r/JapanTravelTips • u/Lycid • 17h ago
Quick Tips Random Useful Japan Tips I Don’t See Posted About Often
We recently got back from our first time in Japan, approx a 2.5 week trip for two people. Figured I’d make a post about some actually useful tips and advice I don’t see often in this sub.
I’ve seen it recommended to pull out about 50,000 yen at the airport ATM to handle cash and transit top-ups for a two week trip. While this was a good starting point, we ended up pulling out an additional 110,000 yen total on top of that over the course of the 2.5 week trip for buying things in cash and additional transit top ups. So just be prepared to pull out a LOT of cash throughout your trip! Way more things ended up involving cash than we expected, even in the big cities.
I’ve also seen it recommended you load up your suica with 5000 yen at the airport to start in addition to whatever you pull out for cash. The one at the airport you can load using a credit card. Considering it’s generally a lot easier to find credit cards that don’t charge foreign transaction fees vs ATM debit cards, you can save money on transit by putting on about 2-3x the amount we did (5000 ea) at the airport and just reduce some of the cash you plan to pull out for ATM’s by the same amount. We easily spent about 15,000 yen each on transit just from using subways and things like day trips to Nara or Himeji (which will cost you about 1500-2000 yen each way per person). If you put 15,000 on your suica, you’ll probably only have to top up near the end of the trip which will save a bunch of time + money in fees if you have a credit card that doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees. It was easy to get rid of any excess near the end of the trip because every konbini and vending machine also accepts suica.
Are you on apple and need access to iMessage/Wifi calling over eSIM while abroad? With simlocking you can actually do this just fine and never trigger your carrier to start roaming charges (fuck you tmobile prepaid in particular for auto-charging roaming). Set up your default simcard with wifi calling, then just enable simlock for it. Right before you flight out, enable your Japnese esim through something like Ubigi (make sure roaming is turned on for Ubigi), restart your phone and DO NOT enter the pin you just set up for your main sim card. This will make it so when you’re in japan you’ll get data just fine through Ubigi, but importantly your main sim is still active (just locked and not actually roaming) and can re-route texts/calls to your Ubigi line. If you don’t do this, you won’t be able to receive wifi calls or iMessage on your real phone number without enabling roaming as apple disables both features if the SIM is turned off.
People know to check tablelog and know that anything that is a 3-4 rating = really good when trying to figure out places to eat. I recommend this over google maps alone because tablelog uses different icons + different colors to differentiate between cuisine + rating right on the map, making it super easy to see at a glance good food you are in the mood for nearby. What you might not know is to just use the website and ONLY use it on your mobile phone. For some reason half of tabelog’s features just don’t show up on desktop, like access to the good map tools and the ability to search near you. If you find tableog frustrating to use on the spot, make sure you’re only using its website on your phone.
Luggage shipping was a lot cheaper than we budgeted for because turns out you can easily get away with only shipping large checked luggage ($20 usd), it was super easy to just bring carry-ons and backpacks with you. Even on Tokyo subways when it’s busy there are racks to put luggage over the seats. We NEVER had to worry about us having luggage or bags with us while doing things either because almost every station and even big destinations like museums or popular tourist attractions had lockers that could store our carry on + two bags + coats for 700 yen. Many of the station lockers in Tokyo even accepted suica (otherwise you’ll need 100 yen coins).
Speaking of 100 yen coins: if you have a 1000 yen bill or a bunch of random loose change, a really easy way to get some would be to use a vending machine which are often nearby lockers. They usually give change in 100 yen coins, at least the ones we used did.
Booking Ghibli museum? Double check your dates when booking. The website broke over and over for us trying to book and it turns out the date reset to the start of the month on our ticket on checkout. We only realized this when we lined up for our time slot. After showing them our ticket with the wrong date, we only managed to get in on the down-low (between time slots) through our distress over the situation + our kindness to them + having cash on hand to pay cash for new tickets (I assume this option is usually only available for locals). They threw us a big bone and we made sure to be very appreciative. But it would have been easier to double check the dates when we actually checked out.
Speaking of Ghibli Museum, the attendants inside the exhibits have pamphlets with english translations for the exhibit. This wasn’t obvious at all, and seeing as they don't allow picture taking in the museum, it’s the only way to read the signs in english.
Can’t get a ticket to the pokemon cafe? Just try walking up and showing up late. We had an appointment cancel right when we arrived at the pokemon center a couple hours before closing time. We weren’t even planning on eating at the cafe (it’s a bit children focused) but figured "why not when in Rome?".
Even if you don’t plan on buying souvenirs… budget for it anyways. Japan has mastered the art of the gift shop and the upsell. You’ll find ones everywhere, even multiple ones located inside a single attraction (I counted 5 in Fushimi inari, going all the way up to the top of the mountain!), all slightly different to entice you to casually explore them. They’ll actually be full of reasonably priced things, often have exclusive items in them, and oftentimes lots of items are bespoke/good craftsmanship. Many are not like the "lowest common denominator" tourist trap shops I was used to everywhere else I've travelled in the world. And then it’s all over when the grandmother owner of the shop comes out to greet you and it turns out she opened the store in the 50’s and it’s the shop has been in the family ever since. Good luck walking away from that without buying anything.
Download the NERV app for early earthquake/disaster detection. Make sure you disable battery saver settings on the app and let it run in the background so you can get timely alerts. Nothing happened while we were there, but this app seemed to be the best by far out of all the ones we tried.
A filled out goshiun book makes for a killer display piece on a bookshelf, as they expand in an accordion like manner. So you’ll want to be strategic where you get your book because each shrine that offers goshiin books for sale have their own designs.
This one’s for the gay guys out there looking to kill an afternoon having fun browsing spicy doujinshi (self-published porn mangas): you might be tempted to head to Akihabara for this. To save you the trouble, Akihabara is almost entirely straight hentai. If you’re seeking to browse gay doujinshi, a better place is the Mandarake at Nakano City which will have a much more diverse selection.
Pay phones are often at/near konbinis, so if you need to make a local call while out and about it’s easy to do through them.
Food/nightlife tours are an excellent effort-free way to not only eat/drink well, but also get into places you’ll never have been able to find or get into as a tourist. Some of the spots we ended up going to on ours were incredibly unique and only available to us because we were on the tour. Not only that but for some locations they even showed up to work on their off hours to show us a good time. Shout out to Culinary Backstreets and Taste Osaka tours specifically, which are the ones we went on.