gbs1112

I have lived and worked in Japan and still visit regularly. Recently friends planning their first visit there asked me for any tips I had to make their trip more enjoyable. I tried to think of things that are not seen in any of the articles published. Here are some of the comments I came up with hoping they may interest others.

Japanese travellers at home travel light. If you want to pick out the foreign tourists at Shinjuku station look for the guys with the big bags. If you visit a ryokan you can turn up with little more than your passport and wallet. The ryokan supplies almost everything you will need. Day wear, night wear, toothbrush and paste, razor, shaving cream, comb and more lotions and potions that you know what to do with or where to put them. If that is not sufficient just ask, maybe some nail clippers for example, they will be with you in moments.

As a foreign visitor you will have one or more suitcase anyway, and Japanese couples and families have luggage too but JR, Japan Rail, is not luggage friendly and the Bullet Train, Shinkansen, is the least friendly of all. There is no dedicated luggage space on the Shinkansen at all, zero. Behind the last seats in each carriage there is a small free space that will hold a couple of bags each side of the aisle but you will be lucky to find this not already taken. You are not prohibited from taking your bags on board and you will see people doing just that, hoping for a free seat space at best. But it is not the Japanese way. Loads of them take advantage of a super-efficient and cheap baggage forwarding service, Yamato Kuro Neko, the Black Cat system. Their distinctive logo is a stylised black mother cat carrying its kitten by the neck, all on a bright yellow background. Once pointed out you will see it on vans, trollies, carrier bags and on shops several times every hour as you are out and about in Tokyo. It is ubiquitous. Every hotel I have ever stayed in has all the forms and if you present your bag and the address of the next destination to the concierge he will do everything needed. The bill will be added to your hotel account and the service is not expensive. About the cost of a modest lunch in Tokyo per bag. They will have your bag almost anywhere in japan within 24 hours. On arrival at your next hotel or ryokan your bag is likely to be in your room when you get there. Once you have tried the system you will be impressed how easy it makes travel.

My partner and I being unnecessarily cautious devised a fail-safe system when we are moving around quite quickly just in case there is some delay, which we have never actually experienced. We split our packing between two bags and forward one to our next destination and the other to the one after that. Our bags will leapfrog around our route and one or both will finally end up at our departure airport. At Tokyo Narita the Black Cat collection point is right in the check-in area with luggage trollies available and it takes less than a minute to retrieve your bags.

The JR Rail Pass for foreign visitors is a valuable concession and we have used it several times. The cost for a seven day pass equals about the same as the return fare from Tokyo to Kyoto-Osaka so if that is an example of your main travel in Japan any other rail travel off that route and within the time limit of the pass is a bonus, free. Its main drawback is that the pass is valid for consecutive days, perhaps one week, so if you remain in one place, like Kyoto for example, for several days you feel you are missing out on the full benefit of the pass. Not so many visitors are aware of the Airpass system. If you arrive and depart Japan on a carrier associated with one of the airline alliances like Oneworld you can purchase coupons for a substantial discount. You can buy any number of coupons and each is valid for one sector. The length of the sector, long or short, is immaterial. You could probably fly from Sapporo to Okinawa on two coupons. On our more recent trips to Japan we have combined full fare rail tickets and airpass flights very efficiently.

There is a free online website called Hyperdia, a rail planning application that is easy to use and right up to date. It provides not only train times and connections but also the exact cost of each ticket in whatever class you travel, including seat reservation costs. It even gives you all the arrival and departure platform numbers for your trains. If you print out your selected option the JR ticketing office can work from it with no language problems arising. Using Hyperdia you can easily calculate your exact rail costs and decide if the JR Rail Pass would be a better deal or if you will find a combination of rail and air ticketing is more advantageous. When you purchase individual tickets you can vary the class of travel to suit the circumstances and control the cost. Some of our Shinkansen sectors were very short, twenty to thirty minutes, and we chose standard seats while for the longer sectors we moved up to seats in Green Car (First) class. Standard seating is three plus three across and is a bit on the tight side for a well-built westerner. In the Green Car the seating is two plus two.

On our last visit to Japan we travelled from Tokyo to Osaka indirectly with side trips into the Hakone area (Gora) and the Izu Peninsula (Shuzenji) on regular train tickets that were not all on JR and from Osaka flew on an airpass coupon direct to Narita with an immediate connection to British Airways. Because we were with BA we qualified for coupons with JAL. On a previous trip we had coupons with ANA. The costing is identical. The advantage of this routing was that we avoided transit through Tokyo and the cost of travel from the city to Narita. We prefer the Limousine Bus and that fare now is about one third of the airpass coupon so it became a good option.

The Tokyo Metro is easy to use and the most efficient way of getting around. There are two contactless card ticket systems available. PASMO AND SUICA. I am familiar with Pasmo and cannot compare the two. Pasmo cards can be bought using the self-service ticket machines at all stations. The price includes a deposit of Yen500 and you can charge up the card with cash for use and recharge it when necessary. It can be used on buses and in a number of outlets apart from the metro, such as convenience stores. Before you leave you can return the card for a full refund of the deposit and any unused cash, with no deductions. To get your refund you have to find the station master’s office. Not every station has one but all the larger ones will though in the large stations it might take a bit of finding. If you are in Tokyo for just a day or so you might decide that it is not worth the trouble and just buy single tickets. There is no price disadvantage in doing so. Ticket pricing depends on your destination and to work out the proper fare you need to consult a large metro map above most ticket machines where your required station will have a correct fare alongside. If this is a bit complicated or you can’t find your glasses it’s no big problem. Just buy the cheapest ticket and proceed to your destination. At the exit barrier you will see a clearly labelled fare adjustment counter and the attendant will work out the correct fare and collect the outstanding amount. This is quite a standard and acceptable practice and there is no fear that you may be trying to cheat the system.

The ryokan experience is unforgettable, even though on more than one occasion I have said “Never again”. But I did do it again on our last visit. The problem for me is all the sitting and sleeping at floor level. At my age it is not so easy and a bit undignified getting up. Also I have found that however comfortable the futon seems when I get into bed by morning I feel that I have been sleeping on a stone bench. But there is a solution. Most ryokan will allow several guests to share the room and stored away in the room is the extra bedding should it be needed. Put all of that under you and the night is no longer so punishing. If you are quick about it and remember to ask the room attendant she will do it for you when she makes up the beds after dinner.