

Ask HN: Advice on traveling in Japan? - steveklabnik

Hey HN:<p>I'll be going to Tokyo with my girlfriend and a friend for the next week. This will be my first time outside of America, though my partner has significant travel experience. What advice would you have to make my experience the best one possible?<p>Also, if anyone in Japan wants to meet up, send me an email.
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evo_9
If you are feeling really adventurous I'd look into visiting an Onsen. It's
essentially a japanese hot-spring bath-house and is a major part of the
culture of Japan. Their isn't much written about it but I was fortunate to
travel all around Japan with my ex-wife (a native) back in 02. We went to
onsen's in almost every city we visited, including Bephu which has the oldest
onsen in the country (something like 1100 years old).

It's a really interesting cultural experience because it's such a big part of
japan's history. It's also a bit unnerving because it's split between men and
women because there are no clothes allowed and for me, I was alone with a very
limited grasp of the language. People were really nice and mostly curious
about me and how I knew about onsen's (seemed like a big secret to me at the
time).

If/when I go back to Japan I would actually make it the entire reason for the
trip; aka, travelling around from one onsen to the next.

~~~
steveklabnik
My girlfriend made a reservation at a place like this, but she said she had
found one that wasn't gender separated... good to know it's a good experience.

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mikhael
i went for the first time this summer, and i can give a little advice;
depending on your level of spontaneity, you may or may not really care:

as a visitor to japan, getting a temp. cell phone seemed ridiculously hard.
there are no prepaid SIMs/phones; you can only do a rental. and no matter what
plan you get, outgoing calls will be ~90yen/minute.

so: after two days in tokyo, i wound up renting an iphone (3GS), and it was
immensely helpful. having maps + gps was really fantastic. i installed and
used skype pretty often - it breaks up a lot over 3G, but again, it's far
better than paying 90yen/minute. i highly recommend this company:
<http://jcrcorp.com>. i have no association with them, but they were a
pleasure to work with. (also note: an android phone may work better, as
iphones are on softbank which is a newer and less well established carrier).

i also found that free wi-fi seemed to be very, very rare. you can find some
coffee shops with wi-fi, but you have to buy a ticket at a nearby FamilyMart
for ~500yen/day.

do you know any of the language? if the answer is no, it's probably too late
now; but i found that using the japanese keyboard on iphone (just kana) was
very helpful to mapping stuff out.

it's worth spending a few minutes to understand the addressing system:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system>. there are no street
names, and it's generally very different from the US.

finally, i assume you already know this, but tokyo is not cheap; be prepared
to spend a lot of money, and enjoy yourself.

feel free to contact me off-list.

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starkfist
I lived in Tokyo for a year. However, most of the stuff I remember was outside
of Tokyo. Tokyo was like a giant urban blur. The main thing I remember in
Tokyo as a tourist destination was the Tokyo Tower. The rest of the time I
just randomly walked around. If you can get out of the city, go to a hot
spring bath, Kyoto, Kamakura, and the beach. This might sound lame, but I
thought the shopping in Tokyo was amazing. So many little custom boutiques.
Also, Tokyo Hands was cool.

Tokyo is weird in that there aren't really a bunch of specific tourist
destinations. It's more like a non-stop hallucinatory experience.

~~~
steveklabnik
> It's more like a non-stop hallucinatory experience.

This is what I'm hoping for. Awesome.

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kylelibra
Japan is an amazing place. I just spent three weeks there at the beginning of
the Summer. I tried to write about everything I did, hopefully some of it will
be of help to you.

<http://kylelibra.com/category/japan-trip/>

If you have any more specific questions, let me know. Tokyo is cool, but I
wouldn't spend the entire trip there if you can avoid it.

