's the future I tell you

Already planning for next year. The missus picked the hotel for the recent trip and she's already been looking for next. She has suggested the Sunroute Shinjuku Plaza

(http://www.sunroute.jp/SunrouteTopHLE.html)

which has been getting some pretty good online reviews but I'm fighting to stay here again

(http://www.anaintercontinental-tokyo.jp/e/room/)

due to the fact that it's where we stayed on our honeymoon and that was the best holiday I have ever been on (everything holiday up to the age of 16 was to the Isle of Wight with my parents and I hadn't had a holiday since the age of 16 until I went on my honeymoon )

We're looking at going for a proper two weeks next year too (fly out, 15 nights, fly back). Had 11 full days this year and we still didn't get to see everything we wanted. We managed to get around the majority of the gardens that we wanted to see as well as going up the Government Building and Tokyo Tower. Usually I struggle to get up a step ladder but I amazed myself. Even managed to take some photos without thinking about what would happen if the floor gave way!

It was my wifes' birthday while we were out there so we went to the Sea Life park and saw the giant Tuna and the Penguins too. I'm a big fan of Katsu-don so it was also nice to find a Tonkatsu Wako (their Miso Soup with little clams in it is delicious) on Odaiba looking out over the Rainbow Bridge where we had dinner and looked at the incredible view. My dodgy little Casio digital camera even managed to take some rather good photos, even in the rapidly diminishing light.

Bleeders, the Shinjuku Club SEGA is sooooo cool!! 4 player Mario Kart GP2 ftw!!! Although, from a range of machines / space to walk around and not choke from tobacco smoke I have to put forward a vote for the Taito HEY! Amusement Centre in Akihabara. That place was amazing! So many shooters and fighters...I almost didn't leave

[Brian Topp]

Well, it's finally come round, tomorrow I'll be on that plane. Never flown before, so I have no idea what to expect! Never mind, I'm sure the Ayumi Hamasaki concert will be worth it...

Bit of an odd question, don't know if anyone here can answer it: has anyone brought any Japanese artists cd's while over there? I'm not sure what funny looks I'd get when purchasing Kumi Koda's latest one. They might be like, "why's this English guy buying that for??!"

[randombs]

from a range of machines / space to walk around and not choke from tobacco smoke I have to put forward a vote for the Taito HEY! Amusement Centre in Akihabara. That place was amazing! So many shooters and fighters...I almost didn't leave

i fell in love with HEY, and when i found out my hotel (green hotel ochanomizu, ?30 a night, if anyone's interested) was, flukily, 2 minutes from it, I was there every night for my last week:



my vega skills nftw

although i thought it was pretty smoky (the 10Yen SSF2T corner, anyway, although i was also responsible for that!)

[Anpanman]

Well, it's finally come round, tomorrow I'll be on that plane. Never flown before, so I have no idea what to expect! Never mind, I'm sure the Ayumi Hamasaki concert will be worth it...

Bit of an odd question, don't know if anyone here can answer it: has anyone brought any Japanese artists cd's while over there? I'm not sure what funny looks I'd get when purchasing Kumi Koda's latest one. They might be like, "why's this English guy buying that for??!"

Crikey, nothing like going in at the deep end, ganbatte!

Shouldn't expect you'll encounter any probs buying CD's.

Have a great trip & travel safe

[kryss]

The only problem with the CDs is the price.

[randombs]

@ Ampanman:

I bought loads of CDs on my two trips to Japan (20+ altogether, I think). Quite a few were Western stuff (Japanese version of Daft Punk's Discovery with the cool anime cardboard sleeve, Best of Earth Wind & Fire and Ghostbusters OST for £4!), but most are Japanese. You won't look a fool, and spine cards are addictive

Heck, one night at about 2AM I was at the local Tsutaya store in Kyoto (great store, if you're around Shibuya go visit the Shibuya Station Tsutaya, has a Starbucks and the basement floor has loads of 2nd-hand CDs, most are really cheap, and you'll find some gems down there. I'd spend ages sifting through all the rows of CDs) and I heard a groovy song being played on the speakers. I just went up to the counter and asked the guy what the song was. After poking around the iTunes, he went and got the album for me

[Anpanman]

Yeah I've not had any problems either & where we are it's not a big city so not many westerners & I've been in the anime shop in town looking through game OST's and small record shops looking for dorama OST's.

[Taka]

Hey folks, I'm almost certainly gonna be heading to Tokyo in September for a week or so and virtually all of my questions have been answered bar one.

I will be travelling alone but will be meeting up with my friend and his wife to be in the evenings and I was wondering if anybody had any advice on whether it's possible to rent a mobile phone for use out there? My alternative is that I am an iPhone user so if there's free wifi everywhere then I can rely on email for comms purposes but if not, are there any other solutions?

[kryss]

I'm pretty sure you can rent mobiles from most large shops. The Softbank shop by Tokyo station does it, they might even do it in the shop in Narita Airport.

There's very little free wifi these days I've been told, but there are lots of internet cafes that charge by the half hour.

[neoboy259]

I took my 3G Vodafone UK mobile with me to Japan, just had to call Vodafone to allow international roaming. Worked a treat!
Not sure of this is an option with a 2G iphone.

Alternatively, quite a lot of the hotels have wifi/ in room net access, or at the very least communal pcs in the lobby area.

[r3z]

Yeah, you can rent from the airport, not sure how cheap it'll be tho.

I'm planning on going back over for a few months over the summer and trying to work out what to do about a phone as well.. was wondering if there was a way I can just somehow reactivate my old au phone without setting up a new contract but I don't think there is. The extremely limited number of pay-as-you-go options were rubbish from what I recall when I was over there and doubt it has changed.

Actually, despite the fancy features they have the fact that the whole mobile phone system is completely locked down and protected by carriers was something which really bugged me.. and still does as my old phone is basically a brick even tho it has games/etc I bought and paid for stored on it but cannot use as most of the features are disabled when you cancel the contract! - and people think Apple's restrictions on the iPhone are bad.

[randombs]

I was going to rent a mobile, I found this site (linked to from sakura hotel) which seemed pretty cheap but they wanted a deposit of about £200-odd I think, and said the deposit would take 2-3 months or so to be refunded (I only needed the phone for 3 weeks) so I didn't go ahead with it.

I also just enabled roaming on my Orange contract, but had to get a k800i as my 6230i wouldn't work over there (only 3G, chaps).

If you rent a phone, you'll get an email address along with it that you can give to people. In my case, I set up an orange.net email address which would send me a free text whenever I received an email, so then I'd go into my inbox and perform a send/receive to get the message.

Long-winded, I know, but it was the only way for me at least (they don't text over there, and even if they did, I think texting only works if you're on the same network), and is much more cost-effective I think - you wouldn't want your phone continually checking your inbox when you're roaming, as the data charges would skyrocket.

I clocked up £80 on my 2.5 week trip (that's charges, not including the £30 line rental), as data was charged at £8 per megabyte. Mind you, roaming SMS is 50p per message sent, so 16 texts would cost the same as a gazillion emails.

My bill was quite high because I did make/receive quite a few calls while there, and also couldn't resist using the internet on the train.

If you take your phone with you, be sure to reset the call/data counters so you can keep an eye on what you're spending. They are your friends