Two Broke Girls and a Six Day Rail Pass

By Ami Kurosaki · Japan

It was two days before our trip to Japan and we still had not decided where to go or stay. “Let’s plan this after spring break,” “let’s plan after finals,” “let’s plan once we get to your place in Tokyo,” my high school best friend and I kept saying… and finally we were left with no hotel reservations and nothing figured out except a 5-day Japan Rail Pass. The rail pass is a $200 all-you-can-ride ticket that can get you to any destination in Japan, only sold to foreign travellers. So, we could go anywhere: we just didn’t know where.

“Ok. We’re both art or architecture majors. Let’s go to museums.”

“Yeah, ok what’s that place with the pumpkin artist?”

“Naoshima? That’ll be our first spot.”

“Ooh I wanna go see the deer.”

“That’s Nara. While we’re there let’s visit Kyoto and Osaka. It’s close by.”

“Cool. What about that place your mom suggested? The 21st Century museum or whatever.”

“Kanazawa; that can be our last destination.”

And that was how we decided our one-year-late graduation trip in five minutes. We found random hostels and guest houses on Booking.com, each under an average of 25 USD per night, and rushed to the train station to reserve the shinkansen to Okayama, which would get us from my family’s house in Tokyo to Okayama, a prefecture in the west. My friend and I met up in New York City, and she had come to visit me in Japan for a week before going back to Hong Kong, which was where we had both grown up. It was her first time in Japan, so she was pretty excited. It was exciting for me too, being a traveller in my own home country that I had not lived in for 14 years. And besides, Japan is the perfect place for a budget traveller: cheap food, cheap hotels, relatively safe. Really the only thing expensive is transportation, but we got that covered.

Day 1: Travel

Our trip started with a rice ball from the convenience store, and thus our budget Japan trip began. We got on the shinkansen early in the morning, hoping to get to Okayama by 12pm in order to get on the local train to Uno, the port city by Japan’s inland sea, so we could finally get on the ferry to Naoshima. When we finally made it to Naoshima, the ‘art island’ that drew many foreign tourists to an otherwise abandoned island, it was already 6pm. We dragged our carry-on to a guest house in the woods, called “Bamboo village,” where we shared a room with six strangers. The place itself was nice; a converted family home dotted with Ikea furniture. There were no restaurants near the guest house, so we went to the other side of the island and had a dinner that cost 5 USD each: a cheese-eggplant gratin with no rice and a tiny, appetizer-sized paella.

Day 2: Naoshima

My friend and I woke up the next morning at 6am because of jetlag, which meant we were the first ones to the toast and coffee provided by the host. Next, we decided to walk to the museums on the other side of the island, although there were buses. It was a nice summer morning and we could get some good photos on the way. It took us an hour to get to our first spot: Chichu Museum designed by Tadao Ando. Naoshima is almost a pilgrimage site for architect and art lovers alike, and we were in awe at the beautiful spaces. We walked to Lee Ufan museum afterwards, and last to Benesse House museum, complaining that each took more than a 10 USD entry fee, but coming out satisfied from a museum experience unlike anything we’d had before.

Day 3: Osaka

As great as Naoshima was, our tight schedule forced us to leave with the evening ferry back to Uno. We took a midnight train back to Okayama, where we stayed at another guest house, which was one of the cheapest options. It started to rain as we dragged our luggage, and we arrived soaked. The guest house itself, called ‘torii kuguru’, was decent, and around 30 USD per person.

We didn’t stay in Okayama, as it didn’t interest us much, so with the morning train we left for Osaka. Our main motive in Osaka was the Kaiyukan, one of the top rated aquariums in Japan. For lunch we had a Japanese fast-food gyudon (beef bowl). One can’t go to Osaka without going to Dotonbori, so we went to the major shopping district, got one of the cheapest but worst takoyaki (please, if you are getting takoyaki in Japan, just go to Gindako), and for dinner had okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake). Later we walked to our guest house called HIVE, which at around 25 USD per person, is a converted office tower with beds so closely spaced to each other we could hear the stranger next to us breathe as we slept. We also had to take the elevator to go to the shower.

Day 4: Nara

In the morning we left for the train to Nara. Nara is small, known mainly for its temple with deer that roam the streets. Deer are considered sacred here, and were not killed off unlike in other places in Japan. Instead of going to the World Heritage temple, my animal-loving friend and I went to Nara Park to play with the deer and to climb Mount Wakakusa. Despite the twenty minute hike uphill, the view of Nara was worth it and we had the hill to ourselves.

Day 5: Kyoto

We left Nara after having one of the best udon we’ve had at Fukutoku (try curry udon in any restaurant while you are in Japan!). Kyoto was just a short train ride away, and after not being able to figure out the bus system, we had an hour walk to our guest house. This was our cheapest deal of the week, at just 15 USD per person, but was definitely the worst. When the host showed us the room, I was pleased to see that we had a private room and went to open the closet, only to find a strange man sleeping inside it. The host told us that was his “room.” The doors didn’t close either. The sheets smelled used and we later found out that I got bed bugs from that place. Since it was located in the middle of nowhere, we had teriyaki in a nearby izakaya (Japanese pub) that was a similar level of sketchiness.

We took a bus to Arashiyama the next day for the famous bamboo forest, but left quickly for the monkey park. We probably spent the most money that week feeding the monkeys bananas and nuts, and coming up with theories about which snack they preferred. Looking for something to eat, we found a place having a lunch plate sale and ended up eating surrounded by middle school student groups, also flocking for the cheap food. We stopped by Ryoanji as every tourist does when going to Kyoto, and then left for our last destination, Kanazawa.

Day 6: Kanazawa

The shinkansen to Kanazawa was a long trip. Our main goal was to visit the 21st century museum designed by SANAA. We went right at opening time, but there was no one else, and our suspicion was confirmed when the reception lady told us the museum was closed on Mondays. They still let us in the outside area of the museum, so we got a glimpse of all the interesting exhibits they had, for example Leandro Erlich’s pool. We sadly walked away, and found some high school art students sketching, and decided to join them, with nothing better to do.

We spent our last afternoon of our rail pass trip touring the Kanazawa castle park and kenrokuen. They recently rebuilt the castle park for the opening of the shinkansen that would connect Kanazawa to Tokyo. Our last hostel, called “Blue Hour,” was the most memorable of them all. It was new, design was minimal and nice, service was great, wifi was amazing, and overall was a great deal for just 20 USD. I would go there again just for the hostel.

The next morning we took the new shinkansen back to Tokyo, and that concluded our budget trip. We spent just 200 USD, excluding the rail pass. But the rail pass saved us around 200 USD in total. That could buy around 100 monkeys worth of bananas!

It’s been half a year since our trip together, but my friend and I still joke around about the bed bugs that I caught in the sketchy Kyoto guest house, or the museum that was conveniently closed in Kanazawa, or the fact that we travelled to all these places in Japan and yet opted to go to aquariums/zoos instead of temples and shrines. Everyone travels to Japan with a different objective; some for food, some for art, some for religion… for us, we had absolutely no objective but to explore and navigate through this unknown land with our first instincts, and see where our rail pass takes us. So get on the train to anywhere, and discover your own Japan.

This article was published in the Spring 2018 issue, Budget Travel.

About the writer

Ami Kurosaki is from Tokyo, Japan and Hong Kong. Her favorite city is Tokyo because of its endless things to do and eat.

About Guac

Guac is an award-winning travel publication run by an interdisciplinary group of students at Cornell University. We aim to inspire our readers to celebrate cultural diversity and view the world with an open mind through delivering unique stories from people around the world.

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Guac Magazine

Guac is an award-winning travel publication run by an interdisciplinary group of students at Cornell University. We aim to inspire our readers to celebrate cultural diversity and view the world with an open mind through delivering unique stories from people around the world.

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Guac Magazine

Guac is an award-winning travel publication run by an interdisciplinary group of students at Cornell University. We aim to inspire our readers to celebrate cultural diversity and view the world with an open mind through delivering unique stories from people around the world.

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