Flight Ticket from the US to Japan

The best deals are at Japanese travel bureaus located in America. Because they deal with Japanese customers, they seem to have extra special deals. As of this writing (June 2003), a 2-way tickets from Chicago to Osaka is listed rather expensive 1200$ on a site like www.expedia.com, while at a place run by Japanese in America the price starts around 650$. Yet the difference is salient only during peak seasons, like summer.
I often use JTB. Midwesterners can call their Chicago office (800-305-5824 or 847-593-7226). They are located at a famous Japanese super market Mitsuwa in Arlington Heights.
One creative way to buy a ticket is to make Tokyo (Narita) as the airport to arrive and Osaka (Kansai) as the port to depart. In this way, you don't have to make a round trip once you get to Japan. The airfare does not change.

Hotel Reservations

www.mytrip.net is one of the good sites, yet most of the contents are in Japanese and what is searchable in English (click here) is very limited. Thus you will need to have your Japanese research assistant sit by you to make a reservation. A decent and reasonable fee for a single room starts from 4500 yen (38$), which is largely a result of Japan's deflation.

What about other English Sites to book a hotel in Japan? This one lists prices for the hotels that I know, but seems like they are a lot higher than the prices that I see at mytrip.net in Japanese. For insteance Sunroute is listed as minimum of74.40$, but at mytrip.net the minimum for that place is 45000 yen (38$).

Here are my picks for KYOTO. Consider $1 as 118 yen (as of Summer 2003).

CLOSE TO Sanjo Street

Kyoto Royal Hotel is usually 6500 yen at the mytrip site, but this is a nice hotel. They have a free internet connection, but their system is unstable. You end up restarting many times because for some reason their internet connection lapses after a while. Convinient location.
Hotel Alpha is right across Kyoto Royal Hotel. Royal is filled up on Saturday, so you might want to immigrate to this one. It is similar to Hotel SunRoute. W/ free stable internet connection at the lobby. Also free internect connection from a room if with a network cable.

CLOSE TO Shijo Street

Hotel Sun route Kyoto one offers usually 4500 yen a night at the mytrip site. Shinjuku and Osaka Sunroute were also nice. W/ free internet connection at the lobby. 5 minute walk from Shijo street towards the South. I used to think this place is conviniently located till I stayed at Royal.
Hotel Rich is not the greatest hotel, but on Saturday Hotel Sunroute gets completely full and Hotel Rich is 3 minute walk across the street from SunRoute.

Japan Railway Pass

My Dutch friend, who has been to Japan, claims that this is the cheapest thing in Japan among all buyable things in Japan. It allows you to take any trains, both local and shinkansen trains. Before you could not take Nozomi shinkansen (the fastest one), but now you can take any type of bullet train, all Kodama, Hikari, and Nozomi!

If you are going to make one round trip between Tokyo and Kyoto, it is already more expensive than buying one week pass, so this is a must item to bring to Japan. Only available for foreigners or residents of foreign countries (Green card holder in the US are eligible). You will have to buy a token abroad and exchange it with a real pass in Japan. I'd recommend the exchange part at the airports. If you do it at Tokyo station at a rush hour, you wait in a long line with other customers. See JTB's description.

Months to avoid

Sometime In between June and July there is a rainy season. November is a very busy season in Japan. Price is even higher and there is fewer vacancies in November. Early part of May has a Golden week when there is about a week of consecutive holidays. Traveling gets harder.

What is the time difference?

When it is during summer time, add one hour (if East) or two hours (if Midwest) to an American time and flip the AM and PM. You can subtract instead of add if you are already in Japan. If not during summer time, add extra one to this equation.

Money Exchange

As of this writing, a dollar is 117 yen. There are lots of CITIBANK ATMs, so that would be where I would change my money if I were a foreign traveller. I often wonder if it is possible to exchange money informally among people, between Americans and Japanese, using the exact currency rate of the day. Japanese airports are full of people leaving for America, while the planes coming from the US are full of people needing to exchange dollars with yens.

Internet Connection

Japan may be more connected than US in terms of availability of terminals at hotels. Not all hotels have terminals, however. Kyoto's Sunroute, Kyoto Royal, and Hotel Alpha, have free internet connection on the lobby floor, so I can use HOTMAIL account or even MSN instant messenger service. (Kyoto Royal's connection is unstable, though.)

In Tokyo, many hotels have coin-internet machines (100 yen/10 minutes). I saw this at Shinjuku sunroute. Also some appliance shops, like Yodobashi Camera, have free internet connection at the entrance area for showing their system off. I elaborate this later.

They are all for poor foreigners who don't have keitai (cell phone)! You will see no Japanese person using it because they do internet on their cell phone.

When you leave from the airport (at least Kansai), you will see an Internet terminal at the gate for United and Northwest. It is free. I do a last minute emailing from there, using HOTMAIL account.

Public Telephone

It is not easy to find pay phones nowadays in Japan. Most Japanese people have cell phones. The only people who are using pay phones are foreign travellers. In fact, I tend to feel miserable knowing that I am the only one not connected with people through keitai, which is what they call their cel phones. You may have to walk several blocks to find a pay phone and it only returns changes with 10 yens. I recommend buying a phone card (1000 yen) when you arrive at the airport.

You can also do a rental of a keitai phone at the airport. I don't know how it works really. If you stay in Japan like for a month you may want to do a prepaid keitai service. I will do some research on these.

What is a Japanese way of hanging out, other than site seeing?
Japanese love hanging out at appliance shops. If you are visiting Tokyo or Osaka, you don't even have to look too hard to find one. I am impressed with Yodobashi Camera (Shinjuku in Tokyo and Umeda in Osaka). I don't think no one has seen an appliance shop of a 10 story building, every floor being filled with all kinds of electronic products. Japan may be the only place in the world where there are a flood of people in appliance shops at 9PM at night.

Also Yodobashi Camera feels like a savior when you need to email in the middle of the big city. At their entrance, they have a terminal for free. Believe me, without Keitai (cell phone) Japan looks like an impossible place to penetrate. Being able to email home from an appliance shop feels like a blessing.

Definately lots of Foods to eat

In addition to trying foods that are authentic and rather pricy, you should also try ordinary foods that Japanese eat as fast foods. Must items are:

Ramen (5$)
Okonomiyaki or Yakisoba (7$)
Sushi that goes around on the belt (locals call it "kurukuru" or "kaiten.") (10US$ to fill up my stomach)
Udon noodles ($4)
Soba noodles ($4)
Beef Bowl (gyudon) ($3)

If you are a vegetarian, your travel will be difficult. Even when you think salad is a vegetarian plate, Japanese cooks may put something extra, like small fishes or bonita fish flakes, trying to add some flavors and be unique and original. Without such creativity, Japanese restaurants would be quickly forced out of business. This is because people like exchanging information about restaurants. Once a restaurant is labeled mediocre, no one would go. So what does this creativity mean? You may order a plate of plain spaghetti, but may also get an egg on it, for example.

The concept of vegetarian is fundamentally foreign to Japanese people and it contradicts the core of moral and virtues in Japanese sensibility. From early childhood, Japanese people are taught to enjoy food and eats everything on the plate. At many schools in Japan, children eat school lunch, which does not mean just lunch at school, but they eat together in an orderly fashion in the classroom. A group of about 10 children rotate to distribute foods--they go to a school kitchen to pick up foods and they prepare for everyone to eat in the classroom, wearing white uniforms and masks.

Teachers use it as a way to teach moral values and basic manners. They stress that everybody eats everything, appreciating every bit of food. This is why an individual making a choice not to eat meat could be seen undesireable. Children are also taught to eat within a reasonable time. When I was in elementary school, teachers punished slow eaters by forcing us not to leave our desk until we finish.

I don't know if they do it now that way.

Omiyage (souvenior gift)
Japanese are big on omiyage. They bring small gifts for and from their trips. If you are traveling to see people in Japan, I'd think it is a nice gesture for you to follow their location tradition. The problem for Americans is ... when is the last time you saw something small that is made in America? You don't want to bring things that are made in Asia to Asia. Also whatever exists in the US exists in Japan--often in a better quality.
Over the years I have struggled with this question, but have decided that brand chocolates are the answer. Godiva or Seed's Candy would make a good gift. Godiva is already expensive in America, but it is twice as expensive if you buy it in Japan, so it will make a classy gift. According to my research, buying these chocolates either at department stores, like Chicago's Marshal Fields, or at international airports in America don't make much difference to prices. So, just buying at the airport terminal shops may be a good idea.
And here is a way I process my omiyage packages once I get to Japan. At airports, both Narita and Osaka, there are FEDEX-like parcel services (called Takuhai-bin or Takyu-bin). You can send packages over night to anywhere in Japan and the fee for this is surprisingly reasonable. If you are moving to Japan to live and you arrived with lots of luggage, these are also places to send your stuff from.