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Recommendations for Japan Travel

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Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#161

Post by diceduckmonk »

toastercat wrote: post #129
jeromegv wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like a lot of gatekeeping on your part. This was the good old days when you were travelling but now that other people travel, they are the worst because they take too many selfies. Negative impact of tourism have been documented for a while. There’s just more people traveling because flights got cheaper. But new travellers aren’t worse than you were, there’s just more of us traveling and it makes our impact mor…

When I visited the Great Buddha in Kamakura a couple of years ago, there were dozens of foreign tourists laying down, sitting, or posing on or next to the statue in a way that our native Japanese friend remarked how disrespectful they were being. I don't think it would've been as bad before smartphones and influencer/YouTube culture, but I can't really say.

> YouTube culture

As in YouTuber Logan Paul making a video of Aokigahara "suicide forest", among various other shenanigans in Japan for views?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Paul#2017%E2%80%932018:_...

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#162

Post by nikic »

diceduckmonk wrote: post #126

I've traveled all 47 prefectures of Japan, and done all sorts of "edgy" stuff that AtlasObscura has yet to cover, such as trails where only several dozen people have crossed that season. I've also revisited tourist hotspots like Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto several dozen times. I'd recommend people follow the beaten path. Is the most touristy spots in Japan and Kyoto "overrated" (given how popular it is)? Yes. But if you t…

Regarding restaurants, I think you generally get pretty good mileage out of Tabelog. A key problem for short-term visits is that highly-rated restaurants (>= 3.7) tend to fall into two categories: Either the restaurant is cheap and has a long queue outside it (typically things like ramen, but also cheap+good sushi) or it is expensive and requires a reservation. You generally can't just walk into this kind of restaurant unless you get lucky and it just happens to not be fully booked.

Placing a reservation requires a Japanese phone number (which you can get easily for the duration of travel) and most restaurants only accept reservations by phone. Some can be reserved on Tabelog directly, but this also requires a Japanese phone number, and some restaurants will call you back to confirm the reservation, so I'm not sure I would recommend this if you don't speak at least some Japanese. Even if you do reservations by phone, you should expect that most restaurants are already fully booked out for the next week. The best chance to get a reservation are restaurants that are a bit too expensive for their rating.

Ideally you would do reservations before you travel, but I'm not sure what the best way to do that would be in practice.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#163

Post by ValentineC »

Markoff wrote: post #123
b4je7d7wb wrote: post #90

I would be careful with his advise on money. If you came to Japan in the past 3 months with no cash and a Visa card, you would be in deep shit. Visa cards are just not working here and it seems nobody cares to fix it. Japan is very safe so it's probably fine to just bring your budget in cash. Also outside of the beaten path like he advise people to go it's still very cash heavy society. Your taxi driver will not be h…

Yeah, I really doubt that would be issue for more than few days, any source to this wild claim? Only thing I could find is that foreign cards might not work in some online payments or mobile payments, which is quite normal everywhere in world, but giving bold statement that your foreign card is useless and you can't even withdraw money from ATM seems like spreading fake news. https://atadistance.net/2022/09/19/foreig…

I literally landed in Japan today for the first time since COVID:

Had problems creating and topping up Suica/PASMO with multiple foreign Visa cards (ended up using Amex), but had absolutely no problems paying with Visa in stores that accept the usual myriad of cards.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#164

Post by OJFord »

wyclif wrote: post #109
masklinn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, they use the entire dynamic range. 3 stars for "as expected" is eminently sensible, but the west and especially the US suffers so much from review inflation that you could really remove 2 if not 3 stars of a 5-star scale: either a reddit/hn-style up/down, or possibly have a middle-ground "at expectations".

Yeah, a lot of review inflation in the US. I see loads of 4-star reviews on Goodreads as well as the restaurant review apps. I wish people would use the entire range as it makes the review more valuable.

But even if you encourage that it's still pointless, because you don't know how people have used it, or with what distribution.

This annoys me with ratings used to train recommendations too, e.g. Netflix, where I don't know how they want me to use it. What if I know it is something I would absolutely not even try watching, should I rate it? Or am I telling it I tried it, and that's a higher rating (because I might give something similar a go too) than none at all? Not to mention the old stars not being mapped into thumbs, or the later addition of double thumbs up meaning only more recently encountered favourites get that accolade.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#165

Post by OJFord »

diceduckmonk wrote: post #95
masklinn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, they use the entire dynamic range. 3 stars for "as expected" is eminently sensible, but the west and especially the US suffers so much from review inflation that you could really remove 2 if not 3 stars of a 5-star scale: either a reddit/hn-style up/down, or possibly have a middle-ground "at expectations".

I remember when I first started using rideshare, the drivers instructed people to leave 4 star ratings if bad, 5 star if good. That’s why everyone has a 4+ star ratingz

If someone tells me how to give feedback on them (the nature of it), they're getting the worst possible.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#166

Post by ianpenney »

pyb wrote: post #8

"Very few people take me up on this part of the recommendation: get out of the cities if you are here for more than a week in your life." Same situation for visitors to the UK. I've given up trying to tell tourists to get out of London, they never listen.

Brighton is SO COOL. No sarcasm. Really loved it.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#167

Post by awslattery »

rippercushions wrote: post #157
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tokyo is absurdly gigantic, I would not suggest randomly walking it. Also the subway system can be challenging, and the staff don't speak English, so if you get stuck they likely won't be able to help. Another random thing about the train system: there are women-only cars. I didn't realize this until I had already boarded and (as a man) I was absolutely mortified.

You really can't "get stuck" though. Carry a phone with Google Maps and get a Pasmo/Suica fare card, and it's easy to get back to your hotel from anywhere at all in the city.

Google Maps + Suica worked wonders in 2019!

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#168

Post by diceduckmonk »

nikic wrote: post #162
diceduckmonk wrote: post #126

I've traveled all 47 prefectures of Japan, and done all sorts of "edgy" stuff that AtlasObscura has yet to cover, such as trails where only several dozen people have crossed that season. I've also revisited tourist hotspots like Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto several dozen times. I'd recommend people follow the beaten path. Is the most touristy spots in Japan and Kyoto "overrated" (given how popular it is)? Yes. But if you t…

Regarding restaurants, I think you generally get pretty good mileage out of Tabelog. A key problem for short-term visits is that highly-rated restaurants (>= 3.7) tend to fall into two categories: Either the restaurant is cheap and has a long queue outside it (typically things like ramen, but also cheap+good sushi) or it is expensive and requires a reservation. You generally can't just walk into this kind of restaura…

> tend to fall into two categories

A third category is Japanese chain “fast food” restaurants such as Sukiya.

It’s cheap, fast, no reservations needed, can accommodate English speaking guests (as a chain, they have English tablets/vending machines), a relatively unique Japanese travel experience (that locals eat too), the food is more flavorful to non-Japanese taste palette.

For would be travelers reading this, see also Matsuya and Yoshinoya. Kura sushi, Ichiran Ramen, and Ikinari steakhouse kind of fall into this category too. Just avoid the “flagship” stores such as the Ichiran in Shibuya where the line is out the door recently. You can find an Ichiran at some random less touristy station and there would be no wait.

For a one week trip, there’s enough of these chain restaurants to try. There’s also Denny’s which, for those unaware, has a distinctly Japanese menu (Japanese interpretation of Western dishes)

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#170

Post by [deleted] »

diceduckmonk wrote: post #126

I've traveled all 47 prefectures of Japan, and done all sorts of "edgy" stuff that AtlasObscura has yet to cover, such as trails where only several dozen people have crossed that season. I've also revisited tourist hotspots like Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto several dozen times. I'd recommend people follow the beaten path. Is the most touristy spots in Japan and Kyoto "overrated" (given how popular it is)? Yes. But if you t…

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