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We just spent two weeks traveling around Japan. It was my second time in the country, but it was Jamie's first. So, we came up with an itinerary that includes some of the classic must-sea sites, as well as going to some places a bit further a field. And we documented the whole trip in our very imaginatively titled series called 2 Weeks in Japan. But in this video, we're going to just cut straight to the chase and give you 11 things that we wish we knew beforehand. So, all the best advice and tips we can give you from things like transport, accommodation, money, language barrier, loads of different things. And we're filming this from our brand new pub that we built in our basement, hence the bites. Cheers.
So, grab yourselves a drink and maybe a notepad. We're going to give you loads of advice on traveling in Japan. And just a quick mention, this video is sponsored by Wise, but we'll talk about more of them in a little bit. So the first thing of course is arriving in Japan. What do you need to know? So for a lot of countries, certainly for Canada and the UK, you don't need a visa for visiting there. But what you do want to do is fill out your arrival form online beforehand cuz there's like a million different questions and this will save you lots of time when you land. So once you fill in this application, you'll get a QR code for you personally.
Now you fill in one application per household. So, if you're traveling as a couple or you're traveling as a family, you only need to fill in one application, but you need a QR code per person. Yeah. Because So, when we landed, I only downloaded one QR code and suddenly I'm at customs trying to get on the airport Wi-Fi and download the one for Jamie. So, that saves you a lot of time. So, when you're flying into Japan, likely you're going to be flying into Tokyo. Tokyo has two airports. Because Tokyo is so huge, these airports are actually quite far out of the city. So, you need to arrange transportation in from the airport. Taxi is going to cost
you a ton of money. So, you're looking to take either a bus or a train. We took a train, which was very convenient cuz it's right from the airport. But these trains do sell out. So, chances are if you're arriving, build in a bunch of time. Don't plan to do anything that evening like we did because chances are you're going to have to wait for quite a while in order to get on a train to take you from the airport into the city. Yeah, unless we just had bad luck and a whole bunch of planes arrived at the same time. Also very possible. But yeah, just be aware of that.
Now, Japan has an incredible infrastructure of public transport. Uh we traveled on trains, buses, and even hideout a car to get to some hard to get to places where there isn't a great public. Yeah. Yeah, mostly has a great infrastructure. Last time I was in Japan, I got the JR pass. We didn't get it this time because it wasn't cost effective for where we were going. And how to figure that out is there's actually a website with a JR pass calculator. So once you know your itinerary and know where you're going to go, you can sort of put in the train journeys and see if it's cheaper to get a JR pass or just buy your tickets individually. And we found that even
though we were taking a lot of public transit, yeah, because we were going sort of further a field, a lot of the trains and buses that we wanted to take actually weren't included in the JR pass, so it wouldn't have made any sense for us to do it. Another thing to remember when you're booking your train tickets is that some popular routes will sell out ahead of time. There's limited spaces, particularly on local buses. Or another one is if you're taking the Shinkanzen between Tokyo and Osaka or Nagoya, there is a chance to see Mount Fuji. However, those tickets specifically that give you the good window view of Mount Fuji sell out quite quickly. So, if that's your one chance
to see Mount Fuji, that's your plan, you might want to book your train ahead of time. And when you book the tickets for that, like if you book it at the train station, they have a seat plan which literally says Mount Fuji side, ocean view side. So they'll tell you what seat to sit in if you want to get that view from the train, but they will sell out faster. Mhm. Now, one thing that makes it quicker when you're traveling around the metro trains and other things is a sua card, which I think that's how you pronounce it. I might be wrong, but it's kind of like an Oyster card in London where you
just top it up with money and then you can just tap in and out at the different train stations and buses. But we didn't actually use it though cuz well Jamie will tell you. Let's cheers. So, we actually found that Japan is actually a very cash reliant country. Uh, more so than most other places that you travel now. You actually do use cash. And unfortunately, when using cash, you end up with a ton of spare coins. You'll see. We even bought these special coin organizers for when we were in Japan just to keep track of the multitude of coins that we get. They're amazing, by the way.
Amazon store. Yeah. But we found actually that when we were buying transportation that it was a great opportunity to utilize all this spare change that we had. And when you're purchasing these tickets, you don't have to count out change. You just dump it all into the machine and it'll calculate it for you. So, it's actually really easy. I think if we had all to do again, I wouldn't buy get a SA card. I would actually just utilize our spare change cuz then we walked away from Japan without having a gigantic bag of coins that we had to then try and change back. Japan's quite hybrid with this sort of cash and card use. Like we did use card payments for quite a few things, but yeah, you do accumulate quite a lot of cash and coins. So, like Jamie was
saying, just getting rid of them when buying train tickets was just such a great use for it. But because you need to use cash in Japan, you're going to have to actually withdraw some cash whilst you're there. Even if you get some money beforehand, you never know how much you might need. And whenever you're withdrawing money abroad, you can incur a lot of fees from your local bank if you're not using the right card. But the right card to use is the Wise debit card. With their multicurrency account and debit card, you can spend and withdraw money in over 40 currencies from local ATMs. And it's much cheaper than using your local bank. So before you start your trip, you can
convert your money within your account to the currency that you want at the mid-market exchange rate plus a small upfront fee. Plus, you can order an actual physical debit card or just add your debit card to your Apple or Google Pay. And when you're on the trip, you can just tap away with your physical card or your phone to pay for whatever you need. Or if you need to take some cash out, use that physical card and you can withdraw up to £250 a month without a fee. And now, Carl, if someone was about to go to Europe who didn't have a Wise account, Yeah. is there a way for me to sign up?
Yes. If you use my affiliate link right here, which is awesome. It's actually a real thing that's about yeah. So, if you use that link within the description as well, um, click on that and you get yourself a free Wise Travel debit card and you can get set up on your phone straight away and then it'll also get mailed out to you with a physical card. This is a product I recommend to so many different people all the time before they sponsored this video. So, it's a genuinely great product. So, it's true. I just haven't listened yet. Yeah. She was waiting for the affiliate link, but yes, sign up for the Wise debit card. And now onto the next travel tip for Japan.
The temptation when you're going to Japan is to do a lot of shopping. So, you want to bring a gigantic suitcase with you to bring all your stuff back, which we wish we did. The problem with that is Japan isn't really designed for large suitcases. a small carry-on bag is actually going to be much better for you in terms of moving about and also being in whatever accommodation you're going to stay in. The rooms are very small most of the time. And not only that, elevators are kind of few and far between in a lot of the smaller hotels, so you're going to be carrying your stuff upstairs and then trying to open your suitcase and move
about in a very tiny room with very restricted space. So, if you can manage a carry-on, it's probably better for you. We also found that large suitcases were very challenging when we were taking the train. So, both in the smaller stations or in the subway stations, there are stairs a lot of the time or in some cases there's like one elevator, but the queue for the elevator is huge. So, we ended up carrying a giant suitcase up a ton of stairs. It's exhausting. So keep that in mind. Also, in the trains, there are very limited spaces available for big suitcases. A lot of times you can only really fit a small suitcase on the train unless you've pre-ooked a seat with luggage space,
which there are not very many of. Yeah. Like if you're on a train in Europe, every carriage has a bit for the big suitcases for people to sort of store their cases in. Um, but in Japan like you have to sort of put them up over top. And it was quite spacious. Like you could fit a decent size suitcase up there, but you're going to have to lift this massive heavy thing above your head and wedged up there and hopefully it doesn't fall down and break someone's neck. Now, there are luggage transport services that we saw. So, if you're set on bringing a giant bag, that is definitely something to look into. I think they're relatively reasonably priced and they go between different major centers. So you wouldn't have to
travel. You just have it picked up at your hotel and then they bring it to your next hotel. So that's definitely something to explore if you're going on a longer trip or if you really want to do a lot of shopping, which tempting in a lot of situations, we would check out of our hotel in the morning and then not be moving on to our further destination in the evening. So, what we ended up doing a lot of the time is utilizing luggage storage at train stations. These are coin operated lockers. Uh, again, a great use for all of your change that you're getting. And those were really great, really useful, really simple to use. And then we just simply get our luggage out right before we took the train. It is
important to note that in some busier times, those lockers will fill up. So, really only count on using them early in the morning. and if you're getting them later in the day, you might have trouble. We had one instance in Tokyo where it seemed impossible to find luggage storage and we really needed it. So Carl recommended this app called Bounce that he uses quite often. Yeah, I used it like in lots of different countries. If you ever need bag storage, Bounce is great cuz it'll just there'll be like shops or hotels that'll just let you leave your bags there for a small fee. Uh don't have an affiliate link for them, which is a
shame, but maybe one day. Bounce, if you're watching this, get in touch. Hey, my fees are extremely high, but we can work together. One other small thing to mention is we've talked in other videos about using packing cubes, and I'll put up the affiliate link again for our trip to travel gear, which I wish like every point in this video should be an affiliate link, and we'll just be like, sign up to this, sign up to that. But again, another great product, but another useful thing for that in Japan is a lot of the hotels, the pillows are like a it's almost like a napkin. It's so thin. And
so I would get like a packing cube full of like t-shirts, whatever, and put it under my pillow and acts as an extra pillow. So yeah, another great use for trips, travel gears, uh, packing cubes. So let's talk about accommodation. Where are you going to stay when you're in Japan? Now, accommodation in Japan comes in lots of different shapes and sizes, from really nice host to mid-range hotels to some very fabulous Rioans and luxury spaces that we took a little bit of an advantage of. We really recommend that if you have the chance to do so, stay in Rioan at least once. It is really so special. Uh it includes both your dinner and your breakfast as well as usually an onsen of some shape or
form when you're there. We'll talk about onsense in a little bit. Mhm. Staying at Riaon, it's not just a roof over your head for the night like another hotel. It's an experience. It's part of your Japan travel experience. So, it's definitely worth doing if you can. But in the major cities, the host that we found were quite reasonably priced, private rooms, and really great. When you're planning your stay in Tokyo and you're trying to figure out what area to stay in, uh don't think about what you want to do in a day. Think about what you want to do in the evening and stay there because that means when you finish your last drink or your last bit of food, you can just walk back to your hotel rather than having like a 30
40m minute journey at the end of the night, which kind of sucks. So yeah, another fun thing to remember about a lot of the accommodation in Japan is a lot of things are provided for you that you don't necessarily expect in Western hotels. So most of the hotels not only provided the general like soap, shampoo kind of thing that you're used to. We were getting slippers, pajamas, toothbrush, toothpaste. I got some nice toner from one hotel like face wash, all this wonderful stuff. So, you can really expect a lot more from these hotels in Japan versus more traditional western hotels. Uh, now whether that changes what you feel like you need to pack or not, that's that's up to you. But it was
kind of fun to try on the different pajamas. I wanted to do a little montage of myself in all the different pajamas, but I only thought of that halfway through the trip. So, unfortunately, you don't get that. But maybe you can do that. And that brings us nicely on to number six, which is onends. How does an onsen work? Well, like cuz and again, it's a thing you definitely want to experience when you're in Japan. It's a beautiful hot spring baths. Relaxing in it is just incredible. Feels so good on your skin. But unless you're in a private one, you're going to be buttass naked with a bunch of strangers or possibly people you're traveling with if you're traveling with people of the same sex.
And that's just kind of the way it is. It's one of those experiences that a lot of people coming from the West might be slightly uncomfortable about and I have to admit like I was a little uncomfortable about it. Yeah. However, it really is an amazing experience. And here's the thing, nobody cares. Nobody's looking at you. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Just embrace it. Just be brave. Get used to it. And it's great. It is so relaxing. It is such a unique experience. Some of them are so stunning. We had one that was just right looking out onto the beach in the moonlight and it was absolutely
Well, that was quite funny for me because uh I was just sitting there. I was the only westerner in this one. It was the hotel at the south of the Wakiama and like beautiful view out to like the bay like Jamie was saying and just yeah a bunch of dudes just sitting there naked just looking out and you're thinking, "Yeah, this is fine." But then one guy got up cuz he wanted to have a better look at the view. So, you're kind of standing just in front of me. I was just kind of stretching like that. I was just like, h, yeah, I was cool with this before, but this is a bit much. But it's fine. It makes a fun story.
It's still I don't regret going to that onen. It was still great. There is some etiquette that goes along with being at an onsen. First of all, being respectful of other people. Don't stare uh at naked strangers. Your mom probably should have taught you that, but hey, if I got to tell you about it, I will. Uh, also it's really important to wash yourself before you get into the onsen because it is a communal bath. So you want to make sure that all your dirt from the day is off as well. And they have the showers within the onen as you're about to get in the main pool. So you'd have to like pre-show. And one last thing to mention is with tattoos because it used to be you weren't allowed to have tattoos within
the onen. Um, nowadays so many people have tattoos that they offer like free patches you just put on to like cover up your tattoos or there's a small fee for it. So yeah, if you got lots of ink on your body, don't worry about it. You can still experience and enjoy the onsense. You just might have to put on some I don't have any tattoos so I didn't, you know, have to do it. But I'm guessing it's just Carl has one secret tattoo. I really don't. That's a mole. That being said, there are private onsens at some of these nicer hotels in Rioans that you can utilize. You know, it's a little bit pricier and it's not as unique of an experience, but it is a really lovely one.
Yeah. And also the nice thing, the private ones, as a couple, we could go in together cuz the rest of them are segregated by sex. So, a private one we could go and enjoy together as we did. Number seven, language barrier. How big is the language barrier in Japan? um depends where you are. In the bigger cities, a lot more people will know some English which will make it a lot easier to communicate. Certainly at the train stations and hotels like the staff usually speak sometimes very good English. So doing the basics is quite easy. The more further a field you get, the sort of less uh English the locals will know if any at all. But these days
pretty much everyone knows how to use Google Translate. Other translating apps are available but something like that. We also don't have an affiliate link for this one. Yeah, shame. Google get in touch cuz um but yeah, so that like makes it so easy now. 19 years have we had a the Uber driver in Kyoto, this lovely sweet old guy who told us about the cherry blossom trees and he told us by using a translation on his phone. Um same the lady who worked in that small isizakaya. We're asking her about how long she had the place. So we had a conversation on the train. OS chance this businessman next to me like he was just sitting there using translate on his laptop. So it is with modern
technology it is very easy to be able to communicate. Obviously try and learn some basic phrases. This is true wherever you go cuz it goes such a long way to sort of show that you don't take for granted the fact you don't speak the local language. Like in Japan they don't expect you to speak Japanese cuz it's the only country in the world that speaks it. But by learning a few phrases uh especially more than just hello and thank you. If you learn just a few more, it kind of blows their mind at times. They're like, "Wow." You know, and it really goes a long way. The language barrier is also there for any public signage. Uh it is equally as possible that there will be no English characters on any sign that you're
trying to find. Now, obviously in major train stations, airports, etc., they do prioritize also having English. And the subway, for example, they also have English announcements of the various stations, etc. But again, as you get a little further a field, there is less English. But where there isn't any English characters on the signage, you can just hold up your phone to utilize Google Translate and it will instantly translate the characters on the sign. So easy, very easy. Japan, like many other countries, has had such a boom in tourists over the last few years. And so that means that some of the places you're going to go to, can be very crowded. and you've gone to Japan to sort of hang out with
Japanese people and experience their culture, but everywhere you look are just Western tourists taking lots of photos. So, how do you avoid that? And we say that knowing we are part of the problem, just to be clear. We're not just part of the problem. We're a big part of the problem cuz I'm promoting it on my YouTube channel. So, well, you are. Yeah. Now, I was pretty worried about this, honestly, cuz I really dislike big crowds when I'm trying to experience something. No, I get it. That's a very first world problem. Um, but it bothers me. I get a little uncomfortable. I don't like not being
able to move around in the way that I want to move around. So, I was quite nervous going to Japan thinking, am I not going to enjoy this because it's just going to be so busy all the time. There were busy spots. I'm not going to lie to you. Like, Kyoto was very busy. Osaka can be very busy, not just with locals, but with tourists as well. That being said, there are lots of ways to remedy this problem. Uh there are lots of ways to get away from the big crowd of tourists, and that's usually just going a little further away from the tourist hot spot. Whether that's going an additional block over and going to the restaurants that aren't on the super
popular street but are still very close or whether that's as Carl mentioned in the video walking to the top of Fushimiari or anything like that. Yeah. And sometimes it's just a matter of getting up early and beating the crowds like we did at the fish market at the start. Uh same with like a lot of the spots in Kyoto like a fashimari. If you get there right in the start of the day there won't be many people there at all. But one thing that can really help you out is just by chatting to the locals. Uh especially at like hotels and host because they obvious want to help you out and give you advice and tips.
And there was this guy at the hostel in the Katsugawa who worked there. Uh he was Japanese but he lived in Canada for a few years. And we had a good chat with him and he recommended all these spots we could go to in Aaka where there'll just be no tourists at all and we can go out for some great dining and food. Japan's a big country. The cities are absolutely huge. It is very easy to lose those tourist crowds. You just have to try a bit harder. Ask around, do a bit more research and get some tips on the spots which don't have that huge traffic of all the tourists doing the same thing. Or maybe another suggestion if you also like me don't like that overcrowding kind of thing is to balance
out the days of your trip to say one day it's going to be a really busy day, really crowded day, but then the next day we're going to be doing something a little more peaceful like hiking the Nakasendo Trail or at a less popular spot to just decompress from feeling like you're you're always surrounded by lots of people. Yeah, we kind of spaced out the big cities on our trip so it wasn't just like relentless crowds. It was like, "All right, we're going to have a busy full on day and then we're going to be in the countryside." And so, yeah, obviously Japan is very, very famous for its cuisine, and there's so much different stuff to try and it can be kind of quite overwhelming trying to
pick and choose what dishes you're going to have. If you're an adventurous eater, but don't know where to start, um, there's plenty of food tours everywhere. You can sign up just like for an afternoon tour and try out lots of different dishes. Or sometimes at the accommodation like the Rio camp where the meals are included, you might get like a nine course meal and you can just pick and choose and try lots of different things. If you're more of a picky eater, there's still plenty of western food or western adjacent food. Like there's still plenty of chicken, pork, and beef dishes you can have like if you're not much into seafood or
things like that. So there's always options. And if you're just hungry and need something quick and easy when you're on the go, there's like mini supermarkets everywhere, like the convenience stores like Lawson's, Family Mart, 7-Eleven. And it's really good as well. They have like really good quality sandwiches and little prepackaged meals, um, fruit that's wrapped in plastic. So, no matter what your food tastes, how picky or adventurous you are, you're not going to go hungry. There's so many options, so many things to try. Couple of things to know. If you are buying from a vending machine or a shop, you're supposed to eat just outside a shop. You can't walk down the street with it. That's a bit of a social fauxar.
One of the things I love about Japan that I didn't know before I would I arrived there, was that there's a huge snack culture in Japan, at least I like to call it snack culture, in that no matter where you go, there's lots of little things to eat all the time. And they're not big meals. They're not, you know, you sit down for a gigantic bowl of ramen all the time. Sometimes it's just you go to a street vendor and you buy like one little stick of yakuri or or something like that or a couple gyoza and it was amazing. So, one of the activities that I'd really recommend is going to these little markets, wandering around and just like picking and choosing the little things that you want
to eat and spend you could spend an entire day there just having like little snacks. Most of the izakayas as well have lovely little snack menus. Usually, when you're sitting down in one of the busier ones, they will request that you buy at least one drink and one food item. Don't be intimidated by the needing to buy a food item. They are usually just like a tiny stick of chicken. I really recommend if you need to sit down and buy a food item as it is, some mushrooms, some uh some barbecued mushrooms are like a nice little snack. They do barbecue peppers as well or like stuffed peppers. Really tiny little snacks. you're also eating
your vegetables. Uh, but they're really tasty and you just kind of get to go about your night eating and drinking and snacking. And sometimes they have cover charges at the isakayas as well, which is not that much, but it's just like a little sit down charge cuz Japan's not a tipping culture. Um, but one way you kind of it's almost like included in your cover charge as like some money just for um the staff and the venue. And they'll usually give you like a little bar nuts or something like that, little snacks that are tasty as well. Yeah. So, get stuck in with the food there. It's one of the best things about Japan. But again, if you're a fussy eater, don't worry. Don't be intimidated. You will be fine. There's so many options.
So, number 10 is be respectful. Or as I like to call it, don't be a dick. It's one of the golden rules. We have a shot glass that says don't be a dick. We do. Yeah. We do. Um, it's one of the golden rules of travel or just life in general, but especially in Japan, it's a very respectful culture. There's so many people living so packed in together that everyone's very kind of mindful of their surroundings and not disturbing other people. You know, you don't have to worry too much beforehand about what the different rules are cuz you might just sort of be panicking. Just look around and do as others do.
A key one is on public transport. Like obviously don't play your phone out loud on public transport wherever you are in the world, but you're not even allowed to speak on your phone on the public transport. That's that's one that might catch you out. Now, Japanese people know that you don't necessarily know all of their customs right away. They're very forgiving of Westerners who don't necessarily know all of the minutia of what's polite or not polite. The point is that you're trying. The point is that you're making an effort as much as they're making an effort. And a little bit of effort goes a long way. But it's it's a very kind of respectful country within its culture. And so just try and reciprocate that
when you're there. Don't sort of take advantage of their generosity. Like just be mindful because like when we were there, we saw this protest against bad tourists there. Like some of the tourists there and some uh internet folk have been doing kind of annoying and very disrespectful stuff. Uh just goes back to the beginning. Just don't be a dick. Just, you know, be friendly, be polite. If you're not sure what the customs are, just ask, pay attention, and just see what other people are doing and do the same thing yourself.
Now, on your trip to Japan, you're going to want to plan everything. At least I did cuz I'm a planner. But I think it's really important and a really important thing that you need to know is, yeah, plan, but don't over plan. Let Japan do the work for you because it really is the kind of place where you can just walk around and things will happen or you'll stumble upon something really interesting. Now, for any trip I do, I always come up with a plan and an itinerary, but I never necessarily stick to it. My itinerary is just one version of the trip you can do, but once you're on the ground, always be open to new ideas and
new things that you might discover along the way. And for Japan, whilst other countries you might be like, well, we're going to go to this place and do A, B, and C. For Japan, it was like, right, we're going to go to this town and just explore and just like give yourself time, like Jamie was saying, just to wander around and just see what happens. See what takes your fancy. Some of the best things we did, some of my favorite things that happened in Japan were things that we just stumbled upon. The wine festival, Destiny, the puppy cafe.
Yeah, my heart. That's so much the fun of Japan is just discovering the random things you have no idea about. Like the standard itineraries and guide books will mention this temple, this temple, and a couple other things. But I have way more fun wandering around, you know, rather than just going and see another temple kind of thing. So, let Japan just happen to you. Yeah. And you'll discover puppy cafes and Lord of the Rings TV. uh you'll be end up like chatting to like random people like in isakayas or other places. So yeah, come up with a plan. Just don't make it too detailed or don't be too rigid with it. And yeah, I
think that brings us to an end for our Japan travel tips. Hopefully you found this very useful. If you haven't watched our two weeks in Japan documentary series yet, please go check that out cuz that's that's more like the story and the actual experience of being there, whilst this is more just like the sort of, you know, braw get down to the nitty-gritty and tell you how things work. So, please go check that out. As usual, subscribe, like, notifications, all those bits and pieces. And uh, anything else? Cheers. And yeah, cheers from our new pub. By the way, this is I don't know if we mentioned it at the start or not, but this is our new pub we built in our basement. We'll do a video about this in
the future, just we got to do some more finishing touches. But yeah, we're going to finish our last sip of beer and then we're actually off on our next trip. See you soon.
