Hello and welcome to the Casual Chat!

I have come back from my trip to Japan! While I can definitely gush about the best things that I did, the only thing that I will say to that is that I had a great time and I am glad I was able to go.

I do know that there are a lot of people out there who want to go and are working their tails off, and I am going to say that it is a tough ride, but I was able to do it so you can do it as well!

With that being said, there are somethings that I learned while on my trip that I want to impart to anyone else who wants to go, especially if they have a trip that is coming up in the future.

And for maximum click bait appeal, I am also going to be making it a top 5 list of subtle things that help for a trip to Japan.

Whether they are budget tips or lifestyle tips, there are some minor things that I want to let you all know about for a trip to Japan. This can also be beneficial if you happen to be going to other places, but I am speaking from my experience in Japan.

Let’s get started!

Caution: Long Read Ahead

5: Look into overnight buses

While the railway system in Japan is great, especially since I live in a place where public transportation is limited, there are a couple of downsides.

The Shinkansen or bullet trains in Japan are among one of the best ways to go around the country, but the issue is that they can be expensive. If your travel plans permit, then I would advise getting a JR Rail Pass, which allows you to take any of the JR trains for either 7, 14, or 21 days and it is only available to tourists, especially if you are going to be travelling around the country a lot.

One of the downsides to this is that it can be quite expensive, especially if you are going with multiple people. For a 7 day pass on the standard cars, you are looking at 50,000 yen which as of writing this is around 340 USD.

If you are looking for a 21 day pass then that will set you back 100,000 yen, or about 677 USD, and again this is for the standard cars. Looking at the Green pass, which is better seats, a 7 day pass is 70,000 yen or about 474 USD and a 21 day pass is 140,000 yen or about 948 USD.

Going to Japan is already going to be expensive, so if you want to save a little bit of money and aren’t going to be doing a lot of travelling around except to few major cities like I did, there is a cheaper alternative in using their overnight bus system.

The company I used, Willer Travel, offers a bus pass, which come in 3 day, 5 day, or 7 day passes for their Monday through Thursday buses or a 3 day or 5 day pass for their All Day/Any Day pass.

The way these passes work is that you can choose a bus within a two month time frame of your purchase and choose which bus you want to ride. The days do not have to be consecutive, and they offer either day buses or overnight buses, which you can schedule ahead.

This can be a way to substitute a night in a hotel while also travelling to a new place. Keep in mind some hotels won’t let you check in until the afternoon, so plan accordingly in that respect since if you take an overnight bus it may be early morning when you arrive to your destination.

The best part is that the most expensive pass which is both the seven day Mon-Thur pass and the 5 day All Day pass, each costing 15,300 yen, which is about 104 USD. You can buy three of these passes and it will still be cheaper than one seven day JR Rail Pass for the ordinary car.

This does come at a cost, having done the three day All Day Pass myself, and that is the seats are a little small if you happen to be a bigger person like myself, and even though for the longer rides there are plenty of bus stops, there are no restrooms on the buses for emergencies, at least on the buses I was on.

If you are able to get the JR Rail Pass and are able to use it effectively, I would highly recommend it, but if you want to travel around and save a bit of money, the buses are what I would choose.

4. Convenience Stores

This is lower on the list because it can be fairly common knowledge for someone researching to go, but for those of you who may be unaware the convenience stores in Japan are excellent.

There are three major convenience stores that you will see around; Lawson, Family Mart and 7-Eleven, and they all have some major things in common that you can make extreme use of.

One of the first things is that the prices for drinks is pretty good, for example a soda will cost anywhere between 120 yen to 180 yen, which is between 80 cents and a 1.25 USD and huge bottles of water tend to be cheaper at between 100 yen and 150 yen.

There are also a dozen of varieties of teas, like oolong, milk, green, and black to name a few at your beck and call, which are also unsweetened if you happen to be watching your sugar.

The snacks can also be decently priced at between 150 yen to 350 yen depending on what you get, with candy bars erring cheaper than say breads and donuts. Not only that, but the fresh food that is offered in convenience stores is pretty good.

On the evening I had arrived, a few restaurants that were near me had already closed, but since most if not all convenience stores are 24 hours, I went to the nearby Family Mart and got myself a piece of fried chicken and an oolong tea and a couple other snacks to fill me up.

Since many restaurants aren’t opened until 10 or 11 AM with the exception of a couple of café’s, you can go to a convenience store to get something to wake you up, like a hot or cold coffee and a pastry.

The other benefit that convenience store have is that they are always within the vicinity of wherever you are staying. If you happen to get lost and want something quick to eat then you can find a convenience store no problem.

Doesn’t matter which brand, there will always be at least two or three convenience stores within your immediate vicinity, and not just the main chains either.

The best thing about convenience stores however is the other services that they offer. The one that is the most useful is the ATM, which if you want to have a bit of cash on you like I did, you can use the ATM’s very easily and with no trouble.

The rates you get are pretty good, with my experience being that they are very close in the rates while charging you a minor fee or no fee at all depending on the convenience store you go to.

Another benefit for the ATM’s, at least the ones at 7-Eleven, was that you could charge an IC card from the ATM. I got a Welcome Suica card, which is a temporary IC card offered to visitors of the country that is primarily used to access trains if you don’t want to buy the individual tickets, and if I needed to refill it instead of me going to a train station to do so, I just went to a 7-Eleven ATM while I was getting some cash.

It does work with most if not all IC card brands, at least from the labels I saw on the menu of the ATM, and can be done in a bunch of languages so you don’t have to struggle with it. The ones in 7-Eleven only took cash, so keep that in mind.

Something else you can do in convenience stores is print something out, like tickets for a museum or train or event if you want to have an extra copy on you, or just to print something in general. It wasn’t something I needed to use, but it was nice knowing that the service was there.

Speaking of services that were nice to have that I didn’t use was that they had a bunch of power banks you can rent to charge your phone and drop off at any other place that has that specific brand of power bank. I went to a couple of 7-Elevens and saw that they carried the same brand, which I cannot remember unfortunately, but if I needed a power bank it was nice to know where I could get one and drop one off.

3. Coin Holders and Retractable Lanyards

These are two pieces of convenience that I managed to pick up on in the second half of my trip, but my goodness were they very useful in the long run.

The first one that I picked up was a coin holder/coin purse/coin pouch and this was because I personally preferred to pay with things in cash. While many places in Japan, primarily in the bigger cities like Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka I was able to pay with a card, it always helps to carry a little bit of cash around. Now this proved to be helpful in the couple of places that I went to that only had cash, but there was a significant downside.

The Japanese yen has a lot of coins that are commonly used; 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, and 500 yen coins and there is a chance you will be holding on to quite a few of these coins, especially if you are like me.

Now if you pay with a lot of things with card then this doesn’t affect you as much, but there will be time when you need to pay in cash and you will have some loose change rolling around. It would be prudent of you to carry a coin pouch with you to help you keep an eye on that loose change.

Not only that, but if you want to pay in exact change, rather than digging in your pockets hoping to find the right coins, you can pull out your coin pouch to get what you need.

If you want to get something from a vending machine that doesn’t have a card reader, you can get the coins you need. If you happen to partake in gacha machines or claw machines, then you can store all of your 100 yen coins in there.

If you are a seasoned traveler then this advice might seem like a no brainer, but for people who haven’t travelled outside of their home country or pay primarily using their card, this can be something that makes things a little more convenient.

Speaking of convenience, something that I didn’t get until the last few days of my trip but made a massive difference was getting a lanyard with a retractable card holder.

I had bought it on a whim from the Nintendo Museum (which if you are wanting to go, buy your tickets at least a month in advance) just to see if I could use it for my Welcome Suica for the trains.

I wasn’t able to store the card on my cell phone and I am wary of doing IC transactions through my phone personally, so I decided that it would be worth a shot to try the retractable lanyard to see how it would fare for the trains.

It helped immensely, and while it isn’t a revolution in how to travel more efficiently, it was something that I didn’t even consider until I saw that lanyard in the shop.

Having it made using my Welcome Suica much easier than taking it out of my pocket and scanning it, whereas now I could extend it to the reader to scan and be on my way. I also didn’t feel like I constantly needed to keep track of it by feeling for it in my pockets, since it was right in front of me, which helped ease my mind.

It saves a few seconds in terms of actual time saved realistically, and if you can put the card on a digital wallet then you could do so, but for those who are unable to do so or feel a bit nervous doing so, a retractable lanyard is a helpful way to manage your train card.

2. Luggage Concerns

This is something that I learned while on my trip there, but it is something that is important to consider, especially in Japan.

When I went over I had the traditional rolling luggage that most people would have, and that served me fine enough, but something I didn’t consider was the amount of stairs that I would be climbing.

Japan is a relatively small country, unable to go too wide with how they build things, which means that many buildings are multi-storied, which makes sense.

What became a concern quickly was when I went to an older hotel that didn’t have access to an elevator or went through train stations and subway stations that also didn’t have escalators.

In some of the bigger train stations there were some escalators, but sometimes there would be instances where the escalators only went one way, which was helpful if I was going in that direction, not so helpful if I wasn’t.

As the trip went on I acquired another piece of luggage, something more akin to a duffel bag that had a strap that I could attach to the handle of my luggage to make it easier to carry while I was on the move.

This was helpful going long distances, but whenever I had to move up or down stairs, there was the issue of me carrying two pieces of luggage that grew heavier as the trip went on as I acquired souvenirs.

It made traversing stairs difficult and while I have a decent amount of strength, carrying two heavy pieces of luggage up several flights of stairs depending on the train station and two to three flights of stairs for the hotel gets tiring, especially as the trip went on and I had a long day to get to the hotel.

There are several ways to tackle this problem. One is make sure you pack light when you get to Japan so you have less difficulty in moving up and down certain stations and hotels. Another is using a different kind of luggage that is easier to carry up and down stairs.

Travel backpacks do exist, and if you are a solo traveler than that might be something worth considering since it would be easier to bring a backpack up and down stairs than rolling luggage.

A duffel bag is also an option, especially if they sell duffel bags that have a way for you to attach a lock on them to make sure your belongings are safe.

If you are travelling with a larger group then consider bundling clothes into a couple of travel backpacks or a large duffel bag while also keeping a couple on hand to use for souvenirs.

If you do need to use rolling luggage for any reason, then please do whatever research you can on accommodations to make sure that they have an elevator and don’t be afraid to ask for help from hotel staff to help you if you happen to be struggling.

As far as dealing with train stations that don’t have escalators, you may need to do some maneuvering to find elevators that go to the station, of which there are few that are also well hidden, or check to see if someone can help you.

This is something that a little bit of research and planning can go a long way to make sure that you are not inconvenienced for your trip.

1. Pick a Direction and Get Lost

This is my final tip because it is something that I like to do, and that is that if you don’t have any plans whatsoever and don’t mind a lot of walking, then you should pick a direction and start walking.

No matter where in Japan you go, you should be able to find something to see, some place to eat, or just take in the atmosphere of being in Japan.

While there is an abundance of things available to do in Japan that can fill in a whole day, something that I think is underappreciated in travelling is just looking around without a plan.

I personally had few things planned in terms of things I wanted to see, so on most days I just started to wander around until I saw something that piqued my interest.

Google Maps can help you guide your way back to your hotel with good accuracy, so if you get really lost then you can find your way back easily enough. Google Maps can also show you something interesting that you didn’t even consider going to if you wander a good distance away and are looking for something interesting.

One day I was in Kyoto wandering around, having already done what I wanted to do for the day, and decided to see what was nearby me. To my surprise I saw that there the Kyoto International Manga Museum.

I enjoy manga quite a bit and decided to pay it a visit and had a fun time, and it was something that I only was able to experience because I was just wandering around. I had no idea that there was a manga museum, so finding one by pure happenstance was a nice surprise.

While I was in Hiroshima, after I visited the Atomic Dome, I was walking back to my hotel when I noticed that there was the Hiroshima Museum of Art. Not having anything else planned for the day, I went inside and saw some fascinating pieces of art.

It was a little awkward because a couple was also getting their wedding photos done so maneuvering was a little tricky, but after getting past them I saw some cool pieces of art. They had an exhibition of an artist by the name of Odilon Redon, and I never would have been able to see some of their art, which I liked because I do enjoy some surreal artwork.

On a different day in Hiroshima I got super lost and was working to navigate my way back to a train station where I found a random shrine in the middle of nowhere, which are also cool finds since there are plenty of shrines scattered throughout Japan and just finding one randomly was a neat experience.

When I was in Osaka walking through Dotonbori looking for somewhere to eat, I managed to find an okonomiyaki place that was just opening up for the evening and only had two other guests. As I was waiting for my food the place slowly filled up, which helped the atmosphere of the experience.

And that is really the key reason why this is my number one tip: experience Japan. Of course there are hundreds of places that you could visit because those are popular things to do in Japan. I did plenty of those as well, like I said I visited the Atomic Dome, I saw the Unicorn Gundam statue in Tokyo, I went to four separate Pokémon Centers, I ate at Ichiran, I went to the Osaka Aquarium and all of those were great experiences.

But the experiences I liked the most were the ones where the ones where I was not somewhere crowded and just experienced being there. During my time getting lost in Tokyo, I saw the coastline while the weather was windy and just looked at the water.

Just seeing it ripple in chaotic patterns was something I don’t experience often and spending a few minutes just immersing myself in that experience is something that I will remember for years.

Of course I will remember the big things I did, but what I loved most about Japan was the small things that I did that most people wouldn’t do because it wasn’t something that I could experience when I am home.

In Conclusion

I had a blast going to Japan, and I hope that for those of you planning to go in the future that these tips help you a little bit when you are able to go.

It took me seven years to go, two years of planning ready to go only to be delayed by three years of pandemic and two years of saving up again, and it was hard work.

I missed out several family events and holidays to do it, worked myself to the bone, and budgeted hard to make sure I was able to enjoy myself. It wasn’t easy, and I was so stubborn to have it happen, but it was the biggest personal accomplishment that I have achieved.

I do want to go again since I only scratched the surface of going to Japan, but I am not in any hurry to go again soon. Maybe in a few more years when I save up again and in a warmer period so I can go visit north of Tokyo.

If you are planning to go I wish for you to have the best time and if any of these tips were able to help you even in a small way, then I did my job correctly.

Thank you for reading, see you all next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual