Japan - non-cycling trip

We’ve booked flights to Japan for end June beginning July, in and out of Tokyo.
Does anyone have any advice on good self guided tours, e-sim provider and general advice.
We are very happy to travel by train and public transport. I’d be happy to drive but toh thinks we won’t understand the road signs (she’s got a point)
Cheers in advance.

have a read up here on types of tickets if your just happy staying in the Tokyo city pass is great.
https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2359.html
when i went i got the JR pass as i was traveling all over and it works out a good deal if your doing more than just a couple of trips although i think the price has gone up.

have seen people doing small motor home van style trips which look fun. i guess you could get sat nav thing in english.

I know people who go to japan a lot and they just book a pocket wifi and collect from the hotel and return in a prepaid envelope, it’s not expensive.

+1 for Japan Rail pass
(I went 2015)
I have fun memories of the escalator between the two towers in the Osaka Sky building. Whatever you do, don't download an earthquake app just before doing that!

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Do a day trip to Kamakura>enoshima from Tokyo, nice loop on the train. Kamakura has excellent easy hiking trail with great shrines. Enoshima has nice view of fujisan on clear day

I second Kamakura, cute beach in Zushi too and a nice road along the coast. Super close to Tokyo. Some odd Samurai shrines in the cliffs there too - it used to be the seat of the Shogunate after all.

I went 2019, JR railways pass essential. Pocket wifi picked up at Airport worked perfectly. Internal flights are reduced for tourists. Air BNB experience tours worked for me, did three of them. 2x Tokyo, 1x Sapporo.
I did a blog here which i'm proud of. Work from the bottom up (wordpress)

We got SIM cards from this company that we picked up at the airport:
https://www.bmobile.ne.jp/english/

Looks like they do e-sims now instead.

You shared this a while back, glad you posted it again, We never went to Japan cos of some flu thing that went round…
Can’t go until 2025 as I have a flat to sell at the end of this year plus a kitchen/lease extension to fund. going to follow this thread so I don’t lose any info.
We have a rough idea of 2 weeks to do Tokyo-Nara-Okayama-Naoshima island, though the mrs wants to go to Seoul to dance tango so will have to fit that in too though I might skip that and do a tour of jazz kissa’s instead.

Visiting Naoshima was possibly the greatest day of my life (and I've had a decent life so far). I travelled quite a bit in Japan but nothing came close. An incredibly experience of complete perfection and beauty.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/travel/naoshima-japan-an-unlikely-island-as-art-attraction.html

You can get sim cards at the airport without doing anything in advance. Maybe gonna be a bit more expensive but they'll also help get it set up for you. I've done the pocket wifi thing in the past too and found it far too clumsy in comparison to just getting a sim.

My brother lives in Tokyo so I've been out a few times now. I'd recommend doing two nights in each place as this gives you opportunity to see the sites, without moving around all of the time.

I second Naoshima, so beautiful. Book at least one or two galleries in advance, and bikes well in advance if you want to hire them to get around (recommended). We also did a trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima (to see the Torii gate), having based ourselves in Okayama for a few nights.

I'd recommend Izu if you're into surfing/beaches - it feels like Cornwall.

And go to every Onsen you can. You won't regret it.

Another +1 for the JR Pass. Lets you use pretty much all the smaller trains and some of the Shinkansen.

We did a few days in each of Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, and Yokohama, then back to Tokyo.

If you've got any tattoos then be aware you won't be able to go to any of the public baths or onsen. (There was a humourous exchange where one of the hotel staff offered me a sticker sized about 2" square to cover mine up. I had to try and explain that I'd need about 100 of them to cover all of them, which got a laugh at least)

Pocket Wi-Fi was well handy - booked it online, picked up the little box at the airport then dropped it back before we headed home.

We basically just walked everywhere most of the time - had a rough destination in mind then just explored. Loved it and I'd go back there tomorrow if we could afford it.

Sounds very similar to me. We had a great trip end of November. Will write more details in later but would also thoroughly recommend the train. Not being able to get the fastest Shinkansen isn’t a problem at all and reserving seats on any train is so easy with the Jr pass.

Even the 'slow' ones don't hang around.

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We had a trip to Japan planned a few years back, had JR passes and were doing Tokyo, somewhere west to see the snow monkeys, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima and a few other places.

My wife was pregnant with our first, she fell ill whilst out there, had to go to the hospital 3 times in the 3 days we were there in Tokyo and were advised to go home. Total bummer, but mother as baby were fine in the end.

Still hoping to go back to finish the trip.

Any recommendations for nice places/areas to stay in Yokohama? We're going to be in Japan in May and would like something close too but not in Tokyo for the first and last leg. Ideally a quieter less industrial feeling spot where going for walks, grabbing a coffee/lunch etc would be easy. Considered Kamakura but it's golden week and touristy places could be ramo.

We stayed at the Hotel New Grand. Obviously we went for a flash room because it was our honeymoon but the hotel in general seemed pretty decent. Great views of the harbour, right next to Chinatown and the baseball stadium and a short walk to the Red Brick Warehouse area.

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Exciting! I had an incredible holiday there just last month. We did Tokyo for a few days, then went to Nagano for some snowboarding and back to Tokyo for a few more days.

I have two main tips:

1. Get an esim. Whilst mildly confusing to set up, it cost £6 for 10gb of data, of which I used about 4gb in two weeks. Plus you don't have to carry around a unit and share the connection (which allows you to wander off and do your own thing. Airalo is the provider I used, connection was great even up in the mountains.

2. Look Up. Do not rely on Google for your restaurant / bar / izakaya recommendations etc. Try to learn some basic words for getting by in Japanese and then LOOK UP, have some confidence and try some doors (you might have to enter a first floor and take an elevator). Some of the best places I found were on 2nd and 3rd floors, not listed on Google. Sometimes they'll be members only 🙅‍♂️ and other times you can end up in a fun izakaya eating tempura at 2:30am and sinking sake with some locals.

Whilst dreaming about my next trip, I looked at doing some ferries as overnights rather than Hotels.

Hi all,

I hope @Alan_tbt doesn't mind me jumping in on his thread with similar questions?

My family (2 x adults, two boys aged 4 & 7) and I are going to Japan from 01/04 - 17/04 (maybe I can do some recon for you, Alan?), and so far we have bought flights and accommodation.

Our plan is Kyoto - Arashiyama - Hakone - Tokyo - Osaka.

My brother-in-law lives in Tokyo as a travel writer, and tells me that the JP rail pass recently went up by 70%, so it is no longer very economical. Friends of ours who went last year spent as much on the JP pass as they did on flights. Our plan is to buy train travel there - is this unwise?

Sounds like a sim is the way to go over pocket wi-fi - is this easily purchased in the airport?

I have also heard that contactless isn't so popular, and cash is still widely used.

The main reason for me finding this thread, is that I would love to watch and have a little flutter on some KEIRIN racing! The websites are well confusing. I have heard that there is a velodrome in Nara near Kyoto. Has anyone here watched keirin racing in Japan? If so, any advice?

^No problem
We’ve booked a self guided package with Japan Journeys. It included rail pass, accommodation in Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto, Takayama and Masamoto. We thought anything more would be too much. I’d have happily driven but got overridden.
There is a Kierin track near Tokyo. Events are only published a little way ahead. I’ve tried to get some info from Jo Truman who raced out there but he’s a little busy with the Olympics it seems. His dad just pointed me at the awful website.

http://keirin.jp/pc/top

I also opted for eSIM via rather than wifi dongle. It was $9 for 10gb (recommended above). Here is a referral link if you want it cheaper (I get $3 too)

Get US$3 off eSIM data pack from Airalo. Use code ALAN4441 when you sign up or apply it at checkout. https://ref.airalo.com/K2ka

I am currently learning some Japanese via DuoLingo, 26 day streak currently.

From my research we’ll be going back. It looks fantastic!!

Having cash is going to be useful but honestly, it's not that bad. I was lead to be believe the ski resort was going to be completely cash-only, that wasn't the case, almost everywhere took card. Only our accommodation was cash only.
However, it's nice to pay with cash at smaller places if you can.

We went to watch Keirin racing at Toyama Stadium in 2018 and it was one of the highlights of our trip there, I evangelize about it to anyone who's going. We chose Toyama solely because we already had a schedule and that was the only track with racing happening when we were in town (though I remember thinking how unlikely it would be that we'd got it right). Being a bit off the beaten track, they were overjoyed to have a couple of confused tourists show up, assigned someone to sit with us and explain what was going on, and dusted off souvenir plush toys and towels for us to take home with us.

In terms of locating a race to watch, I think I looked up the individual velodromes in the places we would be and worked backwards from there - list of velodromes in this leaflet - http://keirin.jp/pc/dfw/portal/guest/campaign/navi/pdf/KEIRIN_English.pdf

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e-sim question: Does it enable you to keep your UK mobile number, or do you get given a new number?