First time visitor impressions and tips
 

I love this place! We've been here 10 days now and are sad to be leaving soon. I thought I'd write a brief travelog with some tips for other first time visitors.

Arriving at NRT was a bit of a PITA as there are no express lines for C/F and we came in just after another jet. But the total wait at immigration was only 20m so not as bad as LHR and others, and our checked bag was waiting as we exited. The NRT express train is super easy to find - almost directly across from customs exit. Easy to buy tix with CC (and a steal at 1500 yen pp) and the girl can direct you to 7/11 and Citi ATMs which are just around the corner (both accept US ATM cards). Finding the train is a slight challenge you have to go downstairs and then follow signs to the correct track.

The train itself is nicer than HEX (London) but much longer ride at 80 minutes to Shinjuku. Arriving in Shinjuku at rush hour was not as bad as we expected - yes crowded but not crazy. Finding a street exit takes a little time but once you do so taxis are easy to find. There is a shuttle to the park Hyatt but not so easy to find and a bit of a hassle if you have significant luggage. But we used it often when going and coming during the day.

The Park Hyatt itself is everything that you expect in terms of luxury and service. I have stayed in bigger and more deluxe rooms, but for Tokyo it is hard to beat. The staff was uniformly good (aside from a situation at the Peaks bar that I will address elsewhere and was satisfactorily resolved). The location is a bit further from Shinjuku stn than one would like but worth the walk or quick shuttle or taxi.

The first night we went back out to eat in the area between the hotel and trains, there are many restaurants on the small walking streets. We found one with the sushi boats and stuffed ourselves for $40. Good fresh fish which hit the spot after airplane food. Second night we got tired and basically made a meal with the Peaks lounge hhour appetizers. Third night we went to Gonpachi in Roppongi, a great experience and quite reasonably priced. The final night we did not feel like walking so we descended into the basement of the office building under the Hyatt which like most offices has many restaurants plus convenience store, drugstore (needed suntan lotion!) Just walked into a sushi bar that looked nice and enjoyed a great meal with sake for @ $80. There are probably places like this everywhere in Tokyo if you are willing to roll the dice and explore outside the guidebook and concierge high end lists.

We spent our first two days full days with two wonderful gentlemen provided by tokyofreeguide.com. We were fortunate to get 2 separate tours (apparently I made 2 requests) and I cannot say enough great things about these guys. They each split up the major sites - met us at our hotel at 9am and then directed us back at 5pm with the only cost for their metro fares and modest lunch. Better than any tour bus and great exercise. My only caveat would be to prepare for a lot of walking through parks to see shrines, etc. - if this is not your thing then maybe better to do something else. The river boat cruise was a nice interlude and we ended day one at the Akihabara electronics area. The fish market puts my own SF fisherman's wharf to shame!

The final full day in Tokyo we took a day trip to Kamikura which was one of the highlights of our trip. Yes, it's touristy but a pleasant change from the hustle of Tokyo and some great shrines and the giant Buddha. Time well spent if you have an extra day though finding the right train there was not easy (in part due to some service issues which required connecting in Yokohama).

The next day we took the "Romance Car" train to Hakone. It is not so easy to find the right tracks, you basically have to go to the far North? part of the station, almost through a dept store to find the train. The ride is about an hour, nothing special - I would not pay extra for this experience again.

My least favorite experience of the entire trip was spending a night in Hakone. The train itself was pleasant, but I could do without the 1/2hr ride on the curvy road to the Hyatt in Odawara. Honestly the communal onsen baths just did not appeal and in fact made me nauseus (maybe too hot) plus I prefer to enjoy a hot tub with my wife and not some naked old men :) We considered a ryokan but the lack of private bathroom at most was a nonstarter not to mention the prices. It did not help that I felt ripped off at the nearby Nobu restaurant which was nothing like the wonderful experience we had in London. While we did enjoy taking the tram to the nearby hot springs (and great views of Mt. Fuji) I felt the whole experience was a bit overrated, way overpriced, and definitely not worth a diversion from much more interesting places.

We had no trouble buying Shinkansen tickets to Kyoto at the JR counter and finding our car. Very pleasant way to travel and 2 hours later we were in the heart of Kyoto. Once again Kyoto station is not the easiest to navigate but the guy from the information booth personally escorted us to the Westin shuttle stop (several people did this throughout our trip - an amazing kindness that you don't find elsewhere). Alas the Westin Kyoto was a big disappointment - my fault for not reading the reviews more closely and for being penny wise, pound foolish. Considering the perks we get at Hyatt, that would have been a far better choice. See my review in SPG forum for more details.

Part II - Kyoto and Osaka coming soon. Apologies for spelling errors

For F check-in at NRT, some airlines - ANA, Swiss, Lufthansa, among others - have a separate security check but not passport control. I don't want to say that it's a wash, but general airport security checks in Japan are so painless that, the one time I flew in NH F, encountering the separate security area was anticlimactic.

I was about to say that the dice are loaded in your favor if you just drop into a reasonably priced restaurant anywhere in Japan. It's unlikely that you'll get anything less than a well executed meal.
... but I would not go to Nobu in Japan for any reason.

I didn't know there was a Nobu in Hakone....

Great report so far...will be leaving for Tokyo in under a week and also spending time in Kyoto. Staying at Hyatt properties throughout our trip. Thanks for posting!

Great trip report! I generally recommend splurging at least one night on a nice ryokan (assuming you can deal with sleeping on a futon on the floor) as a cultural experience, although they are available at all price points. Some do have private bathrooms. I understand using/gaining hotel points changes the calculus on hotel choices, but IMO it would be a shame to miss out on the experience just to save a bit of money or get one more hotel night under your belt.

ryokans -- private bath
 

We discovered that while ryokans, even at lower/moderate price points, do not have a private bathtub shower, many do at least have a private toilet and sink. Obviously one needs to check that out with the ryokan. This distinction was very important for us as I would not want to share a toilet, but did not mind showering in the public bath/onsen for a time or two. Also, our ryokans had extra futons in the closet which made the sleeping quite comfortable.

Private toilets are pretty much standard in any halfway decent ryokan, although I've stayed at minshuku where they're shared as well.

But, yes, the expectation is that you do your evening and morning ablutions at the onsen baths. It's one of the main reasons you're there, after all.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

It's too bad you did not find Hakone to be a worthwhile experience. While Hyatt Regency Hakone is a nice hotel, that's not where I'd go to experience onsen. In fact, they don't even have rotenburo there (unless things have changed from a few years ago) and their indoor bath is nothing special. For not much more than the rate of a regular room at the Hyatt Hakone, you could've stayed in a tatami room with en-suite private onsen and kaiseki dinner / breakfast included at a nice lodge elsewhere. Plus as jpatokal said, pretty much most ryokan rooms have at least private toilets. Those rides in Hakone would not have been too expensive if you had gotten Odakyu's Hakone Free Pass.

You should have followed my instructions in this post in the Japan Do thread. :)

Thanks for the link...we are arriving via NEX from NRT and staying at the PHT, so these instructions will be great!

Part Deux - Kyoto and Osaka

We enjoyed Kyoto immensely and were fortunate to have a free guide on our first day who arranged by one of our Tokyo free guides. As luck would have it there was a major festival parade the day after we arrived and our guide took us from our hotel to a prime viewing spot. We then wandered over to Owariya, a 700-year old noodle restaurant, for lunch. And then to the Golden Pavilion and some famous Zen garden, finally ending up in the Nishiki market area. Alas there are precious few threads on Kyoto dining, so we made a rookie mistake by visiting Genko sushi which was overpriced and the sushi was not even as good as some of the sushi boat places (also too many smokers). Oh well, it's impossible to bat 1.000 every night. The next day we took our only paid guide supplied by Kyoto private guides. This was a bargain @ 2000 yen/hr as we got a personal tour which included some more obscure shrines that were clear across the city. I would highly recommend this guide and service to anyone who is interested - no way we could have navigated the city this quickly on our own, much less learned so much history. We ended the day at the "Silver Temple" and Philosopher's Walk, the latter a bit overrated stone path along a canal that was favored by some Philosophy Prof for his daily constitutional. We ended up at a sushi boat restaurant and finished off something like 9 plates of very serviceable sushi each for <$40. Now that's a deal! The next day we felt comfortable enough to find our own way to some of the nearby shrines and also a local sake brewery (and related museum) that's about 15m by train from the central station. This was a welcome diversion as by that point we were all shrined out (no offense).

The next day we took the local train to Osaka after waiting 10m at the ticket office only to discover there was no Shinkashen :( but the limited express was only 30m so no biggie. From Osaka station you can walk directly to the brand new Intercontinental hotel - another fabulous property (even better for free ;) ) but again you can look to the IHG forum for a detailed review. Suffice it to say the property is very convenient and easy to find by following signs from the station to the Grand Front Osaka office complex. We were immediately off to attend a Hanshen Tigers baseball game. For me this was one of the highlights even though baseball is pretty much the same game anywhere but the stadium experience was quite a bit different from the USA. I will miss those Asahi girls when I'm at my next Giants game (and the $6 beers). Practice tip: contrary to what we were told the team is quite popular and the good tickets sell early. So have your hotel concierge pre-order for you so you don't end up in nosebleed seats like we did! We ended the day at a popular Soba restaurant in the Namba neighborhood, which reminded me a bit of Tokyo with the bright lights and crowd of youngsters. Really liked Namba, wish we could have returned another night.

We were pretty toured out by our final day so we took it easy and went shopping for gifts at one of the train station dept. stores, relaxed at the pool, and had the concierge make a reservation at one of the Michelin star sushi restaurants downtown. No doubt this was our best meal of the trip and an experience we will not soon forget.

Slept in the next day (ironically we both finally adjusted to jetlag the day we returned!) and took the airport bus to KIX. The latter is pretty unimpressive and does not compare favorably with NRT, but it has a couple of serviceable restaurants and the lounge was tolerable.

No offense but Shinjuku is still confusing even with instructions and a map, as it is not easy to pinpoint your current location with phone GPS. Nor does one feel like hiking around after a TPAC flight and NEX. Hence the oft-cited recommendation for first time visitors to take taxi to your hotel when you arrive, and then figure it all out the following day. At $8-9 it's an affordable luxury particularly if you want to avoid schlepping large bags!

Alas we checked several high end properties and none had private WC/showers which is mandatory from our perspective. And the first thing I do after rolling out of bed is to take a private shower. Ryokan good in theory (the futons would not bother me either) but in practice maybe not for those of us accustomed to certain room features.

Final Installment Next: Impressions and observations.

I agree Shinjuku Station is confusing even if you understand the language and have been through it umpteen times. All those construction works currently going on don't help. And I agree that the map doesn't help much either. It was included to show how complicated the station is. However, my instructions were about how to get out of of the station without having to schlep your bags up and down the escalators/elevators so you could catch a taxi to your hotel. :)

The easiest way for first time visitors would be to take a limousine bus from the airport to the hotel.

Definitely bus from the airport. Shinjuku is a nightmare of a station full stop. As Shinjuku does not offer much that isn't done much better elsewhere in the city Shinjuku itself is pretty easy to pass on also.

I am finding the rebuild of Shibuya pretty close to nightmare. Getting up to ground level from B5 is ;) and the plaza on B3 is :o;):rolleyes::(:td: !