So i'll detail my worries.
My wife decided on wed she wanted to goto japan on sat since our semi-yearly hawaii vacation w/ friends was cancelled, somehow we lucked out on 1200$ tickets each. We had a bunch of guidebooks, all trash and worthless, would not recommend a single guide book to use (lonely planet/fodders, etc).
It was 2 weeks, i decided to spend 1 week in tokyo and the rest we traveled around tokyo, for that i decided the 7day jrpass was the one to get i think as
Chysamere
mentioned going from tokyo to kyoto roundtrip pays for the jr pass itself. doing a 14day jrpass? i think is worthless, from my research this is the offical site
Japan Rail Pass - Order Online & Travel Japan
their offices are based in cali, so when they mail you the physical coupon, it's fedex from cali. I wasn't gonna make it so i sent it to my first hotel(dorm) in tokyo.
Japan turned out to be the cheapest vacay, money wise imo. We were 100% jap food, i made many visits to various mcdees to check out their menu, but they didn't have any "funky" jap mcdee shit going on so i just skipped it.
But yea, just walking around tokyo, a hole in the wall shop can have a good curry for 400yen.
money:
So lets focus on how to pay for shit, just whip out your debit card and pull out cash, if your bank has shit debit fees, open a paypal account link it to your bank and get a debit card. Their transactions fees are .25 to pull out cash, i have a business debit w/ em, so i have no idea on personal? but it should be the same. Japan is like all cash or IC pay(more on that later).
So just pull out cash, you'll see this
jap money is taller than USD, so you might have issues fitting it into a wallet, billfold. Either way, go out and buy yourself a coin purse, cuz you'll be dealing with ALOT of fucking coins. (or you could just buy a coin purse in japan, i bought a $1 one that worked wonders in daiso, more on that later)
The money is self explanatory, it's all labeled, except for the bronze 5yen, it's got a hole in it w/ NO NUMBERS, while the silver 50yen is labeled.
also when you pay, always put your money on the money tray, you'll know what that is soon.
At the end of the trip i spent had only 6000 yen in bills and 2000yen in coins and only a few 1$ yen left, either way we just spent it all on some knick knacks at the airport(on the way back) duty free shop in narita. And no, they were not the usual "rip off" duty free prices, they were actually the same prices and items in any store in tokyo, so if you REALLY missed out on souveniers or shit, just buy it there, i think it was called duty free akihabara. (just place all your monies in the tray, they have coin counting machines in the register)
Also, when you pull out money, just pull it out at SEVEN 11, 7-11 is different in japan, it's a fucking paradise of awesome, only pull out your money from 7-11 for one reason, you can trust it, and you can easily track your debit pull outs. There is a 7-11 in narita when you land, the first thing i did was pick up luggage and find the 7-11 to pull out cash.
internet:
don't trust fucking free tokyo wifi or hotel wifi, that shit is garbage. get a mifi, there are many available at the airport, but they fucking rip you off.
i went to
Super Fast 4G,LTE Pocket WiFi For Japan at Best Rental Price | eConnect Japan for 14days they gave a discount at 500yen a day for a mifi rental and even gave an extra battery(which we used everyday cuz were out 16hours a day) (other places seemingly charged 2000yen a day at the airport, ninjawifi i think the most used was charging 1000yen a day) this mifi worked in the fucking mountains in hakone.
I would try the hotel wifi when we went and fuck it, that shit was garbage, i just kept on using my mifi. i didn't care about data, i just needed internet for fucking google maps, which worked amazing also.
getting around:
sure, your jr pass is usable on the jr lines (you'll easily recognize them cuz they start out with jr) but you're gonna have to hop around subways/metro or bus and with that just get an IC card. get either a passmo or suica card (passmo is issued by tokyo rail suica is issued by jr) they seemingly work everywhere, it's just a 500yen refundable deposit to get a passmo, it's fucking easier than stopping at every ticket booth and figuring out where the fuck you wanna go, just use passmo to tap and go, also you can even print your name and dob on it in case you lose it and get it replaced for free. (i wasn't able to get it refunded at narita airport, cuz we were close to our flight time and i just skipped it, no big deal really, we expect to come back to japan in the future), you can even use the passmo/suica card to pay for food and drinks and other shit.
print documents:
maybe you bought some ticket online and you have to print it out for something, i did, i went to odeo-onsen and got my etickets from voyagin (more on them later, their website is govoyagin.com , they were pretty awesome for the two things i bought and they are staffed with english speakers, since they service foreigners).
How do you print shit? again 7-11 or the lawsons (upscale 7-11?) they have net printers save your docs as pdf and upload to this site (you have to register)
全国のセブン‐イレブンでいつでも簡単プリント ～ネットプリント～
Or if you have an android phone w/ a microsd card, just save it to that, they have memory chip readers, cost 20yen to print a b&w ticket.
These were the issues i was unsure and unclear about.
