Our tour of Japan was based on a few things. I (Cam) wanted to show Meg so many of the things I experienced during my six-month posting in 2021/22. There were also a number of things I did not get to do while I was here, I was working after all. My schedule had me working 11 days out of 14. I had Friday’s off and every second Saturday. 

Looking at commercial tours of Japan and seeing what there was, I crafted our itinerary and then went over it with Meg. I also thumbnailed a budget and, I’m happy to say, we came in under budget.

Transportation

A mix of transportation is how we got around in Japan. This included local, limited express and Shinkansen (Bullet) trains, buses, local subways and of course walking. The only trains you need reservations for are the Shinkansen and selected limited express trains. 

I have had a lot of success scheduling train travel in Japan by using Google Maps. Simply enter your start and end points and various routes will be offered, including prices. A note about train prices in Japan. The route you take to get from A to B will determine the cost. I’ve shown an example of travelling from Yokosuka-Chou Station to Nestay Inn Tokyo. 

The first option below uses the Keikyu line to the Oedo Line and then walking, costing ¥890 and takes 1 Hr and 31 Min. Option B would also leave at 6:36PM on the Keikyu line but transferring at Yokohama to the JO Yokosuka Line and then transferring again to the Shinjuku Line and walking. This travel would cost ¥1,170 or ¥280 more than the first option and it takes 11 minutes longer. Why would anyone do that? Well the JO line is operated by JR Rail, and if you had a JR Rail pass, you may want to use that line as part of the travel would be covered by the pass. Travel on the Keikyu and Oedo lines would not be covered. When you transfer trains you often have to “tap out” and “tap” back in again if the lines are operated by different companies.

Learning Japanese trains

I’m sure I spent way more money than I had to when I first arrived in Japan, simply because I didn’t understand the process. The first time my friend and I went to Tokyo in 2021, it cost us ¥2,000 and took 2 ½ hours. We spent over an hour in Yokohama station wandering around, we were so lost. Finally, a kind ex-pat took pity on us and pointed us in the right direction.

Our transportation costs for our time in Japan was $1,896 CDN for 49 days or $19.75/day/pp. This included four rides on the Shinkansen, all subways, local and limited express trains. Our travels took us as far north as Nikko and as far south as Hiroshima and criss-crossed the country seeing both coasts. We did not use a JR Rail pass as it would not be cost effective in our circumstance. Your mileage may vary.

FOOD!

We travel to eat. New taste and experiences are what make going to new places so fun. The food in Japan is amazing. Both of us starting feeling better after about a week and noted our diet took a turn for the worse in Taiwan.

We ate out a total of 54 times. Breakfasts were always in our room, usually fruit, bread and yoghurt. Lunch and dinner were eaten in restaurants about half the time, with the other half being in our Air BnB, on a park bench in the sun, on the go, wherever. We never ate on local trains, but did eat on Shinkansen’s, as that is allowed, they even have food carts!

Sushi – two to three times a week

Sushi was our number one meal, we ate that 18 times in seven weeks. Indian restaurants were a close second with eleven visits. Food is generally cheaper in Japan, at least in the restaurants. You don’t tip in Japan, and while there is 10% consumption tax, it is normally included in the price of the meal. Our total for food and beverages, including alcohol, was $2,656 or $27.67/day each. This includes all restaurants, groceries, water from vending machines when hiking, the odd random ice cream cone. OK, maybe the ice cream cones were not that random.

The amount above provided for high quality meals. We were not on a university students budget. One of my yoga teachers previously said about buying food – “you can pay with your wallet or you can pay with your health.” There was a lot of fruit and veggies, mostly from the grocery store. Our most memorable meal was at a Spanish restaurant in Takayama.

Activities

Coming to Japan, or going anywhere really, is to do “things”. While there are a lot of free activities including hikes, walking around markets and neighbourhoods, some things do cost money. Many of the popular temples have entrance fees. Tourist attractions such as castles are user funded so you need to pay.

Admission fees did not prevent us from doing or seeing things that interested us. We dropped a bunch of money on Disney Tokyo, not once, but twice. It was totally worth it. Overall we spent $1,382 in total on activities or $14.40 per person per day on average. That includes every fee, admission, tour and row boat rental that we did.

Although we have a great home in Victoria, you still need a place to stay when travelling. Being away for as long as we are, a place that was a bit bigger where we could have some meals in while not sitting on the bed was important. A combination of Air BnB’s as well as hotels was our plan. We never booked anything that was dodgy but we didn’t book the Ritz either. In all, our digs were fine, except one Air BnB that was not up to standards and Air BnB is looking at deleting that listing.

For our time in Japan, we staying at eleven different accommodations, for a total of 48 nights. The total cost was $4,757 or $49.55/night per person. This did include approximately $500 of points for three free nights in Nikko. If that is factored in, the cost would rise slightly, however points are there for a reason. To use and enjoy. We do not like leaving anything on the table, so we use our points as soon as we can. I think most people had a surplus of points post COVID and are trying to burn through them.

Miscellaneous Items

Where do you put things that don’t go anywhere? We are placing them the miscellaneous category. Photocopies, document fees, gifts for friends. The hospital visit is also under misc, we’re still trying to recover from the insurance company so this amount may come down. Our purchase of two pairs of running shoes to also goes to misc.

We walked close to 600km in Japan and in doing so, both of us wore out our shoes. At the end of our second visit to Disney, our feet were achy and tired. We were at the park from 8:30 AM – 8:30 PM, 12 full hours. The longest break we took was to eat a light and overpriced lunch. The day after Disney we went out and bought new shoes are our feet were much happier :). We kept the old shoes and are taking them with us to hopefully gift them to someone in India.

The total of miscellaneous costs was $762 or $7.94/day per person.

Total trip costs

All together, we spent $11,455 for 49 days in Japan or $119/day/pp. That includes every snack, each bottle of water, tours, trains, gas for rental car, etc. This does not include the travel to get to Japan. Some people arrive by plane, others by ship. Some come from Korea, some from other places. Some may arrive by parachute. That is a separate expense. 

There was no way we could have afforded seven weeks in Japan had we booked a tour for the entire time. I checked on-line recently on tours of Japan. “Premier” tours can cost $1,800 US/per person/day. For that price, we could have taken a two-day tour. The hotel would have been nicer; however, our digs were fine. More mainstream tours run about $7,000 CDN PP for around 10 days. 

Obviously doing things yourself and arranging everything on your own has both advantages and challenges. It certainly saves money, but when things go wrong, there’s no-where to turn. It all comes down to attitude. On a trip, the difference between adventure and ordeal is attitude. We try and have a positive attitude and pull each other up when one of us is a bit down. 

That’s why I enjoy travelling with my best friend.

Thanks for reading, feel free to leave any comments.

For loyal readers of our website, you may recall a post from early October, where I commented on the size of Tokyo. In particular, it would take a city of Tokyo’s size to be able to support an Accordion club. Fast forward about seven weeks and we are in Taipei with a population of about 2.7 millioin. I was amazed to see this site while strolling back from a flower market.

Maybe it is a regional thing? Now to be clear, I was NOT looking for this shop, or this type of instrument. I’m not sure what the music craze here is, however, I don’t think it is this. For curiosity, I Googled the name. Sure enough, they offer lessons, including on line lessons. Wow.

Night Market

We’ve seen some other interesting things here in Taipei, including the famed night markets. The crowds were almost oppressive last night, a Saturday. Meg and I certainly brought the average age up. It was difficult to order food as there are very few signs in English and Goggle translate is often lacking. Case in point, at lunch earlier in the day, we ordered what translated to crispy sausage. We are not sure what we received, it was likely heart and it certainly wasn’t crispy. We both tried it and left the rest. 

At the night market, we were hungry as our walking tour had just ended. We did manage to order chicken, well I did. All I did was point and hand over some money and the clerk passed us a bag of fried chicken nugget like things. The signs all around this stall had pictures of chickens. Normally night markets are delicious, however we did not get half way through these nuggets before we threw them out. After that we were a bit gun-shy and, even though we walked around for another 45 minutes, we did not order anything.

Restaurant dinner

We returned to our hotel prior to going to a different night market close by. All the stalls were busy, however there was almost no English at any of them. There was a lot of food which looked as if it came from the parts of animals we, as North American’s, don’t normally eat. In the end, we chickened out and headed to a rather busy sit-down restaurant and had a delightful meal.

We have wound down our time in Japan.  I’m drafting this at the Narita airport, awaiting a flight to Taiwan. Our plan to spend seven weeks in Japan, which seemed like such a long time when we arrived on September 30^th, flew by. Originally we were not sure we could fill the time. We had an aggressive tour planned, and in the end, we could have easily stayed longer.

Sometimes less is more

One thing we came to realize after about three weeks, is we needed to slow down. Three days in a place was often not enough. After leaving Tokyo, we visited six places for three days each (Nikko, Hakone, Takayama, Kanazawa, Hiroshima and Osaka). By the 18^th day we were exhausted. I know the organized tours will spend one or two days in a place like Kanazawa, or Osaka, and then move on. These tours are only about 7 – 12 days. We found three days was usually not enough unless you only wanted to see the Instagram things. 

Kyoto came after our 18 days of heavy travel where we stayed put for seven days. Those consecutive days in one place, in a hotel with a kitchen, were a relief. The eight days in Tokyo that followed Kyoto were also good for the mind. Looking forward on our trip, we still have not booked Bali/Indonesia. We’ll use the lessons learned in Japan to assist us in having a better three-week experience in Bali by not moving every two-three days. Remember, it’s only a mistake if you don’t learn from it.

Walking – our primary way of seeing things.

We walked an average of 17,566 steps per day for 48 days (based on our step counter), our highest daily step total was 31,215 steps. Based on IPhone data, we walked about 12 km/day, on average. That’s 576 km’s for the time we were Japan. There were a number of days our knees and feet were sore, the onsens certainly helped on the days we could access them. 

I’ll update more on Japan in a few days, highlighting some more numbers.

Thanks for reading, feel free to leave any comments.

While we normally travel independently, there are times we take local tours to gain some insight and history of the area we are visiting. Reading about things only goes so far, guides, well good guides, will add some interesting things that you simply can’t find online. At least not without spending hours digging, and by then you’re likely to forget.  

Walking the Bamboo forest and a row boat ride

This past Sunday we took the bus and headed over to Arashiyama, walking through the bamboo forest. The photo is Meg standing in “Bamboo Alley” – note the height of the bamboo. We then explored the Okochi-Sanso Villa and gardens where we had a modified tea ceremony in the bamboo forest.  Then we continued walking toward the river where we rented a row boat and spent an hour on the Katsura River. It was a lovely day, +25C, and clear skies with light breezes.

A neat bike tour of hidden Kyoto

In Kyoto, we also took a bike tour and saw some interesting things we would have never seen.  the tour was about 3 1/2 hour and covered 7km. There were some stops and we had time to see things and have a snack along the way.

We also saw the Golden Temple, which was on our to do list.  The building is actually coated in gold leaf. You can’t get into the building, it can only be seen from across the pond. The guide took a great photo of us, catching the reflection of the temple on the pond.

A neat back street tour of Osaka

In Osaka, we took a back street food tour.  We learned a lot about the back streets of Osaka, including the red-light district and organized crime. We also learned why so many houses are abandoned in Japan. We then visited an Izakaya that we would have never walked into, although once inside we realized everyone was a tourist, so it may not have been the real experience. Osaka is reputed to be the food capital of Japan, we’ll reserve judgement until we’ve been more places. The next day we did venture into a local spot that we would have never tried before.

A walking tour of Kyoto

In Kyoto we also took a walking tour. We learned a number of things, saw one of the Gisha districts (shown here). The tour started at 9:30, however as it progressed the streets became more crowded as it was a national holiday.

It was a good lesson in “rising early”, which we did the next day as we ventured to Fushimi Inari Shrine, catching the first train at 06:30 and arriving back at our hotel by 12:00. It is a long hike up to the top, but seeing the 10,000 Torii gates was worthwhile.

Poking around on our own

We leave Kyoto in two days for Tokyo, so we’re now in the “poke around” phase, finding nooks and crannies that are interesting. Today we returned to Kiyomizu-Dera temple, which we skipped on the walking tour. The tour ended there, but the queues were way too long for us. They were much more reasonable today. The photo is Meg in front the “easy childbirth” pagoda. I’m hoping Meg isn’t planning anything I’m not aware of.

Then we found a Mom and Pop restaurant for lunch that had amazing food, and lots of local business men coming in for great food.

Thanks for reading, feel free to ask any questions in the comments, or give us some ideas.