MINESSAA: Tips for Japan

After a couple of months waiting with no travel, we managed to find some money and time to fly to Japan for 10 days! Here I would like to share some tips that might ease your travel!

Touristic Visa: Japan has a "visa upon arrival" policy for both Italy and Turkey, so we did nothing at all to get prepared. You can find a detailed list of policy for Japanese visa here.

Japan Rail Pass: OK, this might be subjective to what you actually want to see and how much you have the time. Japan has an amazing train connections with super fast trains that allow you to discover Japan instead of only getting stuck in the same city. Even though these trains are super comfy, they might be expensive when you buy tickets one by one. Instead, Japan provides an amazing deal for people who possess "touristic visa" on their passport, which is called Japan Rail Pass (JRP). Using JRP, you can take most of the high speed trains for free within the days you select.

You can purchase the pass for 7 days, 14 days or 21 days, depending on your need. It is recommended to purchase the JRP much before the travel dates since they deliver it world wide easily. With the JRP that is posted on your address, you are asked to go one of the JRP information offices in the airports or train stations to validate. We bought JRP for 7 days and activated 3 days before the day we started to use the trains, which is OK. Keep in mind that the office in the airports are much crowded, since it also covers the train from the airport to the city centre. We saved more than 1 hour simply by taking a bus at the airport to reach Tokyo and activate our JRP in Shinjuku station.

Once you have the JRP, you can simply go to train with no reservation and take the train using non-reserved seats. If you know more details about your travel, you can make a reservation for free as well.

Not only the intercity trains, but also some local trains in Kyoto and Tokyo can be covered by JRP, as much as city bus in Hiroshima. I'm telling you, it costs about 200€ and it was the best spent money for Japan!

Pocket Wi-Fi: I am not very proud of it but I must confess that we are getting addicted to our smart phones more and more. Not knowing the alphabet and embracing the advantages of google maps much better, we bought a pocket WiFi, which seems to be super popular to use in Japan. It is a small electronic device that connects more than 10 devices to internet, which you can choose the speed, daily limit and the battery span based on your budget. We chose Global Advanced Communication and bought unlimited WiFi pocket for about 50€ for 10 days, which was a good deal for us. We gave the address of our hotel and our WiFi pocket was waiting for us on our checkin time and sent it back from the post office in the airport.

Transportation Cards: For Tokyo, you can travel mostly everywhere simply using subways. It is just amazing! From the airport or some tourist information, you can buy tickets for 24, 48 or 72 hours. If not, you can buy tickets for 24 hours from the ticket machines easily. The machines might be challenging for a non-Japanese speaker but I swear you can buy it!

For Nikko, you can buy a daily ticket to reach the temples from the train station. I must say that we regret to purchase a daily ticket since there was some sort of a feast and the shuttle bus was not working efficiently. Nevertheless, you can buy single use tickets to reach the national park from the station and the way back.

For Kyoto, there is a subway but I much suggest to use the bus more often than the subway! The temples are mostly super far away from the city centre and reaching one from another is not really possible with subway at all times. Use the bus instead, you can buy daily bus tickets from the train station easily and simply show it to the driver every time you use the bus. It is much much better than any other solution. Also, you can use some local trains with your JRP if needed.

Guide Book: Generally, I enjoy to study the trip much before my arrival and mark the places when I arrive on the map. However, the guide book for Japan was incredibly useful to read the history, the shopping and restaurant suggestions, the subway exits and opening/closing hours. We chose Lonely Planet and I don't regret a bit.

Money Exchange: We do not have an account from an international bank in Italy, so we preferred to bring cash to Japan. Even though some web sites recommended to withdraw money directly from ATMs in Japan, we did not want to take the risk of not knowing the exchange rate and additional fee. We exchanged the money from an office in the airport and unlike many European cities, we observed that the banks in the airport do not provide a dramatically different rates than the city centre. Please keep in mind that using credit card is not very popular in Japan.