Recommendations for Japan Travel

Don’t feed the trolls

I've known practically all my life that I never want to visit NYC. I would like to visit a city like Pittsburgh though, or Charleston, or Milwaukee (and other US cities and towns smaller than these three too).

I'm in Japan right now. I've heard this advice almost word for word from other people and the best advice I can give is don't take anyone's advice.

Japanophiles, shockingly, have different interests than a casual tourist which are dramatically different yet again than someone who is, say, a vegan coffee connoisseur or a car fan who probably wants to drive on the roads and not take transit or say a typography nerd who would be attending printing and stationary museums. Want to get sloshed and spend the night with hookers? Lots of that as well. Have fine tea on a windy road overlooking Mt fuji? Fuck it, go ahead.

Here's an example. I went to a sword museum. I overheard someone leaving saying how incredible and wonderful the place was. All I saw were nearly identical looking swords that had won awards. It was dull and repetitive for me, just metal chunks behind glass but that sword dude was doing backflips over it. Whatever. Maybe that was like famous celebrity swords, I've got no idea.

The point is, don't listen to anybody. Theme it though to narrow your scope. Whatever your interest is let it guide you. Maybe you're a fan of shopping mall architecture, there's plenty of that here. Maybe you like say, umbrellas, there's umbrella stores, people making them by hand, umbrella technology displays, it's very Japanese.

You don't need to know Japanese, sure, just like you don't need to know English in the US. But being able to read and talk to people is surprisingly helpful. Important things are English-enough but don't be scared of Japanese, children master it fine, you can do it if you put in the hours. There's plenty of half-assed guides for busy people. Functional Japanese isn't insane. Receipt is reshīto, elevator is erebētā, they know the words toilet, taxi and metro...you'd be surprised how quickly you can get to non-clueless.

If you can set aside at least 2 weeks and you don't mind spending say $300/day or so you'll likely fill that time pretty easily. It's vacation, take it easy. Next time you get laid off, don't rush to the next job. Do stuff like this instead.

Also don't worry, you can always come back later.

Oh wait, one thing. This is the only real advice. There's travel SIMs at convenience stores. You'll probably be throttled at 256K with your foreign carrier, it's painful. The modern web is bulky and unforgiving. But maybe that's fine for you.

You can download Google maps for offline use and take photos of things with Google translate - it's not terrible for descriptive things and menus.

Hotel room sizes are fine. The crazy small ones are super cheap. Pay normal hotel prices and you'll be ok. The toilets are indeed high tech and weird and trash cans and napkins are mysteriously absent most places. Go to Starbucks if you need that, they're identical to the US ones

Kyoto is not a small city: it has over 1 million people and is part of the Keihanshin sprawl of greater Osaka. Go there for the culture, not the city.

I have also lived in Japan for almost all of my adult life (age twenty-six to my current sixty-five), and the recommendations on the linked page all look good to me—better than any that I would be able to give. He has obviously travelled more around Japan than I have.

Just two comments:

He recommends APA Hotels, but the couple of times I stayed there the rooms were unpleasantly small—around twelve square meters. There was barely enough empty floor space for a single suitcase. I try to choose hotel rooms with at least eighteen square meters. (Some commenters here have raised other issues with APA Hotels.)

He says nothing about COVID. While people in some countries are talking about the pandemic in the past tense, not in Japan. Around a hundred thousand new cases and a hundred and fifty deaths are being reported each day, with numbers rising again. In just the past couple of weeks, I’ve heard from three acquaintances who have recently gone through rather serious cases. Almost everyone is wearing masks, especially indoors. Because of my age, I continue to work only from home and to avoid crowded places. I will be getting my fifth vaccination in a couple of weeks.