Things to know before visiting Japan

2024 Dec 27

My husband and I finally went on a very long-delayed honeymoon and the first vacation we had since 2016 to Japan. I was fortunate enough that one of my Japanese coworkers gave me some pro-tips/key advice to use while there, as well as some friends and colleagues who had been recently, but even still there were things we discovered the hard (and awkward) way. I want to share those pro-tips with anyone thinking about going to Japan to make your trip as smooth as possible! We went in November if that context is useful for anyone. Here are some things to know before visiting Japan.

Planning your trip

📅 Reservations and Activities

• Triple check what needs to be reserved in advance. Some things can only be reserved online and 2-3 months in advance at certain times of day.
• Don't over-plan or over-tour because you'll want to explore and bucket items by how close you end up being and how tired you are.
• I'd recommend sorting the stuff you want to do by priority and then by ward. Even doing this in advance, we were making adjustments on the fly because certain places were closer through the transit system than others like we thought they'd be.
• We made several reservations - I bought a Klook multi-attraction package then booked individual activities. Basically we tried to do no more than one booked/reserved activity per day with some days having absolutely nothing formally reserved.
• Japan doesn’t allow certain medications without approval in advance. Check their official site with the meds list.
  • For my other medication, I took photos of the bottles and printed out a list with my prescriber’s name on a piece of paper that I packed with the medication in my checked bag. No one bothered me about anything but YMMV.
  • I used a pill organizer with numbers ¹ to represent each date we were there and it made my life much easier as someone who takes a lot of medication.

👚 Clothing

• Something else that no one mentioned to me that we would have REALLY wanted to know: almost no one wears color. Tokyo is mainly black, brown, gray, and white. One of our tour guides told us it's because their culture frowns on people standing out, and color is an expression of individuality. I wore a sage green one day and stuck out like a sore thumb.
• Leggings on women and shorts on men are considered underwear out there. No one told me this and I found out after becoming the recipient of some very concerned glances.
• Women tend to wear swishy wide legged pants that are breathable - it's very in style and easy for walking. I immediately bought some upon getting home and love them. These are the pair I went for.
• I do NOT recommend jeans unless it's very cold. The amount of walking you do may be uncomfortable in them.
• High water style pants (above ankle) are also good in case in rains to keep the fabric off of the ground.
• If you’re traveling when it’s cooler, be aware that the Japanese spike the heat in every location possible - the subway, hotels, buildings, everywhere. It was too hot for me, so the clothing I'd brought was largely too warm. If you run hot, just keep that in mind. Layers are your friend.
• If you do want to get clothing out there, since everything is really nice, but you’re a galumphing Caucasian like me, Muji HQ is a great location bc the sizes fit Westerners.

Apps and Phone Info

📱 Phone

• Visiting Japan is far smoother if you have an iPhone, mainly for the transit system and ease of paying at restaurants and stores with that transit system pass card(s) without incurring foreign transaction fees.
• There are ways you can make things work if you have an Android, it’s just going to be more difficult. Note that I’m saying this as an Android user. I’m not a fan of iPhone. (That isn’t to say it’s not great for others, I just personally have a lot of problems with the UI and the way that Apple interacts with literally any other technology.)
• You load a virtual Suica card (or Pasmo or Icoca, whatever you choose; Suica from our experience seemed more widely accepted) into your iPhone wallet and link your payment method.
• Whenever you need to, you can replenish the amount without needing to stop and physically load yen onto a card.
• It’s also difficult to get the standard Suica cards now because of the chip shortage, so you have to purchase a Welcome Suica card - which I just saw, as of December 2024 writing this, is unavailable at the moment, too.
• Because we plan on going back to Japan to experience more of the country to share here, I ended up purchasing an older, used iPhone 13 mini that I could swap my sim card into and that way I could link to the SUICA while there.

🛜 Apps & Data

• You really just need 4 apps: Google Maps (iPhone/Android), Google Translate (iPhone/Android), Klook (iPhone/Android), and Uber (iPhone/Android).
• Download the language and maps of the areas you’ll be going offline before heading out there.
• If you’re not familiar with using Google Translate, watch a quick video tutorial. You will need it. Japan is very easy to navigate as long as you have a translation app.
• Klook helps you book tickets and events, including Shinkansen tickets if you end up travelling between cities. You can book in person, but Klook helps you reserve seats.
• Uber in Japan is tied into their taxi service. Using it reduces issues with translations for where you’re trying to go. It makes it very simple to get around when you are simply too tired after already walking 16K steps one day to walk another 10 minutes to the station and need to get back to your lodgings.
• You probably don't need a pocket wifi or eSIM if you have a service like TMobile or Verizon international pass. We have TMobile and signed up for the extra 15GB of data since we were there for 2 weeks with their international data plan and had zero issues. Since most restaurants and stores - even tiny ones - have free wifi, we probably could have gotten away with not needing the extra 15GB. We definitely won’t need it for the shorter trips we are planning.

🚄 Transportation

• You probably don’t need a JR Pass unless you’re traveling to several cities on the Shinkansen. I actually sat and did the math with a Japanese train fee calculator and it was far less expensive for us to pay for the smaller trips through Suica and then buy the Shinkansen tickets separately. If you're travelling a lot, though, it could be worth it for you!
• Familiarize yourself with how to use the Japanese transit system. Quick takeaways from the best video we found on the topic: look at the color and the letter/number code versus the station name (ex: purple Z09 vs “Mitsukoshimae Station”) and the to/from indicators to tell if you’re in the right place and going up in number or down. You should still watch the video to get an idea of what this means.
• Uber eliminates a lot of the translation issues with the local taxi service if you need it.
• We used luggage forwarding services when traveling between cities so that we didn’t have to juggle everything on the trains and I cannot recommend this enough. It is going to cost more the further you transport your items, but you can send them ahead to your hotel or AirBnB (depending on their rules) and enjoy your time upon arrival in the cities without worrying about your suitcase while you wait for check-in time. Some hotels can do this for you, you can book through Klook, or you can use a service like Yamato. We used our hotel's service once and then Klook for same day delivery and were very happy with both options.

💴 Paying for things

• Suica is your friend if you want to avoid foreign transaction fees (FTFs). Make sure whatever credit card you’re bringing with you also does not have FTFs because they add up fast.
• A lot of eateries will only accept cash, so make sure you have cash on you.
• The best way we found to avoid getting killed by the exchange rate was not to exchange at the airport, or use debit, but to bring USD cash and then go to an exchange within the hotels we were staying in. The exchange rates were much smaller and we were able to exchange in smaller amounts more securely. You can also do this at 7/11s, I believe. (Their 7/11s are as amazing as everyone says.)
• Sneaky thing some stores will do: they'll ask if you want to pay in USD or yen with credit card. I choose yen - otherwise it seems like the stores add on fees that they pocket on top of the exchange cost.
• Tax-free purchasing: anything that isn't food or restaurant over 5500 yen, from what we could tell, is eligible for a 10% tax free discount. Just carry your passport everywhere. You don't need to keep the receipts, but be aware that they will seal everything up that you get for tax free.
  • So, for example, if you need pain medication because your feet are killing you and you happen to bundle that purchase with other items from the drugstore, and use tax-free, guess what? You don't get your pain meds until you're home 🫠 If you have something you're going to use immediately, ask them to leave it out and you'll just have to pay tax on it.
  • Apparently there’s a QR code version of this on JapanWeb that you can use without needing to carry your passport around, but I tried every single thing I could find online to get it to work and it refused to recognize my passport photo. YMMV.
• If you purchase a lot out there since the yen to USD at the time I’m writing this is so devalued (I wish I needed a new phone because the phones were $300-400 less at their major electronics store, BIC Camera), you might need more luggage. We ended up buying two extra suitcases for the stuff we bought at Ginza Karen. They have a made-in-Japan line that's very high quality for not a lot of money that was very convenient.