Don’t Miss These Tips Before You Travel to Japan | Family & Budget Friendly
[Music] Hi everybody. So, we just got back uh from Japan a few weeks ago and we’ve been getting a lot of questions from our friends uh and family just about some of the things we did, some of the things that that shocked us. And so this video, we want to share uh a lot of our learnings uh with you because even though we watched probably way too much footage in preparation for this trip, when we got there, we were still surprised and learned a few a few new things. So that’s what we want to talk about. Yeah. So you’ve probably noticed it seems like everybody and their brother is going to Japan lately. So there’s a lot of videos out there. So, some of the stuff that we’re going to go over might be a little bit of a refresher, things you’ve already seen, but we also did pick up some some things and had some learnings along the way, things that we were like, “Wow, why did nobody else mention this or why has nobody else talked about this or this seemed harder or this seemed easier.” So, we want to cover all that. Um, everything from like the initial planning of the trip, how long you should go, um, you know, which airport to fly into, how to get to your hotel. Um, and then once you’re there, what’s it like to to use the train system? What’s the the payment system like? Um, you know, what should you do while you’re there? What should you avoid? What are the popular tourist attractions like? So, just kind of some highle tips um on some things that we thought were important and again we wish we had known before we went. All right. And then just full disclosure, full context, we’re not Japan experts. No, this is our first time. We’ve seen probably hundreds of hours of footage. Way too much. Um, and we are a family travel. So, we travel with a six-year-old. Yes. Just to give some some context. And then we are we don’t travel in luxury. So, we consider ourselves uh frugal travelers. So, we try to maximize uh and spend as as least as possible without sacrificing too much comfort. So, that’s kind of our style. Uh, if you’re new and uh you don’t know much about us. So, with that, let’s uh let’s get the show started. All right. So, the first uh section we’re going to kind of go over here is just planning your trip to Japan. So, you got the idea, maybe you got the PTO from work and and you’re going to do it. So, where should you start? Yeah. So, how far back? So, what what we found is when it came to flights, as long as you do at least three to six months, you’re probably okay. Now for us we were using um points. So if you are using points you wanna usually availability opens up within a year. So that’s a good time to start looking start scoping. Uh but I would say 3 to 6 months is it’s probably fine. I think we ended up booking about the six month mark. Yeah, it was about six months. So our trip was in March 2025 and we booked it sometime like in September. It was like yeah something like that. Uh, as far as um hotels, we did notice those started booking up. So, I kind of waited a little more for those. Uh, so you want to do those early because for like a lot of the popular ones, um, they can be snatched right away. So, do those early. Uh, we’re talking like things like restaurants, a lot of that not is not going to open till like 30 to 60 days before. So, don’t stress too much over those. even things like uh theme parks. You want to talk a little bit about that? Because if you’re trying to if your objective is to go to Disney or Universal, you can’t even start planning that that far in advance unlike the US. Yeah. And you really kind of have to be on top of it, especially like with Universal if you want to get those express passes and things because those do sell out sometimes. Um and we can make another more in-depth video on like tips specifically for theme parks if that’s something that you guys are interested in. Um, but yeah, each park kind of has its own rules in terms of how early you can book things. Uh, just the tickets and then like with Universal, the express passes is a different date that you can book those. Um, you know, restaurants and things like that, just like in the US, you can book those a certain number of days ahead of time. So, what I did to help me with that is I got online, I looked to see what are the specific dates uh, and times that those tickets go on sale. I then translated the time in Japan to where we are, which were Mountain Standard Time. Yeah. And I put like a reminder in my calendar to say like, “Okay, today at 3 p.m. I need to be online booking the Universal Japan tickets.” And I just did that so I would know ahead of time like, “Okay, this is what we need to book today and I was able to get everything that we wanted that way.” Yeah. And do keep in mind that if you want to stay on property like Disney for example, uh those are very competitive. Yes, those book up really quick. So you want to be on it as soon as as soon as it opens Japan time. Uh otherwise um yeah, you might not get those. They they sell out. And then uh when you do get them, the good thing is that it guarantees entry to the park, so you don’t have to worry about tickets. Yeah, I found Universal, booking a hotel there much easier. There’s about seven options and those were open pretty much um from the beginning. So, not too much trouble there. Disney, that’s a different ball game. Like like you were saying, we can make a separate video on that just about the theme parks cuz it’s a little different. But just keep that in mind that not everything opens up um really early. Yeah. Yeah. And even on the restaurant side, just to add a bonus tip there, another thing that we found is uh don’t obsess too much over the uh you’ll see a lot of clips on social media, shorts, Tik Toks, real about these a lot of trendy spots that look really cool. A lot of those are going to have lines just because they’re all over social media. Everybody knows them. What we found is even if you don’t reserve anything, a lot of places are just really good. You don’t have to find the best according to social media. So in our case, we didn’t make we made zero restaurant reservations and we still came away with some good food finds and that’s without having to worry about, oh, I got to get on 30 days before or I want to miss out on the best ramen. You know, we didn’t didn’t really need to do that. We just found random places and it was okay. So add a lot of time to to to venture. Don’t don’t worry too much about the recommendations that you see on on social media. Yeah, I would say if you have like one or two specific places, maybe book those if it’s like a can’t miss. But yeah, don’t stress and definitely don’t overbook, especially if you’re a family like we are because you just never know how the day is going. like, you know, I I hate to have like a reservation on a specific day at a specific time and maybe you’re somewhere else and you’re having fun. Or maybe your kids’s in a terrible mood and you’re like, I just want to go back and take a nap, but we can’t because we can’t miss this reservation. So, I think it’s a lot easier to just kind of go with the flow. Like I said, maybe have one or two special things booked, especially if it’s your first time there because you really just want to explore. Um, and like you said, we, you know, the food was good everywhere. like we didn’t have any bad food like you know some was better than other others yes just like anywhere but all the food was good like you’re not really going to miss out um so yeah I would say definitely don’t don’t stress about that obviously if you want to do like themed cafes those are much more popular going there for the food quality though you’re going more for the theming like if you want to do like a Pokemon cafe like a Kirby cafe those types Harry Potter those are going to be harder You got to be on it if you really want that. Uh we didn’t really concern ourselves with that this time. Well, maybe next time we’ll do like like they had cool things like a ninja cafe for example. Think we wanted to do that. We didn’t end up doing it because again we didn’t want to overextend ourselves but you know still ended up uh working okay. All right. So with that we’re going to switch over since we talking a little bit about food. Um, another tip, uh, uh, consider getting a hotel that has breakfast. So, the the reason I I we recommend that is because if you don’t, uh, you might be eating breakfast at like 10, 11:00 a.m. Most places there do not open early. Yeah. And in addition to that, Japan is not huge on like western breakfast. So, if you’re going to like a local place, um, you may have limited options. It may not be like, you know, eggs, pancakes, things like that. Um, it’s it’s just going to be whatever few breakfast items that they have. And it’s typically a more Asian type meal. Yeah, there is a casual cafe, so we ran into a few, and it’s usually set meals, very limited. Uh, but most of the hotels that we ended up staying had breakfast included. Uh, so we didn’t have to worry about that. But even on some days where we missed it, where we didn’t have it, we found that just getting a quick snack at like the convenience stores, Lawson, 7-Eleven, Family Mart. Yeah. Uh those those were good enough because they have really good options. So uh that is true. The advice you hear about those convenience stores, that is not overhyped. Those were totally uh totally worth it and very unique. So definitely take some time uh to explore. Uh so we definitely recommend uh leveraging those for your breakfast because there’s just so many good options. Like one one I will give you that I heard a lot and I was skeptical is I kept hearing I heard from many people get the pancakes from 7-Eleven. You get these little pancakes come in a bag. They’re already pre um pre-flavored like it has a little bit of jelly and like butter and they’ll heat them up for you and they taste so delicious which you wouldn’t think being in a little baggie. Uh but they were so good. So just those with some coffee, it’s a good breakfast and then you can get going, you know, do your exploration. And then another quick tip, if you are in one of the major cities, another place you can go is, believe it or not, McDonald’s. So we are not like McDonald’s people. We don’t eat a ton of fast food unless we’re like on a road trip. Um but we wanted to try the McDonald’s there just because we heard it was good. Um and it was like for kids. They have like little mini pancakes all day long. So, you can get them in a Happy Meal. You can get them for breakfast. You can get like a teriyak egg mcmuffin. And the food actually tastes good. It tastes fresh. Um, you know, I’m sure it’s still not the healthiest. But if you don’t have a lot of options, maybe you don’t want 7-Eleven, maybe your hotel doesn’t have breakfast, you can always pop in and and get like an Egg McMuffin just to get you going for the day. So, don’t be afraid to to turn to that option either. Yeah. If you want something familiar, the best thing is you’re going to pay about 50% less compared to US prices. Yeah, it’s quite affordable. And if you like uh the more meaty sandwiches, the McMuffins over there, you get double meat, double sausage, so protein. That being said, I will say we stayed at mostly westernized hotels, so like name brand hotels, and the breakfast. Yeah, the breakfast that we had there were phenomenal. And it was a mix of like western and eastern styles and everything was really really good. So if you can get a hotel like that with the breakfast, it’s absolutely worth it. Like if you can get one that does a club lounge, like we stayed at at least one high one higher regency that had a club lounge and it was unlike any club lounge I’ve had in the US. The selection was was really good. They even said that um they had like uh dinner appetizers, but it was like a full-on meal. It was it was really good. So, take advantage of those if you can. They’re totally worth it. Don’t think that it is like the US. They’re they’re much better. And I found the variety to be just on point. Yeah. And we’re going to have some videos coming out about like our hotel experiences with more um details on like the breakfast and the buffets and and what to expect. So, we won’t go too into depth here. I just wanted to to point that out, too. I will just say that buffets are not uh cheap though. Like if you’re staying like we stay mostly Hiatts, they weren’t the most affordable. If you’re paying out of pocket, like if it’s not included, but if you can get like the breakfast included through like a status or like a club lounge, uh that’s more ideal. Yeah, it’s worth it. But otherwise, yeah, if you just go outside, plenty of options. All right, so now we’re going to move on to uh how long to to stay. So just a couple things there. So if um if you’re going to be visiting multiple cities, we recommend at least two weeks. So we did the what they call the golden route. So we did Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and um we did about 17 days, 17 nights with travel time, right? With travel time. Yes. So we stayed uh we took a repositioning flight to uh to LA so we can fly directly. We’re four nights in Tokyo. four nights in Tokyo Bay, that’s the Disney uh area, uh three nights in Kyoto, and then four nights in Osaka. And then to make it easier, to avoid taking the the train back to Tokyo, which by the way, those can be expensive. So, you want to avoid it unless you absolutely have to, uh we just took an open jaw flight. So, that means that we landed in Tokyo and then when we left, we left from Osaka airport. So, that way we don’t have to go back to Tokyo. Uh, obviously less options if you do that, but if you can avoid uh taking the train back to Tokyo, that’s ideal. It’ll save you at least it was like a hundred bucks per person. So, so they’re not cheap. So, keep that in mind. If you’re planning, if you’re going to be doing multiple cities, consider an open jaw itinerary. Yeah. And in terms of how long to stay, I remember when we were planning, you wanted to stay for like 3 weeks, and I was like, “Oh, that’s too long.” you know, we have animals, we have a kid, we have family. And after we were there for a couple days, I already was like, there’s so much to do here. Like, we should have stayed longer. And we already like wanted to come back while we were still there. So, at least two weeks. Yeah. Plus, uh, keep in mind also, there’s that jet lag component. So, depending on on on on where you’re going, right? So, if you’re coming from the the US, uh, you’re going to be really tired those first few days. So, you got to you want to give yourself some time to recover. So, a lot of people I’ll hear like a lot of people say, “I’m just going to go for a week.” You do a week, by the time you get there, um, you know, with travel because you lose a day when you when you travel. Uh, by the time you recover, I mean, and you have to come back, you’re already like more than halfway through your vacation. Maybe don’t discount it. Like, if you’re going to only do a week, just pick one city. Like, just go to Tokyo or just go to Kyoto or just go to Osaka because with like moving like getting there and then moving between the cities, it’s a lot. Yeah. So, you could probably do a week, but just pick one city to focus on and then it would be a little bit more enjoyable. Yeah. And and just to reduce the uh probability of of jetlag, I would say when you’re planning, so when we talk about getting there, uh one of the things that that I like to do, so I usually do a lot of the booking. So, I like to plan it in reverse. What does that mean? Uh so, instead of looking at your home airport and getting to Tokyo, if it doesn’t have a direct flight, consider repositioning. So, from us, we’re coming from Phoenix, Arizona, West Coast, USA. So, we uh I knew that there wasn’t a direct flight and rather than relying on the airline to route me through Seattle somewhere in the West Coast or to take me back to the Midwest, uh instead I just looked at, okay, what cities connect from the West Coast, booked it in reverse, booked that flight first, and that happened to be LA and then we just got to LA to make it work just to put that final piece. that just gives you more uh flexibility. Uh and then as far as like the best time to leave, I would recommend what we found is that taking an afternoon flight was really helpful because by the time you cross the ocean, it’s about 12 hours to travel from the west coast. Uh you’re going to get there at about the evening. So, we got there at 5:00 p.m. And it was an ideal time because when you have a flight that leaves in the afternoon and it takes 12 hours to get there, it is basically the equivalent of staying up in your hometown till midnight. Like maybe think think about your clubbing days. You you just stayed up till 2 a.m. that day. That’s basically what it feels like. Yeah. You go there, it’ll be 5:00 p.m. 5 6 p.m. You’re going to be really tired and then you’re just going to try to stay up a little bit. you don’t go to bed right away and then in a few hours you’ll crash because it’s like, you know, 2 3:00 am uh your home time, but then the next day you’ll be okay. Like we felt good the next day. Yeah. My biggest issue was I kept waking up at like 4:30 in the morning, I think, because my body was like, “My aren’t you up yet?” But other than that, which I overcame after a couple days, like I didn’t have that jet lag that you get when you fly overnight. Like we’ve flown overnight to Europe and you’re just you get there at like 2:00 p.m. You have to stay up till like 7 or 8. You’re exhausted. everybody’s miserable and then your kids waking up if he’s if they’re like our son like waking up at 4:00 in the morning like all right let’s do this let’s go um and it wasn’t like that I don’t even think he was that jetlagged you know he was waking up maybe 6:00 or 7 the first couple days um I think everybody adjusted pretty well so I think taking that afternoon flight and just having like a really long first day and then just getting a good sleep that really helped um compared to on the way back we did an overnight flight and it was miserable Yeah. I don’t I don’t recommend overnight getting there. Sometimes that’s the only option. Yeah. If you can avoid that, you’re just going to be really tired. Yeah. And at least coming home, like if you have to take the bad flight coming home, at least at the end of the day, like you’re home, you can deal with it, right? You can get back into your routine. But to just feel miserable when you get there and you’re just starting your vacation is is not fun. So, yes. So, yeah, pick the bad one at the beginning. Um, pick a good one at the beginning. Pick a good one at the beginning. Yes. And then if you’re going to be flying uh like mixed classes, like in our case, we flew um premium economy on the way there, regular economy on the way back, uh I would say pick the the highest class, maybe on the highest class, sorry, the longest flight on the highest class because you want to take advantage of it. And on the way back, it was only 9 hours. So we’re almost glad that we took the economy because you got to experience premium economy for longer. So, same thing if you and we were awake, so we got to enjoy like the food, the drinks, like the entertainment. Whereas on the way back, we were just trying to sleep, which you’re not going to get a good sleep no matter where you are, unless you’re in in business or first class. And this is from the US. So, I think if you’re starting from Europe, it might be the opposite just because of the tailwind. Uh it was uh longer on the way there, shorter on the way back. Yeah. So, some things to uh to keep in mind. And in terms of like seasons when to go, I know um it’s like really hot in the summer. Um, I think a lot of people recommend going in like spring or fall if possible. We went obviously like end of end of spring um or end of winter, beginning of spring, sorry. And it was still freezing cold. Like we I don’t think we saw weather above like in the 40s and it was rainy the whole time. But even with that, it was it was bearable. Like uh it wasn’t enough to, you know, to fail miserable. There’s a few days where it was really windy. Yeah. Yeah. But I think if we were to do it all over, maybe we would wait till April. Just if it was like 10 15° hotter, I think it would have been nicer. But yeah, it was the lows were consistently in the in the mid-30s. And it’s it’s a trade-off, too, right? Because it’s a little colder, but we didn’t have the crowds that come like end of March, early May for like the cherry blossom season. And so if you want to avoid the crowds and you’re okay with maybe a little bit of cold in the spring or a little bit of heat still in the like early fall, maybe maybe go at that time like what they call shoulder season. Um just to avoid that. And I feel like as long as you pack for the weather, then you know it doesn’t really stop, right? Just just pack in layers. But yeah, we didn’t feel like the crowds were too bad. No. Uh it was it was it was a good time. Um and we really chose the time not based on, you know, and we weren’t we weren’t trying to optimize for temperature. It was mostly when can we get the cheapest flights. Yeah. Uh so that that’s really where we settled, but we didn’t want to go when it was still snowing. Uh so that’s how we got there. But yeah, I would say probably if we were to redo it, ideally maybe like midappril, late April, early May, just avoid the the summer crowds. Yeah, for sure. Uh cuz you want you don’t want the humidity and that’s when everybody goes. You definitely don’t want to go when everybody’s off of school cuz then it gets much crowded. Yeah. And definitely avoid like any u local holidays like uh Golden Week, I think it’s one. I think that’s in April. Yeah, it’s highly celebrated. Obviously, cherry blossoms. People, while that might be nice, uh people uh like to go for that and it’s just very busy, so you might want to avoid that. And we went early and we still saw some cherry blossoms. Not a ton, but there were some early bloomers and so we got to experience. We got to see it. Yes. Yes. Without the crowd. So that was a nice bonus. Uh all right. So now for the next one. before arriving to Japan. Couple recommendations. So, you want to make sure that you fill out the welcome to Japan form. Uh we’ll we’ll put the link uh to the website, but basically with this, you’re predeclaring what you’re bringing through customs and then uh you prefill some of your passport information. So, really the main reason you want to do this, I didn’t this one when we were watching recommendations, it was like half and half people that recommended it. Uh what we found is that it saved maybe about 10 15 minutes filling out the form. So if you forget to do it, I wouldn’t stress too much about it. You’ll get an opportunity when um you know when you get there to to to write it. So if you don’t want to do it ahead of time, it’s perfectly okay. If you do uh you have to just basically register all the all your family’s passports, but you can do it all in one account. uh just input that information where you’re staying, how long you’re going to be there, and then just if you’re bringing stuff. So, just be prepared to have that. I think the mistake that we made is um at the end of it, you get this QR code, and I thought it was one per family, it’s one per person. So, keep that in mind. But there are signs like everywhere reminding you, and we had time in line to kind of fix that. We even saw people that were literally filling that as we were waiting in the queues. Yeah. Yeah. The uh the other thing that not a lot of people talked about is that there are multiple lines to get through. Like for us, it took there’s like three different lines you have to go through. It’s like three different lines. It took us like a good solid hour. I don’t know if we just got unlucky cuz I think there were like 5 p.m. is a is a popular time to arrive. But yeah, like the first line was just to take um a photo of the of the of our passport, right? Like we just took a they just took a yeah picture of us. And then from there you go to another queue. And this is where if you don’t have it pre-filled out, you got to fill it out by paper and then you talk to an immigration officer. That’s a different cue. And we just happened to luck out too where they were like changing shifts, so it took like an extra 20 minutes, like an extra time. But once we got there, it was quick. Uh, one of the photos didn’t work, so they had to redo it. And then there was another line after that. That’s just to talk to immigration. And then after that, you get your bags. So if you checked, you’ll get your bags. And then you got to do your customs declaration, which even if you’ve pre-filled out the form, you still have to go through another kiosk to scan your passport and basically do like the e uh the e uh signature, something like that. If you don’t do that, then you got to fill out another customs form. So that’s a different different line. Once you finally do that, then there’s the final line where you actually talk to a customs officer. And uh a lot of the advice we heard there is I felt it was a little exaggerated, but it was like don’t bring the Nicole because you’re gonna get arrested and you’re gonna go to jail. Stay away from from that. Don’t bring those decongestions, right? Because pseudafrain is is illegal in Japan. And so I think we took out a lot of stuff that we normally travel with just to be safe. But I mean once we got there, they didn’t even ask. They didn’t even say. Yeah. And I mean that was mostly me cuz I’m a rule follower and I know they’re big rule follower. So, I was like, I don’t want to spend time like opening my bag and explaining what’s in there. We’ll just buy it when we get there. But, I mean, like obviously don’t bring it if you don’t need it just in case you do get checked. But they they literally asked us like no questions about what’s in our bag or what we’re bringing. So, we had we would have had no issues whatsoever. So, um definitely don’t let that scare you. Just be aware that like that technically is a rule that you’re not supposed to bring that stuff and you might get questioned. But I think especially when it’s busy, right? Just like here, they probably ask less questions and and they care a little bit less when they’re just trying to get people through. And I find it hard to believe that they’re gonna arrest you for bringing Nightquil if you if you didn’t know. I mean, they probably just have you throw it away. I don’t I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Obviously, it’s it’s illegal there, but uh cuz you know what? If you didn’t do the research, we only find out because like I said, we watched a lot of videos. Yeah, I found out like the day before. I had already packed like I always bring, you know, like a night and a day cold just in case someone gets sick. Um, I bring like allergy medicine for my son in case he has allergies and like I’m like, “Oh, none of this stuff is allowed.” So, I had to like undo my toiletries, take all that stuff out, repack them. But, uh, so I mean, just be aware that the laws are there, but it’s not as big of a deal as some some people would have you believe. Yeah. I I think we would have been fine. Yeah. Uh, but and having said that, we didn’t end up using a lot of it anyway. Yeah. So, it would have been uh Okay. Now, um when when you get there, just make sure to note you’re going to land at two major airports, either Haneda or Narita. So, very important, especially if you’re pre-booking travel. We’ve heard people make this mistake. So, Narita is the closer one to Tokyo Bay. So, if you’re going to Disney, that’s the closest one. Heda is the one closer to the center of the town. So, about 30 minutes from Tokyo. different airports depending on where you’re coming from it’s going to be different flights. So for us we flew Japan Airs Japan Airlines and it was in Heda. Um train options are the similar. So in both you’re going to there’s options to to get to the city. What we recommend and what a lot of people recommended and we weren’t sure is um just pre-booking your your taxi. And I would say that one was totally worth it. It was 100% worth it. Yeah. Especially like for your first time there and especially if you are like a family, you have kids, maybe you have elderly relatives with you just because like when you get there, you’re already tired from the flight, you’re overwhelmed with like if you were to take the train, like you’ve never done it, you have all your stuff. It was just so nice. The guy was there with like a sign, knew who we were, helped us with the bags, took us to the van, took us straight to the hotel. Like there was zero thinking. So, it it was really nice to have that all taken care of. It was super nice. We uh ended up booking it through Clook just cuz we didn’t want to have to worry about all these sites. It was very easy. It was about I think we paid like $70, something like that, US dollars for three of us. It’s a car that held five, six people. Super nice. Super nice card. So, do keep in mind that if you’re traveling with a bigger party, they they only allow like so many pieces. So, for example, if it’s three of you, you might not uh even a sedan might not be big enough. So, you might have to adjust because if you have too much luggage, they basically make you put that like in the seats. So, for example, a three a four passenger car might not be enough if everybody has big suitcases. So, get a bigger one. So, we just got a little minivan and it was uh super comfortable. Yeah. And the the price might sound like a lot. Like you may be thinking, “Oh, I can just take an Uber for 20 bucks or whatever.” But first of all, Uber is not really a thing there. It’s they’re all like taxi companies and they’re considered professional drivers there and they’re very expensive. So, I think if if you’re going to do it, just pre-book it, like take that weight off your shoulders and and don’t even bother with having to worry about it when you get there. They have a different brand. I think Go Taxi. Um they might have Uber by the time you you watch this. Uh but uh but it’s expensive from what I understand. It’s still expensive. Yes. from the airport, you’re not you’re not really going to save um too much. We just found it was convenient to pre-arrange it because they literally monitor your flight and if there’s a delay, they wait for you. Like I said, they’ll meet you right outside uh customs or or luggage. Yeah. So, you don’t have to worry about navigating. Now, there is a downside to that and we’ll get to it is we didn’t get our card, but we’re going to come back to that. So, yeah, one uh one option you might want to consider is a limousine bus. Uh, so that one I got it’s very affordable about $6 to $10 per person, very comfortable, comfy seats. They you you can store your luggage under. So it’s a great way to travel and I have to worry about that. Downside is it might not drop you off where you want to. It it doesn’t have um it only drops off at certain location. So in our case, if we would have taken one of those, it would have dropped us off at like the Tokyo train station, which would have been 10 15 minutes away from our hotel. So, we wanted to avoid that walk again with the six-year-old super jet lag, tire, suitcases. Last thing we want to worry about. Obviously, we could have just taken maybe the metro, but again, we didn’t want to have to worry about that. So, yeah, we found that um getting there with a taxi was very convenient, but yeah, depending on where you’re staying, the Lenosin bus uh might be a good option. Uh like for example, Hyatt Regency, if you’re going straight to Tokyo Bay, the bus will drop you off right at that property. So, just double check the destinations, but it it might be a good option. It’s quite affordable. And then the the cheapest one, obviously, it’s going to be the train, but that means you got to be prepared to learn the system, carry all your luggage with you. So, you know, once you’ve done it, it’s probably fine. Like, I think if you were to go back, we’d take the train. It is by far the cheapest option. Uh probably less than 10 per person to get there. Uh but again, you got to deal with the luggage. So, if you don’t mind, so we recommend packing light because you’re going to be carrying that up and down stairs the whole time. Uh, but that can be um a really good option if you don’t mind navigating. But just keep in mind that you’re going to have to have money ready with you, probably an IC card so that you can pay. Yeah. And I mean, the trains are super easy. We’ll get into that in a minute. I think my opinion was just like for our first time like let’s get to our hotel, get rid of our stuff, like make sure we have our bearings and then let’s go figure out the train rather than like getting there and your first thing is like how do I do the train and I have all this stuff and I have a kid who’s tired and having a meltdown and like then it’s just kind of like the vacation starting to like be miserable right off the bat. So hiring the the private transportation just avoided all that. Yes. So, all right. So, speaking of um so now we’ll we’ll touch uh a little bit about the So, I’ll talk a little bit about the train, right? So, with the train, you’re mostly going to pay with um with an IC card. That’s your like Suika Pasmo card. That’s the easiest way. Yeah. The only difference is like Suika’s in Tokyo uh and Pasmo and then it’s like what is it? I Ioka once you get to Kyota. There’s just like different name brands, but they’re all the same technology and they all work in the different cities. But yes, you’re just going to basically tap and ride. Otherwise, you have to buy single tickets, which you don’t you don’t want to do that all the time. It can be inconvenient. So, uh yeah, you can buy it as soon as you get to the airport. They they they sell it right there. Um if at some point you run out of balance, you’re going to see kiosk all over. You can just top it off. Yeah. Not a big deal. My biggest tip would be like don’t stress. like if you don’t get the card at the airport. I like had it in my head that it was like we had to go find like a stand with a person and we had to figure out like what card we could get and like I was stressed out about it a little bit and literally we were just walking around the JR station and we noticed there are the kiosks and right on them it says you can just buy your Sua card right there and we were able to get like the you could choose either the tourist one which I think is good for how long is that one good for? I think 10 years. So there’s two options. There’s the welcome to Japan. The welcome one is is good for less time. Yes, that’s the sixth one. That’s the tourist one. And then there’s the the like resident one or if you want it ready for or good for longer that’s good for 10 years. So we ended up getting those like with our names on them. You can tag it. I didn’t see a lot of people talk about that. And you just get it right from the kiosk. Like it wasn’t an issue at all. Didn’t have to talk to anybody. Didn’t have to get it from the airport. I know in the past there were issues I think because like they were low on stock of sweet there was a ship shortage so that they weren’t making the circuitry. We didn’t run into that at all. It was super easy. Um the only thing we had an issue figuring out was like kids are supposed to get a reduced fair and because we did it through the kiosk we never figured out how to get like a child. Yeah. So in the kiosk we couldn’t buy the tourist one which is the one you need for kids. So, just to give you a little more info there, uh if if your kid is under six, it’s free. You can just ride with an adult. If it’s six to 11, you pay a reduced fair. So, I think it was like 50%. Yeah. Uh and then, uh 12 or above, you get treated like an adult. And each person needs their own card, even if they’re a kid. Even if you’re a kid. So, even if you have um a lot of people, if you hear if you listen to a lot of vlogs about this, they’ll say, “Oh, if you have your iPhone, you have nothing to worry about.” Um, but if you have Android, you know, you still need the physical card because there’s no app that works, right? If you have iPhone, you can just get the app, you’re good to go. But even then, if you have kids, unless each one of your kids has an iPhone and they still need their own. And so, what we recommend is um get it at the machine. Uh, you know, you have get one for your kid and get like a lanyard so they can the kids you can hang it and then so yeah, if you don’t have an iPhone, there’s some easy solutions. So like for me, so this is my card. My phone case is broken. Don’t mind me. You can put it like inside your phone case and then when you go to the train, you literally just tap and it will work. The other thing is um we got a lanyard for our son. So every time we would go out, it became a joke like get your card and he would wear his little lanyard and then I found one for myself too. So again, if you don’t have an iPhone, don’t stress like you don’t need to go buy an iPhone. Just pop your card in there. When you get to the station, um, this retracts so you can hook it wherever on your bag. You just tap it and you go right through. Super easy. Yes. Just the lesson learned is maybe do get the welcome one just for our son. So, I think next time before leaving the airport, maybe we’ll get one from machine for him so that we don’t have to pay uh 100% fair the whole time. Yeah. But yeah, if you have kids under six, you don’t have to uh worry about it. It’s it’s included. The exception there is the Shinkansen train. if you’re gonna if they’re going to take up a seat, you still need u a ticket, but I believe it’s reduced. So, keep that in mind. Otherwise, on the subway, the metro under six, uh they can ride. Yeah. And speaking of the the Shinkansen, so you can reserve those ahead of time if you want like a specific seat or a specific car, but you can also buy those on the same day. You just risk um you know, you might have to stand if there’s not enough seats. there may not be space for your luggage, things like that. But we didn’t find that that was that big of a deal. There there was plenty of space. I mean, even if you’re concerned about that, uh you can mitigate it by just getting there early. But we found this in most of the cards, there’s a section for just people that have reserve seats and then there’s the open ones. But if you just get there like 15 minutes, 15 to 30 minutes early and just line up, people are very, very orderly. You can just be one of the first ones to get there. just wait and you’ll be one of the first ones to get into the card and you won’t have any issues with uh with with luggage. Just make sure you check the size because some um it is not meant for all luggage sizes. I forget what the max uh height is, but there is a uh a total length that you have to abide by otherwise you’re supposed to be reserving, but even then if you forget to do that, we saw a few people literally that had like the large suitcases and they put them up and uh we saw one that put it up. You’re not supposed to do that. I think they I’m surprised they didn’t get called out. But we also saw another couple that literally just put it in front of their seat because you get so much space that you could do that. Obviously, that person couldn’t really bend their knees. But if you really want to avoid paying for reserve ones, you can just do that. So, don’t don’t stress out too much. But yes, you are supposed to uh if you want the extra space, basically you reserve the seat that’s in the back and there’s extra space there and you just put it right there. Yeah. But if you’re traveling with a carry-on, like we were able to put our carryons on the rack and we had a ton of space for like leg room and then our little, you know, souvenir bags, backpacks, everything just went in front of us and we were comfortable for the the ride. Yes. Uh the other thing to keep in mind uh about the trains, there’s different types of trains. So just know that um you have to scan in and out every time you go. And so you’re going to ride into you’re going to run into so there’s three different kinds that I picked up. So there’s the metro like the Yavanote line, Ginsa. When you estimate the fair, that’s going to be one one type. If you have to go further in the city, like you’re going to Tokyo Bay, you’re going to take the the JR train. So that’s the regional. Usually that’s going to have its own fair. And then for some places there’s an a private line. and I forget the name, but for example, if you’re going from Kyoto to Nat, it’s a different u private line, different train, and that has its own cost. So, when you’re doing the estimates on on Google, it’ll tell you what it is, but sometimes it’ll it’ll seem like it’s more expensive, and that’s because it’s having you connect to different um places and sometimes you basically start on the metro and then you go on the regional line and then maybe the private line. So, if you do that, that’s three changes, three different costs. can do that. But yeah, you can order if if you want to get the cheapest, you can order by the by the price on Google and I’ll tell you that. So, be sure to use that. It’s uh it’s very user friendly when it comes to it and it was quite accurate we found when it came to estimating the cost. I was just going to say and if it’s not um do you want to talk about like the fair adjustment machines that they had? Yeah, in case that you don’t have enough money uh you can just top off at the end. So, I think uh one of the things that we did like one of for one of our last train rides, we try not to put too much money in it because we didn’t want to come back with a lot of unused yen. Uh we were short like a hundred and you can just basically scan at the machine and it’ll give you the X that it’s not enough. And then you just come back, put coins in it, put your tap your card, it’ll say how much is remaining. It’ll detect what you tried, what you owe, and then you can just top off the coins and then you do it again. So, it’s no big deal. Yeah, very easy to adjust. Um, you definitely want to be more careful when you’re using the welcome sua cards, the tourist ones because with those uh you don’t you don’t get any of your money back. So, if you don’t use those and you put 10,000 yen and you only spend 8,000, guess what? You just left 2,000 on the table. So, don’t don’t do that. So, that’s one downside of those. Whereas the regular card, uh, those don’t expire or they do, but it’s like 10 years. Yeah, it’s a long time. Uh but the the downside is you have to put a deposit of 500 yen which I didn’t think was too bad just to have the permanent card. Yeah. Uh but now when we go back now we have it. I think I have 200 left on on mine. So and I think we’ll be back within 10 years if I had I think so. Yes. But I have enough for a Coke uh next time uh next time we’re back. All right. Now let’s talk about how to how to pay for things. So this advice was a little bit mixed and um this is one that I felt was a little bit exaggerated. So a lot of the a lot of the blogs a lot of the advice was like uh Japan is uh well it’s technologically advanced is mostly a cash society. Cash is king. Uh have your sweet card top it off. Have it ready. The reality is that very very few of our transactions uh we ended up needing cash. Yeah. Uh, so it’s perfectly most places take credit card. It wasn’t a big deal. A lot of the advice like if you’re going to go to a 7-Eleven, for example, make sure you have your sweet card. You’re going to need that. No, nah, not really. They take credit card. They all take credit card. So, if you just have an international Visa card, that’s all you need. Uh, obviously you need it for the trains because you don’t want to have to buy like a train ticket every time when you for the to put money on your Swiga card for the trains. That has to be cash. You do need cash for that. Pay for that with credit. So that’s one thing. Yeah. So even when we took out cash, probably I would say like 70% of that went to trains. Yeah. It was very few that went to actually buying things. Probably the only things that we spent on cash was like some of the street food. Maybe one or two like more traditional restaurants. Um, and even like a lot of the street food, I feel like a lot of them took like, you know, they had like the square or like the similar where you could tap, but there were some that that took cash, but most like big stores, things like that take credit. If I had to estimate um and maybe we can make a different video about like finances and how much you can expect to uh you know to spend for like a two week trip but I would say maybe five to 10% of our total spend was using cash and out of that most of that went to our strains. Yeah. I could have gotten away with mostly credit card even on the trains if I was willing to just buy tickets on a on advance like each time, but I didn’t want to do that because the convenience not worth it. But for me, you know, we’re points collector. So use your credit card. You can you’ll be fine. You can use it almost everywhere. Just make sure that it’s an international credit card so you don’t pay the fees, right? Because those fees add up. We’re talking 3%. You don’t want to do that. And then if you have a debit card, make sure you use an international debit card like Charles Schwab so that you don’t pay the ATM fees and you don’t pay fees for withdrawing money internationally. And then with that also with that card, you can withdraw from anywhere. It doesn’t have to be 7-Eleven. It can be any convenience store, any bank, uh anywhere. You’ll you get it all back. Yeah. And one other place where we did need cash were the arcades, like the gigo shops. So you either need cash or you need some of them will take like your suica card and you can just tap and play the the game. Um so you know obviously we had like our son’s own little bank of money and and he used that for that. So if your kids are into that or you’re into that make sure you save some cash for the games too. The other occasion where you’re going to need coins, and this, and I’m talking coins, necessarily cash, where coins come in handy, is uh for like um uh like lockers, like if you’re in a situation where you need to rent a locker either to store your suitcase or maybe um I don’t know, you bought an item that requires refrigeration, you want to use one of those lockers, uh you can do that. Another place where the coins are going to come in handy is like if you’re going to like a nonsense uh because you’ll need uh in some of those places you got to rent towels and they’re going to be like I want to say from what I heard like a couple hundred yen. So yeah, your 100 yen coins, your 200 denomination, your 500, those are going to be your friends because that’s what uh things are going to cost approximately. So yeah, definitely have one of those. In fact, a lot of people will have uh coin purses and you can buy some of those so you can keep uh some of your coins. Yeah. And then another place where you might want some coins is when you’re visiting the temples. Um so you can obviously make like an offering, a donation. Um you can use coins to get like your fortune and just some different various activities there. So it helps to have some coins um when you’re visiting the temples too. Yes. All right. And so once uh once you’re in Japan, so another question we get asked a lot is uh do they speak English? Uh short answer is sometimes sometimes and it depends. It’s not as good as uh Europe, right? In Europe a lot of uh students study English as a second language. That’s the international language. So most people speak it and the western side has a is very fluent. Right? In uh in Japan um not so much. But from what we’ve heard, they made a lot of improvements since the olymp since the Olympics. And so what we found is in most service places, English is there, like your hotel for example. Yeah, definitely at the hotels. And then at restaurants typically they know enough to like take your order, answer basic questions. Um, but don’t get like too complicated. Like I remember one time I asked a server like, “What would you recommend?” And they just looked at me like I had three heads. They had no idea what I was talking about and it dawned on me like, “Oh, keep it simple like you’re talking to a to a 5-year-old.” And then they do, a lot of places do have uh English menus, but you noticed a couple like differentiations. Yeah, I would recommend uh and I speak to this for any if you’re visiting any country. Uh but definitely with Japan if you can just get the Japanese menu and just use Google uh translate or lens to you know get the description of the item uh because sometimes the pricing will be different. I I did some comparison uh so anecdotally most of the time it was the same but there are were some scenarios where there’s a clear difference in the price on once you switch to uh to English. So uh be aware of that. They’re going to have pictures in most of them. So, it’s not really that hard to understand. Yeah. Uh, and you can just point. They’re very good about pointing and directing you. So, I notic they’re very efficient about that. Even once you’re done with the order, you’re basically going to go up to the register, you you show the card saying, you know, you’re paying with card. They’ll understand that word and then uh they’ll usually tell you the number. Most of them know the number. So, they’ll say a thousand yen and they’ll have you they’ll point to the screen to have you check, make sure it’s okay, and then you charge. And then of course, no tipping, which is uh kind of nice. Yeah, that makes it easier. You don’t have to worry about tip. And tipping is actually considered um like rude in some instances. Yeah, it’s offensive. So yeah, don’t um don’t do that. Otherwise, um like at places like train stations, you don’t have to concern yourself with translation too much. Most of the signs are going to be in English. You’re going to see a lot of English signs. I think as you go more remote there’s less and less English, but for the most part, uh, the train stations shouldn’t be too intimidating because they’re going to have those those signs and in in both languages. Yeah. And I think as long as you have the technology, like, you know, have your Google Maps, have Google Translate, um, and you can really pretty much understand anything. Um, Google Translate, like if you’re in 7-Eleven, you want to get something, you’re not sure what it is, just use that. It’ll help. Same with like you mentioned at the restaurants with the menu. Um you know there are sometimes where it’s like not 100% accurate the translation but you can pretty much figure out what it’s trying to to tell you. Yeah. And pay attention to the uh when you use Google Maps it’s going to tell you where to exit. Very important because the stations are very some of them are are huge like Tokyo station for example. And so it’s very important to exit in the proper one otherwise you’re going to be walking a lot more. So, usually it’ll say exit on six or exit on east gate, something. So, make sure you follow those signs. Uh, one hack from me that I learned before you board, it’ll usually Google Maps will tell you for fastest exit, go to train number four. So, if you started on train number two and it says fastest exit is on train number four, when you get off, go towards train number four and that’s where the exit is going to be. That’s one way that you find it. Yeah. And I mean the directions are very detailed um in terms of you know where to go, what car to get in, all of that. So as long as you have the technology, you should be good. And then if something happens you don’t, don’t be afraid to ask a local for help. Um you know, we ran into that a couple of times and maybe they didn’t even like know a ton of English, but they knew enough to kind of point us in the right direction. Um and and they’re very friendly. You know, they just kind of keep to themselves. You know, they’re busy. They’re usually coming and going, but don’t be afraid to like stop someone and ask for help because we, you know, had good experiences with that as well. Yeah, we didn’t have any issues even the few times where we were a little bit lost. Like we almost took the wrong train once, the wrong chinansen. Yeah. Uh we weren’t sure about the the train and so we asked someone and they at least knew enough to point us to uh to to prevent us from boarding because it was clearly the wrong train. Yeah. And to point us to a conductor that can help. So yeah, don’t be afraid to ask. Yeah. All right. And so with that, we’ll segue into uh some cultural norms that we observed because we heard a lot about these. And just like a lot of things, we found some were exaggerated, some were no joke. So let’s let’s get into that. The uh the walking while eating, that’s a very common. What What did you think of that? Yeah, I would say uh the walking while eating specifically, I think, was correct. You don’t really see people walking around eating. Usually, if you got like a to- go food, you’re expected to kind of stand outside of like the convenience store or the the restaurant where you got the food and eat it. You throw your stuff away and then you move on. What I did not notice is um there were a few people like walking with like an iced coffee. That was a little bit more common. Um you definitely don’t want to take it on the train. I did take a coffee on the train once and I got like a look from the conductor like, “What are you doing?” Um so maybe avoid that. I think they just want to keep it clean. They want to avoid spills. Um, but as long as you’re like respectful, you’re watching what you’re doing, you’re not bumping into people. Um, you know, don’t be afraid to like walk down the street with a nice coffee. And at the theme parks, it it was much more common to see people like walking and in eating and drinking. I think it’s it’s more common there. Yeah. Especially like popcorn, you’ll see a lot of that. But even at the train station, I think as long as if you have a bottle and it’s open, it’s fine. I think what they don’t want is like open containers or can cause a spill or like free the smells. Yes. The exception of that is the Shinkansen is the opposite. You’re encouraged to bring bring food there. Um so yeah, but at the metro that’s that’s a no no. Just keep it in your bag. I think the times that we did have it, I would just have it in my backpack, but I wouldn’t I wasn’t actively drinking it. Yeah. And then um when you do get something to eat or like you know, you take it with you, uh the garbage situation that people talk about where there aren’t a lot of trash cans, that is 100% true uh in our experience. Yes. It’s probably the easiest is uh if you buy something from a convenience store, if you eat it right there and then, they’ll have they’ll have garbages there. Or even if you happen to uh buy a different item and then you go go on your way. Usually convenience stores are a good bet to find garbages. Otherwise, it’s really hard. So, yeah, we recommend bringing having like a bag with you. One trick we did is you brought what? Like a little dog. They’re like the dog poop bags and they come in a little roll. I mean, the roll is like this big. It’s very compact. So, it was easy to just like slip in my bag and then if we had some extra trash, I would just rip one of those off and we’d carry that around until we found a proper trash to throw that away. So, that worked out really well. The other thing that that you could do that I noticed, it took me a few days, but let’s say you get like some melon bread from the street or like from an alley or like a a street vendor. You might not see like a garbage can even next to to that type of establishment, but usually they’re happy to take the packaging back. If if you hand it back, they’ll take it and they’ll throw it in their garbage. So, yeah, very common. Don’t don’t be afraid to do that. You don’t even have to say anything. You can just show it and they they know that you’re giving them garbage. So, yeah. And then another big one um that was absolutely true and we kind of had to I try to prepare our son for this ahead of time just like how quiet it is there in public especially on trains um and sometimes like in restaurants too. Um and even with that like there were several times I had to tell him like sh like you got to calm down a little bit. Um so people do take that seriously. um you know if they are having a conversation it’s at a very low volume almost a whisper and you can definitely tell like who were tourists and who were locals just based on how they acted like at the train. Yeah. Yeah. Well they would say that as you went as you go south it felt like it got a little bit louder. uh even within locals I I thought I don’t know if they’re just more relaxed down like in like Osaka Kyoto but yeah Tokyo they were they were much more quiet much more rule followers there just in general in general yeah anything train yeah much less chaotic for sure yeah like the and that’s another thing that was true too is just like the train etiquette so in addition to being quiet like the the lining up for the train they do take that seriously so just you know there’s markers like where you’re supposed to line up, where people get off. Like everybody gets off first and then you get on, which I personally really appreciated because it was a lot less stressful than like when you go to New York City and you get on the subway and everybody’s just pushing and shoving and you might not get a seat. Like it’s really chaotic. This was not that. Um it got a little more like disorganized like you said the further away from Tokyo that you got, but especially the big touristy places like some of the temples. It was still more organized than like any city I’ve ever experienced here or even in Europe, I would say. Um, and then once you’re on the train too, they’re they have like sections for like families or disabled people or even women only too. They have women only cars too. So, um, and don’t be afraid to speak up to if like someone sitting in like if there’s like a man sitting in like the family car, like an able-bodied person. Um we we had a couple interactions that we saw where um like an old lady got on with a walker and there was a gentleman kind of standing in the section that was meant for disabled people and she was pretty much like hey can you move and the guy did and you know I think they just kind of expect like you you’re supposed to make room for people that have the highest priority there the highest need and I noticed that they don’t proactively get up to give up the seat which I think you see that more in the US. Yeah. But people will call you out if if you don’t if if you don’t do that. They’ll either not say anything or call you out. Like few cases that we noticed where people clearly needed the space and they were young and able bodies uh taking them up. So yeah. Yeah. The other um the one one weird thing that I noticed and maybe someone can shine some light here, but the the the washing hand situation. So we were in March. So, one one thing I noticed is that the water was very cold. There was no hot water any even in Disney like at the parks very cold and most bathrooms only had like one dryer. So, even I noticed like like big public restrooms that had like 10 urinal and you know a few like toilets. They would be one dryer for everybody. And so what I noticed is most people didn’t really wash their hands thoroughly. At least the way we were thought during co where you really, you know, you scratch 20 seconds, warm water, right? It was like really quick. I saw men would just open it kind of like splash and then they were they were gone. So, uh not u not a lot of deep washing. So, I don’t know if they were just doing it later or they had sanitizer. I don’t know. But I I I noticed that which I I thought was a little bit weird. So, no. So, if you go during colder months, just know that the water is going to be cold. So, you might want to bring a towel if you don’t want to deal with the the one single dryer that they have in the whole area. So, something to to keep in mind. I thought that was weird. That is common. Um like you’ll see people bring like a handkerchief or like a small hand towel and just especially for like girls like keep that in your purse, maybe keep it in your pocket, whatever. So, if you encounter that situation, you can dry your hands. Um, and then I’d recommend just bringing some sanitizer too, just in case you run into a situation where that’s an easier solution. Yeah. And then just on the last one, just a few things we noticed. So, we talked a little bit about, you know, some of the some subtle signs of public shameness that or shamelessness that we that we noticed. Like for example, there were situations where our son was fooling around on on the floor like, you know, just uh, you know, acting like a fool, right? And so people would come up, workers would come up and say, “Hey, can you get up?” Uh, so yeah, that they will call out your child if they’re misbehaving. Wasn’t there a situation where he was very loud too? And somebody said, you know, keep it down. Yeah, I think that was actually on the plane like he we were playing like a card game or something and he he was like got excited and the the stu the flight attendant was like, and there’s another situation where he was kind of like walking and you know, I’ve told him 10 times like, “Hey, walk in a straight line. There’s people coming.” and he almost ran into an older gentleman and the guy like stopped and he was like, you know, like you need to calm down and you know, so he he kind of learned like, hey, if you’re not going to listen, like it’s not just mom and dad calling you out here, like other people are going to keep you honest. They’ll call you out. Yeah. And then there’s Yeah. I was just going to say too, um, and like don’t take offense to it either because that’s just like they’re kind of I feel like just helping each other like because they’re so used to everything just falling in line that if someone’s not, they’re just kind of like, “Hey, you should be following the rules here.” And I had a situation at Disney where I was waiting in line for like a a food item. And I only saw like where the line went straight, not where it curled around. And so I got like in the middle of the line, unbeknownst to me, and someone was like, “Hey, just, you know, like the end of the line is over here.” And I was like embarrassed. I was like, “Oh my god, thank you for telling me.” Cuz you know, normally like I would never cut a line like that. So they will call you out, but I I took it as like like help like, “Thank you for telling me that I missed that.” Yeah. And there were other subtle signs of of of shame, which I didn’t understand before, but now I do. Like for example, um I noticed that if you went to a 7-Eleven and you wanted to buy alcohol, they would literally lift a sign and you had to attest that you are not driving and you’re of age. So they would lift a sign. Yeah, they take that really serious. They take that serious. I guess there’s zero tolerance and you know drinking and driving where here in the US I feel like it’s very common to like you know have a glass of wine with dinner. We take that for granted but over there I don’t think that’s a thing. Like no, if you drink and drive, they will shame you. And uh yeah, you get that when buying the drink. So yeah, I thought that was very interesting. I saw that at the parks, too, at Universal. Yeah, if you order added like a draft beer to your set of meals, they would hold up a sign, just want to make sure you’re not driving and that you’re of age. So pretty interesting. Um the other uh the other things I noticed is at elevators they were clear signs to say these elevators are only for those that are handicapped pregnant or if you have like small kids. So it was very uh evident that that it’s not meant for someone young and able just because you have some suitcases or because you’re lazy or you’re lazy, right? So yeah uh just subtle signs like that which I thought um I thought were interesting. So yeah. And you mentioned like the stairs even count like show you the calories that you’re Yeah. In some stations, uh you can see the you can take the escalators, they have that, but if you don’t want to take the automatic escalators, um the on the stairs, it shows you how many calories you you burn if you get to the top. So it’ll mark and it’ll say, “Oh, by the time you get to the top, you’ve now done 20 steps, five calories.” So you know exactly what you’re burning. So almost like a reverse nutritional fact on on on drinks. This is what you could be burning if you if you took the step. So, I thought that was kind of interesting. Yeah. And yeah, speaking of uh stairs, so there were some stations where there were like no elevators, no escalators, and so you have no choice but to go up the stairs or if there were other options, we couldn’t find them. Um so we had to carry our luggage, all our stuff up several flights of stairs. And this happened a good handful of times, I would say. Um so when people say like don’t overpack, definitely keep that in mind. you know, if you’re lugging two full-size suitcases on around, like that’s not going to be very fun for you if you run into one of those stations. It’s quite a workout. Uh, and uh, I know we talked about getting off in the right exit and following the directions on Google Maps to be efficient. Well, sometimes if you don’t want to in order to be efficient, you have to take the stairs. If you follow the way of the elevator, it might drop you off in a completely different exit. So just keep that in mind cuz not all the exits, many of the exits do not have elevators. So yeah, understand that so that you know you don’t pack uh too much or just know that you’re going to have to carry that. Yeah, I was going to say I know we didn’t really cover packing, you know, in in the beginning of the the video, but just a few tips like we were able to get through two weeks with just carryons. So we each had a carry-on, including my son. He had his little like half-size carry-on. We each had a backpack. Um, and then by the end we bought like a expandable bag just to throw some souvenirs in. And we did check that on the way home. Um, but basically like try to bring a carry-on if you can. Try to only bring like at most I’d say one week’s worth of clothes because most hotels have laundry, especially if you’re staying at like a western hotel. So you can do your laundry, rewear your clothes to save you the hassle of carrying more stuff. Um, and then some things you can leave behind like you don’t need an umbrella. Every hotel had an umbrella. And if not, you can buy an umbrella at 7-Eleven for super cheap, like a couple bucks, I think. Um, and then every hotel also had pajamas. Um, for us, not for our son. So, maybe pack some for your kids. They had either like babies or adult size basically. Um, so we didn’t really need pajamas. And then they have like all of the toiletries you could ever imagine, like way above and beyond what you’ll see at um an American hotel. So, we’re talking like toothbrush, toothpaste, brush, comb, uh shaving kit, uh you know, obviously your shampoo, conditioner, soap, um like everything you could think of and then some slippers, like everything. Um the only thing I didn’t see is like deodorant um in the hotels, right? So, I think unless you have like a specialized like hair gel or like face wash, maybe bring those couple things, but other than that, like you really don’t need to pack much. They really provide almost everything for you. Yeah, if we were to redo it again, I would go much lighter on my toiletries. Uh, now I don’t know if this is different like if you’re staying like at a I don’t know category like a twostar hotels, but for our for us the lowest we stayed was like a I don’t know like a three star high place and even those had a lot of amenities. Yeah. Uh so yeah, I would leave uh more more stuff behind. You don’t you don’t really need um a lot of those essentials. Those are provided. In many cases, they’re just in the lobby and you just kind of grab them. Yeah. And even I was going to say even the hotel at Universal that wasn’t like a name brand hotel. They had had everything too. And then some of the Hyatts had like even little kits for our son like little slippers, little washcloths, little kids toothpaste and toothbrushes. So, they’re very conscious of like just having stuff for everyone. Um, the one thing, like I said, is just the pajamas. They don’t have for kids, but everything else you could pretty much get. Yes. For free. So, one other thing that uh not a lot of people mention that I want to circle back on, hotels, um, this not a problem in the US, but if you if you’re traveling as a family, normally in the US, uh, it is not a big deal to say you’re traveling to adults. And if you have kids, typically there’s plenty of room. If you get a you can get a two queen standard room, it’s perfectly okay. You can fit up to four adults. Not an issue. Usually the price is the same regardless of how many adults. Not a big deal, right? But if you’ve done enough traveling, you know that if you go to Europe, that’s more strict. They have occupancy laws and generally you have to either get a connecting room or you have to um you know get hotels that have like three single beds, right? Every person normally has to have a bed. they’re very strict. But in Japan, it was more in between. So, what I found is more more a lot of places that offer like standard king rooms, you could bring your kid with you, but they might not always have a bed ready for them. So, a lot in a lot of cases, it was either a sofa bed that they would fix up or they could share they were okay to share the bed with you, but there’s no extra cost. Sometimes they would charge you to fix the bed, sometimes they didn’t. So, keep that in mind. But normally they’re very flexible when it comes to bringing an extra kit. It’s not like Europe where as soon as you put three people in the reservation, the inventory drops by like 90%. Here, if you on the reservation, if you put three people, two adults, one kid, you’ll still see plenty of inventory, it just might not there might not be a bed uh for your son. So keep that in mind. And there are some properties that cater more towards families than than others. So, um, as an example, if you do like higher place, higher houses, those tend to have a lot of those have sofa beds as standard and so you’re going to get more accommodations. So, I think that’s something parks too, you’ll probably find good like family accommodations. Yes, a lot of close to the theme parks, you found a lot of them that just had like three twin beds and so it wasn’t too hard to to do that. But in some cases, for example, we stayed at the W in Osaka, and I got an email saying that if if they wanted to fix the bed for our son, they want they wanted to charge like um I forget the cost, but it was like 5,000 yen. It was kind of pricey. Uh so we just opted to not have them do it, and he just we just share the bed. It was it was a king bed, so it was big enough. Uh but in some places they um they don’t fix it ahead of time. You have to ask, some charge, some don’t. So, uh, just something to keep in mind, but definitely don’t lie about the occupancy cuz they will ask for passports, although they didn’t always do that. It was maybe like sometime sometimes they didn’t. Yeah. Cool. And then I think we just had some uh bonus tips at the end, just some like random thoughts that we collected along the way, mostly about like attractions and things that we did. Um, so one big one that I had was if you go to the Tokyo Skytree. Um, so I was under the impression that like if you didn’t book ahead of time, you weren’t going to get in, like don’t bother. Um, and we ended up in the area. We were just going to go check it out from the outside. We were waiting in line to like see if we could get a ticket and I was able to get online on my phone and order the ticket for like what was it like 30 minutes later. Yeah. So don’t let that scare you. Like again, we didn’t want to plan too much stuff ahead of time. So, we were able to get last minute tickets. Maybe we just lucked out. Maybe it wasn’t a busy day. Um there’s still a lot of people. Yeah, it felt busy. So, definitely try. Don’t don’t be discouraged. Like, you know, worst case you get turned away. Um and then another thing about the Sky Tree is like it’s not just like the observation deck where you go up and and you see the views. There was like a whole other section. There was like a mall with like all these stores and stuff. And then down at the bottom there was like a food court. So we literally could have spent like probably a good half a day at least in there. And we got there towards the evening. So we we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked. So if you’re going to go there, definitely like make a day of it. Maybe even go there in the morning or go there and look around and then make your way up like however you want to do it. But there’s a lot to see there. Yeah, there’s a lot to explore and um don’t be afraid to uh if you go to a lot of these markets. We were there uh towards closing like you were saying. Yeah. And they have some really good deals on on food if you go towards the end. So if you don’t mind Yeah. They’re trying to get rid of stuff. So if you don’t mind going uh last minute, you can get some really good deals. You just take it back to your hotel and it’s a good way to have like a cheap uh dinner. So yeah, take take advantage of that. Uh there’s there’s a lot of um a lot of options. Yeah. Don’t be afraid to eat at places like that or like at um like department stores, things like that. We actually had some really good meals in the place. The department stores were no joke. They had really good uh food courts. Yeah. Um Yeah. And a lot of these places are hard to miss because they’re like inside buildings. So Mhm. you get these uh huge buildings. They’re easy to miss. Yes. Easy to miss. Huge buildings. And sometimes um you’ll be walking to these buildings and you only see the storefront, the main one. But it turns out if you go up the next floor, there might be like a whole floor of of restaurants. So yeah, pay attention to that cuz it can be very easy to miss. Yeah. And then obviously, I mean, for us, we’re like theme park people. We like going to theme parks. So I would say if you can can do it, you can make it work financially and timewise. I think the theme parks there were worth it. Like yes, we have Disney here in the US. We have Universal here in the US, but it was just a different experience there. Um it was a lot of fun. You know, there were different rides. just I felt like it was really worth it, especially with our son. Like he his favorite part of the whole trip he says was Universal. Um and he actually like cried when we left because he was so sad to be leaving. So if that tells you anything, he’s never reacted like that before on any trip. So yeah, definitely worth the time. And the best part is you’re going to be paying about 50% off compared to a US park. So we paid Disney what, like 60 bucks a ticket. Yeah, something like that. And Universal was similar. The only thing that made Universal expensive um was the express passes. The express pass is expensive. I will say that. So, if you’re not looking to do that uh quite affordable, but the downside, of course, it gets uh you know, it does get crowded. So, yeah. Uh as long as you don’t mind buying some of the fastpasses, um yeah, you’ll be you’ll be okay. But yeah, uh totally worth it. Totally worth spending a few days to check it out. The the food the food culture is just on another game. Um well, we’ll put we’ll make more videos about that to share our experience, but we just want to give a few uh just general pointers on that. Yeah. And then um do you want to talk about like the temples? Yeah. And just real quick, a couple points on the on the temples uh because this is something that we weren’t sure, we didn’t know, but um we definitely recommend vi visiting the the temples. So it’s even if it’s just for like a photo op architecture, you get to learn a little bit about the the history. I think it was it was really cool to go to some of those sites and just pay respects, learn a little. Uh, but what I found is I noticed a bunch of tourists because you could tell they weren’t like Japanese or like Asian, but they were wearing kimonos and I was like, is that offensive? Like I wasn’t I wasn’t sure like I even saw like like Mexicans like people brown looking like me speaking Spanish that were wearing them and I’m I’m like ah I’ve never seen like Americans wearing a mariachi in Mexico so what’s the deal here? But no, it’s I guess it’s common. As long as you’re you’re doing it in the proper way, you’re paying respects to, you know, the the norm, how you’re supposed to tie it and all that. As long as you do it right, people actually respect it. And uh you saw a lot of people doing that and doing like photo ops. Yeah, I was going to say I think a lot of people do it for like family photo shoots. Um and we talked maybe that’s something we do on like a future trip just for like some unique family photos. So definitely. And and you also heard that it’s pretty affordable. Yeah, you can rent it. You can just rent it. Uh just do a place that does it right where because you know like especially for a woman uh I guess the way they tie it, you really need another person. So if it’s a type of place where you don’t need another person, they’re probably doing it the cheap way. So just make sure if you’re going to do it, do it properly. You know, pay your respects. Uh and then they give you these. I notice a lot of people wearing these sandals that look like sandals sandals. Yeah. They don’t look very It didn’t look very comfortable. So just know that that’s how you have to wear it. Again, I didn’t see anybody wearing sneakers, which would have been more comfortable, but I would assume that’s probably offensive. And so, people stuck with the Yeah. you know, traditional way of of wearing the whole outfit. Yeah. But as far as like the temples themselves and and the other like tourist attractions, I would say most of them that we went to were worth it. I would say they’re they’re crowded and popular for a reason. I mean, these are like truly historical places. They’re fun to learn about. They’re fun to take your kids to and kind of explain the history to them. Um, and definitely like get there early if you can because some places do get really busy like shoulderto-shoulder trying to get in and out of places. Um, so I think the earlier you can get there the better, but it’s definitely worth it to check these places out. Yeah. And also, uh, the other bonus is you get a lot of opportunities to try some, uh, some some snacks. Yeah. Uh, and then, uh, opportunities for for souvenirs. So, you might see some unique ones, uh, or in some cases, um, you know, just like really interesting stuff. Uh, just don’t be afraid to explore because you might see other options. Sometimes you might get better prices um outside. But yeah, there’s usually like a lot happening. So, it’s it’s one of those where you can invest like a whole day if you’re really up for some exploring and just browsing around the neighborhood. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, just um, you know, final thoughts. If you’re thinking about Tokyo, um if you’re like a a very hardcore planner, you like to know uh have everything ahead of time, I would say our biggest advice is don’t don’t think about it too much. Just book it. You’ll have fun. You don’t need to stress over too much about reservation, planning everything. If you’re up for some exploration, you’ll you’ll have fun. Yeah. And I think sometimes like some of the best stuff you find is kind of things you didn’t plan for, right, that just kind of happened. for example, like I mentioned the sky tree, like we didn’t plan that. And that was super cool to see. Um just like wandering through different neighborhoods, finding different restaurants, you know, all that stuff is unplanned. And those are for me those are kind of the moments that like make your trip right. Those are the things you remember. The monkey part that was uh we didn’t reserve that and we just kind of figure out how to get there kind of last minute. We’re like, “Okay, let’s let’s see if we can just show up.” And it was one of the coolest uh attractions, too. Yeah. Um, so yeah, don’t be leave room for uh for for exploring and I think uh I think you’ll be fine. So with that we’ll leave it. Hopefully this was very helpful. If we missed uh anything uh let us know down below like if you’ve been there before and uh you know you have some uh advice, some comments and things that we missed or maybe if we misspoke and uh you know you like to uh correct us because sometimes you know things change. um you know, let let us know. Otherwise, uh yeah, thanks thanks for watching. I hope this was helpful. I was just going to say also like if there’s anything you’d like to see more of like uh I know we mentioned like maybe should we make a video about um you know like what did this trip cost us, like how should you budget, maybe more specific on like tips for the theme parks. If you have any ideas, anything you want us to expound on more in a future video, definitely uh shoot us a suggestion there. Yeah. Otherwise, uh don’t forget to subscribe uh because we are going to be posting more videos about this, sharing our entire experience. We just thought we did we do this one about tips right away while it’s fresh in our minds. But yes, definitely more coming. So, we’re going to share our entire itinerary, where we stayed, all the hotels we did, a lot of the food, everything that we ate, the attractions, every ride at the theme parks, what it’s like traveling from city to city, the experience of flying there. All that is coming up. Yeah. All right. Hopefully by the time you’re watching this, you’ll see uh links through uh some of the other videos. So, see you on the next one.
Traveling to Japan with your family? 🇯🇵✈️
In this video, we’re sharing everything we wish we knew before our trip—from navigating public transportation and finding family-friendly food, to cultural tips that made our experience smoother and more fun. Whether you’re planning your first visit or just looking for helpful insights, these tips will help you make the most of your family adventure in Japan!
👨👩👦 What we cover in this video:
-How we used points to book flights & hotels
-How long to stay and when you should visit
-How to use Japan’s train system with kids
-How easy is it to get around?
-What surprised us about Japanese culture
-What to pack (and what to leave at home)
🔥 Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:15 Planning Your Trip to Japan
12:33 How Long to Stay in Japan
18:54 What Time of Year to Visit
21:10 Things to Do Before Arriving
25:45 Airport & Transportation Options
31:14 Train Travel & Suica Cards
40:04 Paying with Cash vs. Credit
44:27 Is English Common?
49:21 Cultural Norms
01:01:01 What to Pack
01:04:08 Booking Hotels for Families
01:06:52 Bonus Tips & Random Thoughts
Link to Visit Japan Web for customs and other forms: https://services.digital.go.jp/en/visit-japan-web/
✅ Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more real-life family travel content, cruise tips, and theme park adventures!
📍 Watch our full Japan travel vlog series here: link coming!
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