Visiting Japan for the first time: top tips
[Last updated 25 August 2024]
I first went to Japan in 2010 and have been back several times since. This means that whenever friends are about to make their first visit, they often ask me ‘how do I… where should I… when should I…?’. With Japan on more and more people’s travel radars, I thought it was time to bundle this advice somewhere on the internet.
Information about travelling in Japan
Your first ports of call should be:
- Japan Guide: tourist guide to pretty much all of Japan, including simple instructions on how to get to every town and attraction listed
- Tokyo Cheapo: Japan needn’t be expensive, and Tokyo Cheapo is a fun insiders’ guide to making the most of the city on little yen
- Japan Cheapo: Tokyo Cheapo’s sister site, covering the whole country. Not as comprehensive as Tokyo Cheapo yet, but still has great insight (and some stuff written by me)
There are also some fun YouTubers:
- Abroad in Japan: Chris Broad is one of the earliest English-language YouTubers, with videos on all kinds of topics
- Only in Japan: John Daub has also been around for ages (he also has a livestream channel, Only in Japan GO, where he regularly straps on a camera and goes for a wander)
- Cakes with Faces: as well as her channel, Amy has written a guidebook for first time visitors to Japan in which she answers all the questions I had before I went, in the way that I would answer them now, plus bonus kawaii cartoons
Please do use those resources to do your research!
During my 2024 trip I saw so many confused tourists. The line to buy train tickets at Kansai International Airport took forever because tired and jetlagged tourists were baffled by the options offered at the ticket machines. One older, possibly German, couple tried to use their JR Pass on the Kyoto city bus — apparently a previous driver had let them (I presume the driver didn’t feel up to having the very painful, and lengthy, conversation that took place on my bus). Waiters often warned me, before ordering, their restaurants were cash only. This hasn’t happened before and I guess is borne out of experience.
I strongly recommend doing your research. Japan may look kind of Western but it is often very different, and the language barrier means it’s harder to work out what’s going on. Read up on how to ride the bus. Know in advance how you’re getting from the airport. Learn the customs. You’ll have a much better time.
Japan is not that expensive. Not really
I don’t have pots of cash to throw around and there’s no need to take out a second mortgage to visit Japan. There are reasonable deals to be had on hotels (particularly outside Tokyo) and if you eat in salaryman-style restaurants you can easily have the best ramen of your life for less than £5.
In 2024, the yen reached the dizzying heights of 200 to the pound, which is astonishingly good value. I’ve experienced the exchange rate between 110 and 180 ¥ to the £, and always found prices to be reasonable.
Flights to Japan
There’s one exception to the cheapness rule: flights.
It used to be possible to fly from the UK to Japan (usually indirect, via Helsinki or Amsterdam) for about £500 return in economy. For my April 2024 trip I struggled to find an economy return for under £1,000. (I ended up paying £1,400 via Doha and using Avios to offset the cash fare. This was flying into Osaka, not Tokyo, but from what I could see prices were similar.)
I believe this is mostly pent-up demand from Covid; Japan was closed for such a long time, and airlines are still restoring all the routes they used to fly. Also, journeys from Europe take longer than they used to (~2 hours extra) because Russian airspace is closed. This all adds up.
There are lots of websites that can guide you into getting good deals. From my experience, it’s cheapest to fly indirect. Wait for the sales if possible (signing up to airlines’ newsletters is a good idea, as is setting up alerts with Skyscanner).
If you want to fly direct with Japan Airlines, one tip (for convenience, rather than price) is to book directly with them rather than through BA. JAL allows direct-bookers to check in online and choose your seat first. Everyone else comes later and there will be, like, two middle seats left in the whole cabin.
Tokyo Cheapo has a good guide to cheap flights to Japan from all over the world.
Hotels in Japan
I’m going to refer you to Japan Guide’s section on accommodation types and my own guide to booking hotels, written for Japan Cheapo. A few things to note here:
- Hotels outside Tokyo tend to be cheaper, but avoid Saturday nights in the popular areas — prices shoot up and hotels book up a long way in advance, especially in places like Kyoto
- Business hotels are fantastic, though the rooms tend to be small — pay attention to stated room sizes when booking as a couple. An 11m2 room is only just big enough for one person and a suitcase (looking at you, APA hotels)
- When all else fails, book a Toyoko Inn: they’re cheap as hell, tend to be next to train stations, have a free breakfast and, because they don’t take bookings more than three months in advance, they don’t sell out as fast as others
- I recommend Agoda as a booking website: very comprehensive coverage in Japan and often there’ll be no payment until a few days before your stay and free cancellation (so you can hold one hotel and keep looking for better deals)
- Airbnb is a bit difficult in Japan at the moment. Tokyo Cheapo has the lowdown
- If you want to stay in a ryokan, or traditional inn, be aware of the rules (some ryokan still won’t take Westerners because they think we won’t understand how they operate). Ryokan can be expensive, but there are cheaper deals in less obvious places. Ryokan tend to charge per room, not per person, and may not take single travellers at all during peak season. Agoda has a decent selection or, if you want to go really posh, The Ryokan Collection has a good English-language booking service
Your phone in Japan
There’s a chance your phone won’t work in Japan (they have a different network system) but most modern handsets will. On the other hand, your roaming charges will be eyewatering, so my advice is to get your handset unlocked before you travel and buy a data-only SIM or hire a pocket WiFi device.
Companies offering these services usually have compatibility information on their websites. Check these lists! I discovered that non-Japan issued Google Pixel devices struggle with Japanese SIM cards, so went for a pocket WiFi on my most recent trip.
You can usually pick up the SIM card or pocket WiFi router at the airport, or get them delivered to your hotel. (I’d advise airport, so you’re online when trying to find your hotel.)
I’ve used B-Mobile for data-only SIMs and Ninja WiFi for pocket WiFi in the past, but Tokyo Cheapo has a good run-down of the options for data SIMs and pocket WiFi (take a portable battery pack with you in case the rental pocket router doesn’t have great battery life).
Trust me: you’re going to need Google Maps.
WiFi in Japan
If you’re thinking ‘yeah, OK, but I’ll just use the free WiFi that’s bound to be everywhere, Japan’s all high-tech right?’ I have some interesting news. Virtually all hotels have free, high-speed ethernet connections and WiFi, but cafes and other places are still patchy.
Tokyo Cheapo is on the case.
Trains in Japan
Train travel over any distance in Japan is expensive, there’s no getting away from it. A Japan Rail Pass used to be a no-brainer if you plan on doing any amount of travel but in April 2023, Japan Rail announced an eye-watering 70% price hike in the cost of the primary pass.
A 7 day pass used to cost ~£175, which is roughly the cost of a round-trip on the shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka, and you got to ride the rails basically for free for the rest of the time. From October 2023, a 7 day pass will cost ~£290, while a 14 day pass rises from ~£275 to ~£465. And that’s at good exchange rates. Yikes.
Tokyo Cheapo has a bullet train fare calculator, so you can see if it’s cheaper to buy individual train tickets or go for a pass. Bear in mind that once off the shinkansen, local trains are hella cheap (Osaka to Kyoto costs about ¥600 / ~£3.50) so a rail pass is now only worth it if you plan on doing a lot of bullet train or medium/long distance travel.
It’s possible to get cheaper, regional rail passes that cover only specific areas of Japan. There are loads of these now, all of them having their own rules of operation. (Take a look at the right hand navigation menu on Japan Guide to see how bewildering the options are.) They can be useful if you’re sticking to one area, say Kyushu or Shikoku. Some of the regional passes are also increasing in price, but they’re still great value — the Kansai Wide Area Pass, for instance, which is ¥12,000 / ~£70 for 5 days and covers a huge area around Osaka. The Hokuriku Arch Pass (¥30,000 / ~£175 for 7 days) is another way of getting between Tokyo and Osaka, via Kanazawa.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that the regional passes tend not to cover the cost of JR buses, and there are some destinations that can only be reached by bus (for example, Kusatsu and Lake Towada), but you can pay cash for those.
It used to be the case that you had to order a rail pass in advance before you arrived in Japan, buying a voucher which you then exchanged at a major station ticket office. These days, Japan Railways sells passes on its own website. These passes are a bit more expensive, but you apparently don’t need the voucher and you can reserve seats online instead of queueing at a station counter.
If you’re going to use the voucher pass system, do it at least several days before you leave, because it’s paper and has to be posted to you. You then have three months to exchange this bit of paper for a rail pass inside Japan. There are lots of online agents who’ll sell you a rail pass — I’ve used JRPass.com and Japan Experience before. Both sell a wide range of regional passes and Japan Experience even sells some non-JR passes.
Some regional passes can be bought when you arrive in Japan.
Train timetables in Japan
This one used to be easy: a website and app called Hyperdia had journey planner options for the whole country. Unfortunately, in early 2022 they pulled the timetables, which made the whole thing unusable. Japan Guide has some suggestions for alternatives.
I used a combination of Navitime and Google Maps during my April 2024 trip and they worked perfectly. Navitime is handy because you can tell it what rail pass you have and it calculates which route is included.
Tokyo Metro
Don’t even think about trying to calculate individual fares when travelling on the Tokyo Metro. It’s a nightmare of mileage and competing lines —something I wrote about for Londonist. Just get a Suica or Pasmo card, top it up with money and swipe in and out. If you’re familiar with the Oyster card, it works like that.
Suica and Pasmo cards can be topped up at machines that easily switch to English and can be used to pay for all kinds of things, not just Metro travel. I wrote about that for CityMetric.
You can use these cards elsewhere in Japan, too — see Japan Guide’s, er, guide.
A few words on Tokyo itself
Tokyo is massive. And unlike London, it doesn’t have a central part where all the tourist bits are. It’s a series of towns, all joined together by the sprawling metropolis, which means you can easily spend an hour travelling between various sights.
My advice is to plan. Work out what you want to see, what’s in the same area and do it all on the same day.
If you want to know where to stay in Tokyo, I always recommend Shinjuku. It has excellent transport connections, a good choice of reasonably-priced hotels and about a million small restaurants. Around Tokyo station can be a good choice, depending on your itinerary, as can Shibuya if you can mingle with the hipsters without feeling old. Ikebukuro is another good option for transport and food.
Food and drink in Japan
Tokyo Cheapo does a good job of keeping on top of reasonably priced places to eat in the capital. Another good resource, which is gradually expanding into other parts of Japan, is Bento.com. Very useful English-language resource for places to eat and drink, categorised both by cuisine and area.
Not all restaurants have English language menus. Google Translate (use the camera option) can be useful here, but it sometimes struggles with written Japanese. However, many restaurants have picture menus and/or plastic models of their dishes in the window outside. If all else fails, you can beckon a waiter outside and point to what you want (I have done this!).
Language
If you’re a first-time visitor, chances are you’re not going to be straying much off the beaten path and although you might encounter the occasional shop or restaurant that operates entirely in handwritten kanji, most places will have English as standard or you can ask for an English menu. (The word for English is eggo.) Also, gesturing, pointing and smiling go a long way.
In the major cities and tourist centres, everything basic that you need is in English: train departure boards and station signage, menus, a lot of food packaging. The first four times I visited Japan, I (shamefully) had no real grasp of the language and was fine.
If you do want to pick up some basics, Duolingo will do an OK job. One handy tip is that if you can learn to read katakana, one of the three Japanese alphabets, and then say the word to yourself in an offensively stereotypical Japanese accent, it will usually translate to rough English. (Examples: メロン = meron is melon; チーズ = chizu is cheese; ビール = biru is beer.)
Kanji is painful to learn but there are some useful ones to know:
Entrance: 入口
Exit: 出口
Women (for toilets and onsen): 女
Men (for toilets and onsen): 男
Train station: 駅
And the live camera function on Google Translate is an absolute gamechanger.
Addresses
Japanese streets don’t have names like in the West (with the exception of the occasional main street). Addresses are based on some very complicated block numbering system that you and I are never going to wrap our heads around, so just use Google Maps.
One thing to look out for in addresses is the floor. You’ll see things like “1F” (this means ground floor if you’re from the UK), “B1F” (first basement level) or “6F” (sixth floor; you get it). This will save you a lot of time wandering around at street level before you realise the bar you’re looking for is 31F and you need to go inside a building and find a lift.
Using cash in Japan
Much like WiFi, credit cards aren’t as ubiquitous as you might think. It can be a shock coming from a country where everything’s contactless to having to carry plenty of cash. Major hotels, shops and transport usually accept Visa and Mastercard but don’t be surprised to be asked for cash in smaller or privately-run places. Matcha has a good guide to using plastic.
It’s not even 100% straightforward getting cash, as not all ATMs accept foreign issued cards. Your best bet is to head to a post office (office hours only) a 7-Eleven (up to 24 hours), or some Family Mart and Lawson stores to use the ATMs there. Keep an eye on Japan Guide in case the situation improves.
It’s also worth saying that in April 2024, I found no fees for using a 7-Eleven ATM but a post office ATM charged me a couple of hundred yen for a withdrawal.
Another tip I’ve found for not getting locked out of your cards by your bank: as soon as you land, find an airport ATM and check your balance on all your cards. Because you have to input your PIN, this apparently tells your bank that you’re in Japan and doesn’t flag fraud. I’ve done this twice now and it’s the only times I’ve not had to wrangle frozen cards.
And don’t worry about carrying cash: Japan is extraordinarily safe!
What time of year to visit Japan
This is subjective. If you like cherry blossom, then go at the end of March/beginning of April (be aware that prices rise and that winter can still be very much present). October/November is a good time to visit: the autumn colour starts to appear towards the end of October, but it’s still fairly warm and dry.
Avoid June to September everywhere except Hokkaido unless you handle heat and humidity (oh, the humidity) very well. Early June to mid July is also Japan’s ‘rainy season’; it’s not rainy in a monsoon sense, but it will likely rain at some point each day and the sky will be very grey. Summer is also typhoon season. Winter can be cold as hell and very snowy.
The end of April/beginning of May is what’s known as Golden Week: a series of public holidays where many Japanese people take the opportunity to travel round the country. This means everywhere is busy, and trains and hotels are often expensive and booked up a long way in advance. Avoid.
Onsen
One of my favourite things about Japan is onsen: public (or, if you’re very lucky, private), sometimes open air bathing. It’s so relaxing — and good for you. I once cycled all around Naoshima’s steep hills even though I haven’t cycled since I was a kid, and I credit the I Luv Yu onsen for a lack of crippling thigh pain the next day.
There are some onsen etiquette rules to know before you go (in a nutshell: no tattoos, make sure you use the showers to get yourself scrupulously clean before entering the bath), but public bathing isn’t as daunting as it may sound. For an easy way in, try booking a business hotel with an onsen attached: some APA Hotels and Dormy Inns have baths on the top floors.
There’s a very good book called Onsen of Japan, by Steve Wide and Michelle Mackintosh, that covers many of the various onsen towns in Japan.
Areas to visit in Japan
There are so many places to visit in Japan outside of the usual Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka-Hiroshima route. Japan Guide and Tokyo/Japan Cheapo have it all covered.
However, Kyoto is so over-touristed these days that I’ve put together some suggestions for alternatives to famous Kyoto tourist spots.
However, if you’re not sure where to start, here’s some writing by me about places I’ve visited that are a little beyond the beaten track. Bear in mind that some of these are a few years old, so check before relying on them for any travel!
Honshu:
Kyushu:
- Fukuoka
- Yufuin
- Beppu and Takasakiyama monkey park / Takasakiyama on Japan Cheapo
- Rakan-ji and Nakatsu
- Kitsuki
- Usuki
- Ainoshima (cat island)
