And I will add my standard advice: buy a guidebook and some maps, for heaven's sake. Any large bookstore will offer three or four choices.

Ever since my first stay in Japan in the 1970s, I have helped intimidated tourists get their bearings in the country. All of them are surprised at how easy it is to get around. For one thing, unlike Israel, there is no latent threat from suicide bombers, and on the whole, Japan has one of the world's lowest crime rates among industrialized countries. For another, there is bilingual (English and Japanese) signage in all stations and tourist areas. Most people do not speak English, but they can more or less read simple English written in block letters. The people are not effusively friendly, but they are quietly kind and helpful to foreign visitors.

I would recommend a guided tour (the ones I've looked at seem overpriced) only if you were an inexperienced traveler, and maybe not even then.

Even I was surprised when I went to the rather remote Koya-san temple complex in the mountains south of Kyoto in 2000 and found that the other foreigner staying at "my" temple was a young man in his early 20s who spoke no Japanese and had been in the country only four days.