Japan travel tips

Recently, there's been a surge of tourism to Japan. I've been sending this list of tips out to various friends/friends of friends/colleagues/folks. This is the set of things that I wish I would've known before visiting Japan for the first time.

• Stores/restaurants open pretty late. As in, most stores are still closed at 9am (including most non-chain coffee shops) or even 10am. Including coffee shops/bakeries within major train stations. Check the store hours and don't assume they'll be open at 9am.
• Having reservations at the "nicer" restaurants is not required per say, but it's helpful. At the standard/casual restaurants, it's not at all needed. If you want a specific cuisine but aren't tied to a specific spot, you can probably always book something the day of (e.g. it's trivial to get into a omakase place with some flexibility, but you might not be able to get into a particular omakase place without advanced planning). If you specifically want to go to a particular spot that's popular (e.g. viral), you should book it ahead of time.
• The Japanese have a different notion of ratings. For them, "3 stars" is considered "good" and "5 stars" is considered "outstanding". So if on Google Maps you see a 5 star restaurant, it means either only tourists go there (who consider "5 stars" to be good and always hand them out) or it's actually really really good. A 3 star restaurant is probably still good if the reviewers are mostly Japanese. The main site for restaurant reviews/reservations is Tabelog (English site here), but Google Maps's reviews work fine too.
• Japanese spicy is not actually spicy. There's also a divide in how some flavorful the food is: the flavors tend to be either quite strong (e.g. takoyaki loaded up with mayo/soy sauce) or quite subtle (e.g. sushi, grilled fish, etc.), with more food being on the subtle side.
• The floor on how good the food is tends to be higher than the US. But the ceiling is lower.
• Consider avoiding colorful/”loud” clothing (basically anything other than blacks/greys/blues and fairly simple patterns) to avoid sticking out. The Japanese clothing style is fairly muted/grayscale.
• There's very few public trash cans (mostly in very large train stations, by vending machines, and in convenience stores). Be prepared to carry your trash around in a backpack for most of the day.
• Tipping is not a thing in Japan. If you're asked to tip, you're probably in a tourist trap.
• My favorite places:
  • Arashiyama
  • Nara Park
  • Tokyo Skytree: free unofficial observation deck in the adjacent mid rise office building next connected to the Skytree very high up in the building (30th/31st floor). You don't need reservations or buy anything to take the elevator up. Just find the right elevator and go up to the high floor and the windows views are great.
    • Along similar lines, you can find free high up restaurant floors (free to enter/take elevator up) that overlook the Shibuya Scramble Crossing (which is way more insane in person than the videos/pictures show).
  • Ueno Park in Tokyo's super cool. Lots of really cool museums there.
  • Loft is a chain of home goods stores in Japan. Their biggest store in Japan is in Shibuya, Tokyo. I think this is a great place to buy quality souvenirs. They sell a bit of everything: from stickers to ceramics to art to stationary to souvenirs. They don’t really sell much in the way of food/beverage though. People rave about Don Quijote and while it is a vibe and they sell a lot of novelty/souvenir food/beverages, I did not like the store as it was very overwhelming and felt like a flea market. I do think it’s worth experiencing one in its intentionally kitschy glory though.
• I used the Ubigi app to buy a eSIM and it worked really well for me: high speed data-only service everywhere. Also very cheap.
• Do not expect Japanese websites to be fully interactable with 24/7. You can usually read static content 24/7. But usually a bunch of the transactional sites close or are partially unavailable for a couple hours every night. For example, the Smart-Ex Shinkansen booking app does not allow seat map usage for about 6 hours each night.
• When paying for something with a human cashier, there's always going to be a tray to put your card/cash on. Do not hand your card/cash to the cashier directly. Always place your payment on the tray. The one exception is sometimes a cashier will scan your items but then there's a machine that you pay via, e.g. you insert cash, swipe your card, or tap your card with the machine.
• If there's a line, respect it. Even if the line is unofficial, e.g. there's a line for boarding the train but there's no markings on the train platform.
• I strongly recommend staying a night at a ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn usually with an onsen [hot spring] either in the hotel or in the room). You get an excellent traditional Japanese dinner and breakfast included (usually). This was by far the most culturally enriching thing I did.
• If you have tattoos, try to not show them in public but it's not the biggest deal as far as I can tell. Japanese culture still largely shuns tattoos. At shared onsens (i.e. non-private onsens), people with tattoos will sometimes/usually either need to cover them up or will not be permitted to use the shared onsen.
• For the most part, any prices you see written down will include sales tax (usually 10%) already. Stores will usually stress very hard if the prices include/exclude tax. Tourists are exempt from sales tax in some instances for merchandise. I personally didn't bother with this, but that's because I don't generally buy anything of meaningful value when I travel and the few times that I did, I wasn't willing to wait in a longer register line (or a separate counter after checking out) to claim the refund/exemption to save a few dollars.
• You can pay with card in most, but not all, places. You should always carry around some cash (yen). I generally tried to keep 5,000 - 10,000 Yen (approximately USD$34 to $68) in cash on me. Having a coin purse is also kinda handy because coins are a lot more common than in the US.
• A lot of things in Japan will be surprisingly cheap as an American tourist with a strong USD/weak Yen.
• Japan is notably warmer/more humid than most of the US and the Japanese prefer warmer indoor temperatures than what Americans are used to. They also don't like using air conditioning very much. Take that into account when packing clothes.
• The electrical outlet plug type is the same as US ungrounded plugs (the two prong version). So things should just work as long as you're not using a grounded plug (three prongs). Theoretically, the grounded outlets do exist in Japan, but I never saw any.
• Smoking is notably more common than in the US. Some restaurants/bars still allow smoking indoors (more so bars than restaurants). If smoke bothers you, check if the restaurant/bar allows/prohibits it. Most large public spaces (e.g. airports, popular streets, train stations, hotels, etc.) will have a smoking room with ventilation to try containing the fumes.

• Don't bother with getting any of the metro passes or rail passes or discounted fares. You're almost definitely not going to take the train enough for them to save you meaningful amounts of money. For local transit, the passes don't actually cover all the lines and figuring out what lines are/aren't covered isn't worth the effort because it's so cheap even without a pass.
• If a particular train car/section says female only, only use that area if you're female.
• Kyoto <-> Osaka <-> Nara are very close together and form a transit triangle. A single home base for this part of Japan would be a good idea if you're planning on visiting more than one of these cities.
• "Green class" is what they call "first class" for trains. It's not worthwhile because the standard class is already very nice.
• There's multiple transit fare cards throughout the country, but by and large they're all intercompatible and a card valid in one system is valid in every other system (e.g. you can use Suica cards [Tokyo] in the ICOCA system [Osaka] and vice versa). The generic term for fare cards is “IC card”.
• If you have a recent iPhone (iPhone 8 or later, purchased anywhere in the world; and some other Apple devices), create and then use the virtual Suica, PASMO, or ICOCA (each being a distinct transit card) in the Apple Wallet app. I recommend Suica because I can vouch that it definitely works for tapping into Shinkansen fare gates (see the following tip) and that you can refill it with an American Visa credit card using Apple Pay and won't have to use the cash-only reload machines (as you'd have to do with a physical card). On top of transit, you can use the Suica card for convenience stores, most vending machines, most stores in train stations, and even some stores outside of train stations. Android phones purchased outside of Japan do not support virtual Suica cards.
• The app for booking most of the tourist Shinkansen tickets (the service area is limited to the Tokaido, Sanyo, and Kyushu lines; essentially all the lines going west from Tokyo, including the one to Osaka/Kyoto/Hiroshima) is called Smart-Ex. You pay directly within the app. They wouldn't accept the one Visa card I tried but the one Amex card I tried worked with me.
  • For picking up your tickets at the fare gates, the best way is to (in the Smart-Ex app) "designate an IC card". To designate your virtual Suica card for pickup (if you haven't already, you must create the Suica card within the Apple Wallet app first), you'll need to download the Suica app, click the little "i" (information) icon, and copy paste the card number into the Smart-Ex app.
  • You cannot use Suica to pay for Shinkansen, you can only use it to pick up Shinkansen seat slips at the fare gates. You don't actually need the seat slip for anything if you use Suica to pick it up (there's no conductors checking tickets or the like). But you should hold onto until after you exit your destination station.
• There's almost no point in booking Shinkansen tickets ahead of time (except during Golden Week which is a peak travel time for domestic travel and some other major holidays). I literally bought my ticket from Tokyo to Osaka 10 minutes before the train left while I was standing outside the fare gates. During daylight hours, the trains leave every few minutes. There's no variability in pricing depending on the train month/week/day/time: it is slightly cheaper to be on a train with more stops but the discount isn't really worthwhile since it's so marginal of a discount. There are minor discounts depending on how far in advance you book, but those discounts are not really worthwhile. The only exception is if you want to get a window seat or adjacent seats, in which case booking 30-60 minutes ahead of time for standard class would be a good idea. Alternatively, green class window seats are easier to buy (it's ~$33 more for green class for the ride between Tokyo and Osaka) on shorter notice.
• Some transit lines have multiple levels of service (e.g. the Hankyu line between Osaka and Kyoto has 7 levels of service with a varying number of stops between each). Usually, the price is the same for each level service. But sometimes you need to pay a “seat reservation fee” or “express ticket” for the more express variants of the line or for certain services on top of the ordinary fare. Read the signs/do some Googling/ask the train station attendants (probably via the Google/Apple Translate app) if you're unsure.
  • Notably, the Narita Express (also known as the N'EX: the most direct line between Tokyo and Narita airport) requires both a basic fare and a express ticket (which also usually contains the seat assignment). While I did use this service when I first got to Japan, in retrospect this wasn't the clear and obvious choice knowing what I know today. It only runs every 30 minutes at most, it isn't much faster than other options (maybe 10-20 minutes faster), it's marginally more expensive ($20 instead of $10) than other options, and the lines to buy the express ticket are comparatively long while as some of the other options are just ordinary transit so you can tap on with your Suica card without needing to wait in a line to buy the express ticket. But, there's a ton of very helpful staff helping you buy the ticket, there's minimal stops, and a near-guarantee that you'll have a seat to sit on so it's all a wash ultimately.
• Transit in Japan has a notion of “through service”. The short of it is that sometimes two or more companies will partner together where a single vehicle (generally a train) will start on one line as that line but then “convert” into another line at a certain point. For example, imagine you board a NJ Transit commuter train in NJ, the train gets to Manhattan, and then it becomes a NYC Subway train. The physical train does not change (it may be visually either a NJ Transit train or a NYC Subway train or possibly something else entirely). Any passengers on board can stay on board. This notion of through service sometimes leads to confusing Google/Apple Maps directions where it may appear as though you need to switch trains when in reality you do not. Apple Maps tends to be better about telling you when a train is a through service train.
• Train lines generally don't run overnight. If you're going to be out early in the morning/late at night, be sure to check for first/last train.
• (Almost all) Kyoto city buses only: you enter through the rear door and exit through the front door. You pay as you exit. This is completely reversed from every other bus system in the world that I'm aware of.

• The official English translation of some Japanese text is sometimes hard to understand, contradictory, and (in rare cases) incorrect. It's sometimes helpful to use a translation website/app on the original Japanese text. Certain phrases get translated pretty consistently that are a bit “off” to native English speakers (in the sense that they're semantically correct in translation, but the translation isn't a phrase typically used in western English), e.g. “model course” refers to a recommended itinerary/routing/course.
• Google/Apple Translate have image/speech recognition features that are really handy to have. Be sure to also download the languages for offline use.
• You can get by with Google Translate/Apple Translate and not knowing any Japanese aside from a handful of phrases (please, thank you, etc.). All the train stations/vending machines and virtually all signage in the big metro areas have Latin alphabet letters so it's easy to type things out. As an English speaker, most Japanese words are pretty easy to speak. Menus usually have pictures too.

• Certain common medications are illegal in Japan, but exemptions are possible in some cases. Unless you absolutely need these medications, filing for the exemption is likely more effort than it's worth. Most notably:
  • Sudafed (pseudoephedrine) is allowed, with advanced application that includes a doctor's note.
  • Adderall is completely banned without exception.
• The criminal justice system there is distinct from the US in many critical ways. To the maximum extent possible, don't do anything that is or appears to be illegal. From the US State Department's website: “If you are arrested in Japan, even for a minor offense, you may be held in detention without bail for several months or more during the investigation and legal proceedings.”