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Recommendations for Japan Travel

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Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#291

Post by Ruarl »

petronio wrote: post #120
Ruarl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, how else would you distinguish that restaurant from "Food was sublime, service ranged from movie-star charm to invisibly dealing with my every need, payment was waived in favour of a small donation to my favourite cat charity. 5 stars"

In my view scores are relative to expectations, usually tied to price. A restaurant with a $50 meal and a 3 star score will likely have better food than one with a $5 meal and 5 stars on an absolute scale, but the people who got their $5 meal were happy with it and the ones with the $50 meal were disappointed.

Mine too! I was drawing the comparison between the two schools of thought using an example. I imagine, but don’t have any evidence, that the absolute scale dominates culturally in Japan, and the relative scale in the west.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#292

Post by tmtvl »

rjh29 wrote: post #44
tmtvl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Matsumoto (in Nagano Prefecture), it's a lovely city located right in the midst of some beautiful mountains. Nara is also nice, but I'm a mountain boy at heart.

Nice, not had the chance to visit Matsumoto yet! I lived in Kyoto and being surrounded by mountains was definitely one of the nicest parts.

One of my favourite memories of my travels to Japan was when in Kyoto my buddy and I were standing at the corner of... I think it was Shijo and Karasuma? And we were heading to Sanjo (I may have mixed Shijo and Sanjo up, don't mind it), and I had just double checked on a map that we were heading the right way when suddenly a guy on a bike saw us standing there with our map and stopped. He decided to tell me and my friend about all the great places around Kyoto to go see temples, buy souvenirs, get a good drink, and so on.

A ways through his explanation someone else came up to us to ask us where we were going, and told us that our destination was simply straight ahead, and after saying our thanks we just kept listening to the guy rattle on. That kind of thing is what I really like about travelling, being a couple of thousand miles away from home, just listening to someone go on a ramble about whatever they think is interesting to talk about.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#293

Post by tmtvl »

FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #235
tmtvl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Matsumoto (in Nagano Prefecture), it's a lovely city located right in the midst of some beautiful mountains. Nara is also nice, but I'm a mountain boy at heart.

I'm planning a trip to Japan (my first), and I'm mostly interested in small towns or villages as day trips from somewhere that is already well outside of Tokyo. Would Matsumoto fit that bill? Ideally I'd take a train out of the city and rent a car or bike in whatever smaller city I make my hub. Would love any other advice you have, and open to DMs/emails/etc. :-)

You can get two really good day trips out of Matsumoto: one for Matsumoto Castle and the inner city in general, and one for Kamikochi (https://www.kamikochi.org/). It's also easy to go from there to Kofun or Nagano.

For other advice I would recommend that at least one of your group speaks enough Japanese to ask directions, order food, use a laundromat, shop at a supermarket, describe what you want at a barber's, tell a doctor what you're ailing, ask a staff member where the lost and found is, that kind of stuff. Also note that New Year's and Golden Week are really awkward times to go and summer is hot and humid. Make sure to talk to your GP to make sure you have whatever vaccinations you need, I'm thinking of Japanese Encephalitis (JE) in particular. Also make sure you take enough cash to get the most basic necessities if the airline manages to bungle your luggage. In short, just keep all the basic travel advice in mind and you'll be fine.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#294

Post by dzhiurgis »

mysecretaccount wrote: post #280
dzhiurgis wrote: post #130

What it’s like to travel and especially dine with small children? Our is 1 and 3 and not exactly behaved in Japanese nor European terms - they make mess and break things in restaurants. Will we have hard time in Japan?

Yes. Do not travel with children that age anywhere that would be out of your comfort zone personally.

It’s ok, we are already halfway around the world and 5 countries in.

What can you expect in Japan when they misbehave? Bad food, service or getting kicked out?

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#295

Post by amrocha »

mantas wrote: post #286
amrocha wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The coast is what the US actually is. There's more people on the coasts than not. I truly don't understand where the idea that the coasts aren't the "real" US comes from. They're more real than some city nobody moves to in a state barely anyone lives in.

The real US is the mix of both coasts and in-between. If you see the coasts only, then you don't experience real US. Only few cherry picked bits. It's like going to London and Paris and claiming you have seen „real“ Europe. No, it was just few cherry picked non-representative bits.

No it isn't. 40% of the US lives on the coast, which means well over 50% are within 100 miles of a coast.

It would be like going to most of Europe, and then someone complaining you didn't see the "real" Europe because you skipped Portugal and Croatia.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#296

Post by [deleted] »

michaelt wrote: post #290
bentlegen wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I acknowledged that social media plays some part; read again. You tell me what’s more impactful. Literal data that says the number of international tourists growing 350% over 30 years (from 400 million global international arrivals in 1990 to 1.4 billion in 2018), or some dataless notion that “actually it’s because of selfies”. You can’t build more ancient collisseums and temples. See also why aged whiskey prices hav…

Given that teerak explicitly says: > I personally blame social media and camera phones for this. [...] people taking the same photo 100 times with slightly different poses. Wannabe influencers using their boyfriends as personal photographers. Youtubers being loud I think my interpretation, that teerak is complaining about social media and camera phones, is better supported by data - namely, the text of the post - tha…

[deleted]

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#297

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mysecretaccount wrote: post #279
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gifu is charming, but I don’t get this either. I had a friend there, so my experience is different, a good place to eat, hang out, not really a tourist place even with the castle (and you could see a better one in Osaka).

It reminded me of Milan: a lovely place to live, but a pointless place to visit as a tourist. And I'm at least a CEFR B1 in the language - it would be an atrocious place to visit if you have no Japanese. No clue why the article recommends it (except maybe as an attempt to establish credibility).

Ya, Milan was pretty bad. Got out to Genoa in one night when I realized it just wasn’t going to work out for more than a day.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#298

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

rippercushions wrote: post #273
TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew an Airforce guy stationed on Japan, he said the Japanese straight up made whole villages and districts off limits to foreigners. Not just to soldiers. He said it's to dissuade land flight of women.

Excuse my French, but bullshit. This is probably some game-of-telephone story of some bars near American military bases plastering "Japanese Only" signs on their doors so they don't have to deal with drunk GIs. As a rule of thumb, the only places in Japan that do not welcome foreigners by default are in the sex industry.

Makes sense. Also probably private property, which is obvious for Japanese.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#299

Post by Klonoar »

Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #227
Klonoar wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived there for over six years and moved away because I got tired of the country - which is to say, I really get tired of reading Japan fetishism/worship/exoticism takes. The pedestal people place it on is absolutely not needed. That said, Patrick’s takes are pretty much as bad as people in this thread are pointing out. (Side note: take a shot for every random article about Japan that gets to the front page and you…

When did you start noticing this enter the mainstream? For me it was ~2015. I remember when anime avatars were mocked and ridiculed, and "weeb" was used an an insult. (admittedly both by poeple who did and did not watch anime, but that itself is a point I won't touch on here.) Yet I find "thing, Japan" to be 10x worse than that. So much so that I stopped watching anime completely. I see the most boring, time wasting…

>When did you start noticing this enter the mainstream?

I'm unsure of a specific time period that I'd feel comfortable putting on it, partly because it's honestly been an underlying aspect of tech/cyberpunk culture for as long as I can remember. I mean, go back to the early William Gibson stuff and the "Asian-Megacity-Tokyo-Aesthetic" is shoved down your throat - and I say this as a guy who thinks Neuromancer is one of the best books ever written.

I think the other issue I have with the Japan pedestal-ization that happens is that, if you actually live there, it's got its own arguably fucked up societal issues and isn't necessarily better than here - just different.

Re: Recommendations for Japan Travel

#300

Post by jesterson »

rtpg wrote: post #285
jesterson wrote: post #274

The part where it said that cards can be widely accepted made me chuckle. Don't fall for it, cards wouldn't be accepted in most places where you'd go, and in half of those places your card wouldn't be working because it wasn't issued in Japan. The only place where card would be almost guaranteed to be accepted is konbini. Everywhere else it would be better to rely on cash. Especially if it is inaka

This has changed immensely in the past 4 years. Night and day. I would not recommend going card only (and lots of restaurants will be cash only for lunch) but honestly at this point my cash spending in face to face transactions has plummeted immensely. Though for countryside stuff… I feel like PayPay has a lot more success than cards

Perhaps we have different patterns of spending, but I have not noticed it at all. PayPay seems to be quite ubiquitous tho.

Going card only would not get you anywhere. Suica/Pasmo is more accepted than visa/mc/jcb.

60% of my transactions by volume is genkin, 20% pasmo, 20% visa/mc.

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