Tokyo, Japan

Chysamere said:

HyperDia | Route Search in Japan.

HyperDia is a service which offers the route of the railway and the aviation within Japan. The route search corresponds to not only Japanese but also English and Chinese.

www.hyperdia.com

Weirdly enough most Japanese use Yahoo to get their train details. Yahoo is strangely popular in Japan.

I go to temple myself every year. Partially to pray, partially to eat street food at the food stalls. I live within walking distance though.

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the app i linked has an option that will plan a route for jr pass users, did hyperdia recently get an english option? i remember it being only jap last year.

also i used ta-q-bin delivery from osaka to tokyo, it was only 20bucks to ship two 21in luggages (they measure it lxwxh and combine it so it was 160cm) each. It was pretty great, the form was impossible for a non japonese to fill out i got my hotel dude to do it.

it's a cat picking up a kitten


i tried to have next day delivery from my hostel to narita airport, that was a no go.

1. i had to go with convenience stores to do, and they have to display that cat logo to show that they accept the service


i only recognized the first 3, i asked 3 family marts and a 7-11 if they could do next day and couldn't get a straight answer, then i went to a ta-q-bin office, and they didn't even know. So the best place i figured was to goto the jr east travel service, which is the jr rail pass company and of course they handle english well, turns out ta-q-bin from hotel to narita airport takes 3days notice, so that didn't help. i had wanted to push my luggage from my hostel to narita cuz my flight is at 6pm so we still wanted to use up half the day in tokyo.

the best solution we came up with was to take our 2, 21in and bring them to jr east travel in tokyo station, right beneath them are lockers and we put em there the night b4, the reason to select those particular lockers is b/c that is also the exit where narita express links up.

Koushirou said:

So I'm starting to get together our honeymoon trip to Japan. We're aiming for the week of April 5th, plus or minus some days on either side for travel. I've never really planned a vacation myself before, so sorry if I've got some newb questions. For airports, are there any we should avoid? Looking at prices, the best airfare I can get seems to be going into Haneda (Both times before, I've flown into Narita). If we're planning on staying most of the time in Tokyo, is it easier to go with hotel stays or is AirBnB or like a hostel a better choice? I know it was mentioned before that you can get those rental mobile wifi units, can those be rented at the airport or do the hotels generally only have them?

Is there still a decent place to see the cherry blossoms during our stay? Below's a list of the sights we're currently wanting to see while there. How many of these are day trips from Tokyo vs. trips we should probably stay overnight elsewhere for? Are there any other must-see items I should add to the list that I've forgotten? I personally have been to Japan twice, but my last visit was in 2004, so my memory's pretty fuzzy of the things I visited. My husband has never gone, so I want to try and fit in as many big sights as we can while we're there. We also want to play some MtG while we're there, so Chysamere we'd love a recommendation for a Magic store with an EDH night.

Spoiler: Sight List

Oosaka Castle
Imperial Palace
Kinkaku-ji
Gotokuji
Toudai-ji
Tashirojima or Aoshima
Kyoto
Hiroshima Peace Park
Nagasaki Peace Park

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i used 2020 Top Pocket WiFi Rental & SIM Card Provider in Japan | eConnect both times i went from tokyo to hakone kyoto and recently from osaka to gero to tokyo. the first time i had no issues what so ever, this time i had lag sometimes, however! i might attribute that to the SUPER amount of crowds, the network in the area might've just been bombarded.

you can of course use others i've used em twice and have had good results, what happens is you make your order tell them which airport your coming into (and terminal) and you pick it up from the post office in the airport, just show your passport, easy, they give you the mifi (they call it an egg, cuz the earliest ones look like an egg), charger (it's just jpn to usb adapter) micro usb cable and even a spare charger. When you also get is a prepaid envelope to mail back the whole package just put it in the mailbox when your done with it. What i usually do on the last day is turn it on, seal it in the envelope and keep using it until i'm at the airport, b/4 you check in and go through the gates theres always a post office, in naritas case (i've only gone with narita) it's on the 4th floor, which is also where all departures/gates happen.

since you're going in april you don't have to worry about the new shinkansen luggage rules, they're being restrictive about luggage now.

HOWEVER i would plan out your luggage now, measure out your luggage in lxwxh in cm and add it together, if it's over 160cm (usually 160cm would be equal to a 21in upright) just don't bring it, you'll have troubles fitting in lockers or using luggage delivery if you choose. (when i used tae-q-bin deliver 160cm was the largest size they would accept, when i put my luggage in the tokyo station lockers, the biggest one costing 700yen, my 21in/160cm luggage fit with half an inch to spare)

since it looks like youre going from tokyo to kyoto the jrpass would be worth it for you, order it IN ADVANCE at least a week before your trip, they will mail you a physical voucher, note if you really fuck up on time you can have it mailed (of course for more $) to your hotel in japan as well, but nothing except that physical voucher will work.

use this app to calculate your shinkansen trips Japan Travel　by NAVITIME[iPhone/Android] there is an option to select "jr rail pass" so it'll take into account using your pass (for transfers, etc).

are you planning on doing a 1 day at an onsen? prepare to spend at least $300, but dinner and breakfast will be included, also it'll take a day to get to most of the onsens since they're on mountains, so keep that in the scedule, i went to gero and hakone, i much prefer hakone.

if you're going to be going from place to place i'd recommend using one place to book all your accomodations. I use booking.com to plan my entire seoul-osaka-gero-tokyo trip and i knew exactly where i was going and when i would be staying. also i noticed that when i ask the accodmodations through the app (i have booking.com basically email them) they will respond faster than if i emailed them (or they prefer you using an app to talk to them like line/kakao talk, FUCK THAT) and got a response right away (i'm guessing since i emailed as a booking.com proxy the accomodation will respond quick b/c they don't want to fuck up their booking.com score or whatever).

if you have anymore questions just ask, i've basically done your planned trip twice-ish, what i fucked up on was i missed out on oosaka castle cuz they were closed the EXACT times i planned there and the Hiroshima museaum had special holiday hours the entire week.

one thing you should plan in advance if you want to goto the ghibli museum you need to buy the tickets a month in advance (i couldn't go this time cuz they again were closed the exact times i was in tokyo), from the lawson (grocery store) website

Koushirou said:

If we're planning on staying most of the time in Tokyo, is it easier to go with hotel stays or is AirBnB or like a hostel a better choice?

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how long is your honeymoon? 2 weeks or 3 weeks? cuz imo you do NOT want to move around tokyo with your luggage, it's just so packed, in that respect you might want to have a "home base" and not move around for a bit.
i've done:
hostels
capsule
hotels
love hotels

in tokyo, i guess i'm missing air bnb.

1.
hostel - cheap, i checked and we did 6 nights for 240 for two of us, that is the only "pro". cons are some hostels are not mixed dorm either fem or male only, so you can easily fuck up booking that way. your bunkmates are gonna be 6 other "kids" that think they're cute and don't snore. i did one hostel this last trip cuz i wanted to be close to shopping and know the hostel from last time, but when you book as a couple you get the top and bottom bunk, fucking shit you ain't 9 no more, climbing up that ladder after a full day of walking..., also you're sleeping on if you're lucky a padded quilt on top of a wood plank, ain't no air or springs or foam here.

bathrooms are obviously gonna be shared, might or might not be an issue for you, one time i stayed in a converted hotel house in kyoto, the bathrooms were outside, literally an outhouse, and fucking cold, thank god they still had modern bidets and the seats were heated. also youre gonna take a shower and then what? you're gonna have to hang that damp ass towel inside your bunk, it might be dank, heck if you or someone else forgets to hang the towel and just leave it bunch up... stank. (so advice is, if you're going this route buy a quick drying microfiber towel, i have 3 and their amazing and fold up into the size of a psp)

you're not gonna have onsite laundry, so you're gonna have to go to a laundromat and waste 2 hours of your vacation just sitting there and waiting (sure you can catch up on emails, plan the next day, etc...)

you can't fuck... it's your honeymoon...

2.
capsule hotel - a bit more than a hostel, cuz it's basically just an upgraded hostel, the pros (from a hostel) is you're gonna have on site laundry and it'll be a hotel so you'll have 24 hour concierge, this is important if you want to send/receive luggage as the luggage service called tae-q-bin only ships from hotel to hotel. Luggage Delivery Between Hotels | Traveling to Japan | YAMATO TRANSPORT GLOBAL (there are other service that accomodate hostels and airbnb, i don't know em tho)

3.
it's a hotel, one thing i noticed when i was searching for hotels, some hotels are kind of away out of the main areas, so keep that in mind when booking with a hotel, on my just past trip i made sure all my accomodations were 5min or less (i had two hotels that were literally on the same block as the trainstation) from transportation.

every bonus is here, usually your own fridge, your own toilet, a real fucking bed, you can bone...

4.
love hotels - yo, the love hotel i stayed in had the best bed, unfortunately for booking love hotels are a nightly affair cuz really it's just for japs to bone, either cuz they live w/ their parents or prostitutes, it'll be difficult to book in advance. no one is gonna help you out, you're not gonna see the concierge face and they don't want to see yours, ALSO if you do goto a love hotel, you're gonna want to do it EARLY in the night, cuz as the night goes on, they get FILLED UP, japs like to fuck. We went to the hilly ikebukuro love hotel strip and shopped around (you can see digitally what rooms are available, etc in the lobby), we noticed after 1 hour of browsing rooms were getting sparse and we were like "fuck we need a room or we have no where to sleep!!!"
once you select your room in the lobby, you get told where to go and once you step into the room, the door doesn't lock and you'll see a pay station right in your room. you pay for the night (or the hours as thats what the japs do) and your door locks (don't think about leaving cuz once you open it, thats it)

you'll get a complimentary condom and access to mosaic jap porn.

gauze said:

I'm well aware that the pay is shit-tier with a non-teaching degree

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as long as you realize youre just there as a white face to give legitimacy to their ESL to appease the parents and YOU'LL start talking like "PREASE 2 meet you teacher-san" cuz you gotta sound more horribru chinglish.