How to plan a trip to Japan…
We booked our July 2015 flights to Japan in August 2014, thinking that they would be cheaper the further we booked in advance. I’m not sure how much the price did increase but it meant that we were definitely going and we could get excited and start planning!
I searched for flight prices through SkyScanner and found about £580pp from Edinburgh to Tokyo, via Heathrow. We booked directly through Netflights (they offer cashback through TopCashBack and SkyScanner don’t) on Virgin Atlantic flights. Originally we were flying with them to Tokyo Narita Airport but a few months later Netflights called to change our flights as Virgin Atlantic changed their routes so we ended up shifting dates by one day and flying with ANA into Tokyo Haneda Airport – which worked in our favour as it’s much closer to Tokyo and ANA turned out to be fabulous!
Then for the adventure planning… I didn’t know where to start – a totally new, different country that I didn’t know much about and a big language barrier! So I Googled and I read lots of helpful blogs, which is why I’ve decided to put our Japanese adventure into a blog! Hopefully it can help some other people who also don’t know quite where to start!
One thing that’s important to note if you’re pondering a trip to Japan is that it is a very cheap country to visit! I know a lot of people (including us before we went) think that Japan is super expensive but we found it really cheap. I think that this is partly because the exchange rate is currently working out really well for us. We could grab a delicious bowl of ramen for as little as £2.50 and the most expensive night we paid for accommodation was about £75pp, which was in a fantastic traditional ryokan in Koyasan which included dinner and breakfast (both amazing big delicious feasts!) and a pass to all the onsens. Also admission to places like temples were only a few pounds.
Before we left
We knew that we wanted to travel around Japan and see a lot of the country but didn’t know of many places apart from the likes of Tokyo and Kyoto. I spoke my friend, Adam, who spent 2/3 years in Japan, teaching with JET. Adam also has a blog (https://gadgie2gaijin.wordpress.com/) and I’d followed his adventures when he was away and knew he did a lot of travelling. He was super helpful and gave us advice on where we should visit and how many nights to spend in each place.
Of course, travel in Japan requires the help of their famous Shinkansen (bullet trains)! Once we had a list of where we wanted to visit, I checked the time of the train between locations (with Google Maps) and was amazed to see that we wouldn’t be on the train for any more than about 3 hours at a time. It doesn’t take long to get around when you’re travelling at up to 200 miles an hour! We were planning on a lot of trains so decided to get a 14 day Japanese Rail (JR) pass, which would cover the majority of our transport (with a few exceptions). It is important to buy your JR pass in advance – it’s only available to tourists and when you buy, you must activate it in Japan within 90 days of purchase, so you can’t buy your JR pass too far in advance of your trip.
There are a few companies that sell these, and they’re almost the exact same price. We got our 14 day JR passes for £245 each from Japan Rail Pass by Japan Experience (www. japan-rail-pass.com). This was the exact same price as another company but Japan Experience threw in a free book (The Japanese Railways Travel Guide), which ended up being really handy for working out how to get from A to B! I did ponder if the pass would work out cheaper as we wouldn’t be using it every day but we confirmed this in Japan when we priced a train from Osaka to Hiroshima and it was over £50pp. I think it might actually work on the Tokyo Metro too but stupidly we didn’t check this… Once you buy your pass, you are sent an order for it, which you activate when you get to Japan and tell the JR exchange office in Japan the date you want your pass to start.
We booked all our accommodation in advance, from various websites, most of which allowed us to cancel/change dates last minute. This was really handy in case we decided to change plans. I’ve noted in my blog posts which websites that each hotel/apartment/temple/capsule (!) was booked from but if you can’t find availability on one website, check it on another as they vary.
Another few things we booked in advance were sumo wrestling and baseball tickets and we got these tickets through buysumotickets.com who were really reliable and posted us our tickets to the UK. We also booked a samurai lesson in Kyoto online, directly through the company.
One other thing that I thought might be useful in advance of our trip was to learn a bit of Japanese…easier said than done! I booked a 10 week beginners course through the University of Edinburgh (£110). With three new alphabets, it’s a really difficult language to learn but I picked up a few handy words – Sumimasen (excuse me), Arigatou gozaimasu (thank you very much) and kore kudasai (this please – for pointing at menus!) – which I used a lot! The class also taught us a little about the culture (the first lesson included how to bow!) and it was good to learn about all the extra things to be polite (e.g. say arigatou gozaumasu instead of just arigato).
Our itinerary for travelling around Japan
After a lot of planning, this was our final itinerary…
Thursday 2 July 2015 – Leave Edinburgh, transferring at Heathrow
Friday 3 July 2015 – Arrive in Tokyo, 3pm
Saturday 4 July 2015 – Tokyo
Sunday 5 July 2015 – Tokyo
Monday 6 July 2015 – Kyoto
Tuesday 7 July 2015 – Kyoto
Wednesday 8 July 2015 – Koyasan
Thursday 9 July 2015 – Osaka
Friday 10 July 2015 – Osaka
Saturday 11 July 2015 – Hiroshima for day then stay on Miyajima
Sunday 12 July 2015 – Takeno
Monday 13 July 2015 – Kinosaki
Tuesday 14 July 2015 – Nagoya
Wednesday 15 July 2015 – Kawaguchico
Thursday 16 July 2015 – Kawaguchico (climb Fuji)
Friday 17 July 2015 – Tokyo
Saturday 18 July 2015 – Tokyo
Sunday 19 July 2015 – Fly back to UK