My Japan Trip Preparation

September 30th, 2007 | by Rich |

I’m going to Japan, and I need to prepare.

How did I prepare? Well, I’ll tell you.

I started in late August, when I went to Mt. Mitchell, the tallest mountain in North Carolina, and the tallest East of the Mississippi River. Because I have some inner ear problems, I wanted to make sure I didn’t have any problems when flying.

After the two hour flight from Raleigh-Durham to Dallas-Fort Worth, it’s a fourteen hour flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to Narita, so I figured if I didn’t have any trouble at approximately 6,600 feet, I would be fine in the pressurized cabin of an airplane. And sure enough, I was fine.

Well, mostly fine, because I slipped on a wet rock and fell and bruised the heck out of my hand.

But other than that, I was fine.

Travel Guides

Next came the books. If I’m going to Japan, I need to learn about Japan, right? Well, yes, but, the first thing I needed to learn was how to travel. So the first book I bought was Rick Steves’ Europe Through the Back Door. Why did I buy it? Simple. For the travel tips and advice. Even if you’re not going to Europe, it’s full of all kinds of useful advice.

I also picked up a bunch of different travel guides for Japan, but to be honest, I didn’t really like any of them, with a couple of exceptions. I liked Lonely Planet: Japan and Time Out: Tokyo. But even these two books had problems.

The problem with Lonely Planet: Japan was it was a little over two years out of date. (It was also too big and heavy.) The link leads you to the new version of it.

Time Out: Tokyo is good, but it doesn’t go into detail about Akihabara.

The other guides I read, but didn’t really consider taking them with me. Frommer’s Japan was bland. Japan by Rail was okay, but both books should be library check-outs, not purchases.

The problem with any guidebook is weight. What I would probably do now is scan the relevant pages and store them electronically. Weight kills you.

Better Sources for Travel Info

The other main problem with all of the guidebooks was incomplete lodging information. I’m not exactly sure how they choose places to put in their books, but the few hotels they list for Kyoto don’t even begin to scratch the surface, and you can bet that every single one of them will be jammed full if you decide to divert over to Kyoto for a few nights.

That “charming guest house” they mention in the book will always be jam-packed when you try to book it on a busy weekend, because every other tourist with a copy of your travel guide will try to stay there. Well, duh.

I found the best advice for Japan travel came from JNTO, the Japan National Tourist Organization. It was usually the most up-to-date.  You need the best current info you can get your hands on, because things change daily.

Another site I really like is japan-guide.com. They have a bunch of information on travel there, and the message board is full of good tips. I plowed through various posts to get information on things like JR passes, places to go, places to avoid, etc.

I’m sure travel writers have a very difficult job, but I found some of the best info from talking to Japanese people and looking for Japan-specific travel agencies. I used Japan Travel Advisor in Raleigh, NC for help getting my Japan Rail pass and for advice on places to go and things to see.

Sorting It Out

So there’s this whole mountain of information out there. The really hard part is sorting/sifting through all of it to come to meaningful decisions about what you want to see/do in Japan. I scanned a lot of stuff to get a sort of general idea of what I might like to see. I also checked the forums on japan-guide.com to see what sorts of itineraries other people were planning to get ideas. I went to websites with photos, because I wanted to see if it was going to be one of those “wow” sights or one of those “meh” sights.

You have to figure out how much time you have to visit Japan, and then you have to figure out what you have to see. You know, the stuff you’ve always wanted to see. Stuff that if you don’t see on this trip, and if the plane back home nosedives into the Pacific, you won’t get mad about it and wind up haunting your travel agent. So make a list. All the other stuff becomes negotiable. The list of must-sees will help you plan the rest.

One thing I am building into a lot of my trip– rest days. Rest days are very, very important if you’re going on a long trip to Japan. You’re going to need a few days off here and there to just noodle around and take care of administrative tasks, and just rest.

I don’t just build in rest days into my trip, I also plan days so that I’m not trying to do more than three big things in a day. So that means if I’m going to Kyoto, I might plan on going to Kinkakuji, Ryoanji, and the Heian Shrine. That’s it. Anything else is gravy. If I finish at Heian Shrine and it’s still 3 p.m., then that’s great– I’ll go to my list of other places I want to see, and find the closest one if I have the energy. If not, then I don’t sweat it. And if I don’t make it to Heian Shrine, well, that’s just something to either see tomorrow or leave on the plate for next time.

Learning to leave places “on the plate” is important. Odds are that if you really want to go to Japan, you’re going to want to go back again when you can. So be mentally prepared to leave stuff “on the plate” and just accept that you won’t see everything.

There are a lot of places I want to see in Japan. Since I’m staying in Okazaki for two weeks, and it’s near Nagoya, I’m going to plan a few day trips to Nagoya. Kyoto is an obvious choice. I also want to visit Nara, since it’s close to Kyoto, home to the big Buddha, as well as a center for making excellent calligraphy brushes. I have to see Osaka, too, and maybe Kobe. I want to see Hiroshima. I want to see the A-bomb Dome and the Peace Museum, and I want to visit Miyajima. I’d also like to see Kyushu, but I’m not sure what I want to see there yet. Maybe Beppu? Of course, there’s also Nagano and Sendai, too. I want to see Sapporo– I’d love to see Hokkaido.

Getting Medications Sorted Out Before You Go

So now that I’ve done my research, and I have some ideas for places I’d like to visit while I’m over there, it’s time to take care of more mundane issues, like taking my meds into Japan for 30+ days.

If you’re on prescription meds of any kind, and you’re going to be in Japan for more than 30 days, you need to get a yakkan shoumei. What is it? It’s a kind of import license to bring in large quantities of prescription meds for personal use. How do you get one? Call the Japanese Embassy or Consulate nearest you.

Edit: Give yourself a full month to get it done, in case there are snags. I sent my forms off 3 weeks before I left, and got my yakkan shoumei about a week before I left. But there are still issues I had to work out. Namely, you can’t take more than a certain amount of certain meds without a doctor’s certificate.

So I brought my doctor’s certificate with me to Japan, and it was fine after some explaining. But you should go ahead and send a doctor’s certificate with your yakkan shoumei application, stating that the medicines are medically necessary, so you don’t have to spend 10 minutes trying to explain what’s what to the customs officials there. And if you don’t speak any Japanese… well… you’re going to be in for it. So get it taken care of ahead of time. If you’re going for less than 30 days, you’re okay without it… probably. Check ahead just to make sure.

Japanese Cell Phones: Rent or Bring Your Own?

Getting a cheap cell phone that would work in Japan was very annoying, but totally worth the trouble. Japan’s cell phone system is even more annoying than the U.S. cellular system, in that it uses an oddball frequency nobody else uses (except for one GSM carrier… sort of…), and because you can’t buy a cell phone there unless you have some sort of proof of residency in Japan.

Apparently someone used a prepaid cell phone in a crime, so they figured that they shouldn’t let foreign visitors actually get their hands on one. No, I don’t get it either. I think the people who used the phone in the crime were actually Japanese, too. Yeah, welcome to discrimination against foreigners. Get used to it. It’s something that happens a lot, and it can be pretty annoying.

Anyway, there’s a way around it. I hit the howardforums website for information. It’s full of all kinds of geeky info on cell phones, and I even found threads that discuss using them in Japan. The problem I ran into was that buying an unlocked phone that works in Japan isn’t cheap. But after some digging, I found that the Motorola V3X does work in Japan, and can be had on eBay for pretty cheap. I got mine for $120 with shipping, because I picked an ugly color. Not bad.

You have to get a SIM card for the phone. I bought one from Travelsimshop.com, and while it’s a good SIM card, it isn’t without faults.

  • Fault 1: the phone number you get is in Estonia. That’s a biggie, because if anyone wants to call you, it’s going to be very expensive for them. I think it worked out to almost $1/minute for my family. Yikes.
  • Fault 2: minutes are based on Euros, so U.S. people get hit hard by the weak dollar.

Other than that, it works fine. All of the “global” SIM cards are going to be a collection of trade-offs. The main reason I picked this one was its free incoming calls policy. There are cheaper SIM cards out there, but they tend to have hidden fees, and sometimes they have fees for receiving calls. No thanks.

The other thing I did was plan to rent a SIM card from Softbank. Softbank is one of the major cell carriers in Japan, and they have a deal where you can rent a SIM card from them while you’re in Japan for 105 yen a day, which is about $1. Renting an actual phone is much more expensive, and really not feasible unless you’re only going to be there a short time. Incoming calls are free (yay!), and outgoing calls run 100-200 yen a minute. (Ouch.)

If you’re going to rent a SIM card, you can reserve one (in case they run out when you arrive), but you need to do it a few weeks in advance.

Edit: I just showed up and took my chances. It worked out fine.

Other Travel Junk

So with the cell phone bought, I went about securing other travel-related things. The best things I bought are:

1. The Sony PRS-500 eBook reader. Hands down, the best thing I’ve bought. Why? I can store tons of books on it, so I don’t have to carry them with me as I go.

2. The carrying cases from Waterfield Designs. I love their iPod case because it’s not only good for carrying an iPod, it’s also good for carrying a digital camera kit. Their PSP case is also awesome, as is their Nintendo DS case. They also make pouches that are cheaper and handy for holding cables, chargers, and such.

3. Nikon Coolpix 5100. This is a very nice little 12MP digital camera. It cost me ~$400, but so far has been worth every penny. I would have loved to take my film cameras with me to Japan, but they just weigh too much.

4. Motorola V3X. Perfect for what I needed as a cell phone. Doubles as an alarm clock.

5. Bose noise-canceling headphones, because I have to keep ambient sounds low when I travel.

6. My Eagle Creek big giant backpack. It’s a camping-style backpack that meets carry-on regulations. Very nice. And it has a smaller backpack that detaches from the “main body” for daytrips. It’s also light. I tested it out at the store with 30lbs. in it, and it felt fine.

The only other really useful thing I can think of off-hand that I got was the iGo charger system, and I’m still on the fence about that one. It’s very useful to have all of your chargers in one bag, but it’s unwieldy.

Anyway, that’s most of my travel prep. Here’s a condensed list of links:

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