Japan Is a Dream Trip—Unless You’re Like This
Japan is amazing—but would it actually suit you and your group?
In this video, I talk about common travel styles and habits that can affect how people experience Japan, based on real-life experiences living here and guiding visitors. If you’re planning a trip and want to make sure Japan matches your (and your group’s!) expectations, this is worth watching before you go.
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33 Comments
kanpai!! 🍻
Took my teenage daughter to Japan in January for the second time and this trip was all about her and what she wanted to do, we had the most amazing time. We will be back again at some stage, we love it there.
I'll be there in 2 weeks to run the Tokyo marathon. I've been watching your videos for research. I'm headed to Kyoto for a couple days afterwards. Nervous, but excited.
what are your PC specs??
Great video as always! Just good advice for any kind of trip really lol!
One small thing though… at 7:30 Surely if I can judge all the positives about Japan and what it does better than other countries it should be more than expected that I do the same for the negative aspects too right?
I did this exact thing last year. As the “Japan expert,” I planned everything for four friends. I told them to start walking beforehand they didn’t and then complained about all the walking. I asked for must do and must eat lists six months in advance and got nothing.
After the trip, the only “negatives” I heard were that we didn’t eat enough ramen and that we didn’t go to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum even though at the time only one person wanted to go, and she’d already been there before.
The people that belong to the group #4 are the dead ends. They will complain no matter what. They probably are poorly informed (don't read much). Stay-cation is a better option for them.
Please make a video on Kyoto Transportation guide
3:29 VERY TRUE!!!!
👏👍
I have just come back from a trip to Japan with my family of four including two boys, 20 and 15. The only difficult thing was getting them on the plane to come home. They LOVED it from start to finish. Best holiday ever, I'm told.
Japan seems like heaven for me who walks 15-20k steps daily for fitness. Doing a Feb end to march beginning 2 week trip!
Thanks for this video. We visited Japan last year and loved it. Your videos were super helpful.
Would be great to have a video about Sapporo and Hokkaido (and other locations in the north and south). Thank you! 🙏
When I was a kid my parents used to take me and my sister abroad every year, and we were both miserable every time. I always looked back at it like we were so ungrateful, but now I understand, parents dragged us along, we had no say in anything. Our summer vacation felt like it was taken away from us.
Consider what your kids might want.
I love travelling on my own 😅
12k steps a day everyday is the norm for me for 10 years LOL, did 20k steps in 4 hours or so in Rome
The grass is green
The sky is blue
And you make the most informative, accurate and digestible videos about Japan.
Someone needed to say it 🤷♂️
I am Japanese, and in regions with many ski resorts such as Hokkaido, Nagano, and Niigata, almost every day last January and February—and again this month—there have been accidents caused particularly by foreign skiers who leave the official slopes to go backcountry skiing, tragically resulting in several deaths. Why do they underestimate the dangers of nature and even fail to show gratitude to the rescue teams? Of course, I understand that only a very small number of foreigners behave this way. Nevertheless, seeing how their selfish decisions and actions cause problems almost every day is truly exasperating.
Austrian here.
It’s allways strange hearing UScn-Americans warning “you have a lot to walk”.
For me it’s normal walking between 10 to 15K steps a day.
God gifted to me to feed and thanks to him they’re working and walking.
Wow. I dodged a bullet there. Was supposed to organize and tour cousins, uncles, aunts (a group of 15-16) last summer. The entire group hit 4 red flags. Thank goodness that trip didn't push through. 😅
During my 18 Days Trip in JAPAN, nearly everyday walk not less than 20k steps, lost my child at "Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan", dropped my ID card at "Madarao Skiing Resort" and many more things had happened but its considered a very nice experience and the trip worth what i have paid for.
Brilliant. And for those unwilling to take your very good advice 日本に来なくていいのに。
Walking and above all spending too much time in public transport is common when visiting Japan. Only thing, it is not mandatory. For me quality over quantity is the key. Take in mind you are not going to see the whole country (unless you spend months in there). But even better, focus on a few places, skip some of the most popular ones. E.g: It is not crazy to be brave enough to skip Tokyo and focus on Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima and so on. If you still want to visit Tokyo, plan entrance in the country in Tokyo and exit via Osaka for instance… avoid go and return trips and take advantage of your time.
Great video and great advice for all travellers.
I don’t agree whit this . If tourist are having fun in Japan let them have fun . You live in Japan so YOU have to follow the norms
The last one is best advice. I always say people need to take their trip, not someone else's. So much advice online about you must do this and you must do that. So many travel vlogs that make places look a lot different than they are. But everyone likes different things, everyone travels at a different pace, everyone is looking for something different. And so many places are misrepresented in so much social media.
With the dietary restrictions, researc, research research. Absolutely right. One of my biggest recommendations is to learn a few chains you can eat at. For example, knowing that Coco Ichibanya has vegetarian food means you haven't found one restaurant in Japan you can eat at as a vegetarian, you've found 1500 restaurants.
I did not come with a lot of expectations into this video, but these are really great tips! I was in Japan in October with my teenage daughter. It was clear to me that I needed to adjust the places to visit and partially the choice of restaurants to make it a nice stay for her. There was a bit too much shopping for my taste and I would have liked to eat more seafood, but we both came back happy, so I think my planning was quite good. And I planned for a lot of weeks, compiling a 30 page document in the end. My main takeaways are: Yes, please make it fun for everyone, especially minors and plan a lot and book popular spots well ahead of time. Also, virtual credit cards don't work, get a physical one and cash!
Great video. The first time I went to Japan, I went with friends and one of them was the "Forced to participate" type, and another had dietary restrictions. The trip overall was great, but I definitely felt we had left out some very important experiences. I was also the person in charge of the majority of the planning, and barely received any help, so there's also that 🙃
I was in Japan with my daughter last fall with MUCH help from these videos — SO GRATEFUL. She is vegetarian and I am gluten-free. As an additional challenge she was pregnant and having some nausea (although she was over the worst of it). We actually enjoyed the challenge of finding places where we could both eat. There are lots of resources online if you plan ahead. We had a Google Map set up with places we wanted to go and restaurants where we could eat. We ended up exploring some "off the beaten track" areas because we wanted to try some of the restaurants. We even went on a food tour in Kyoto, and even though there were things one or both of us couldn't eat, it was one of the highlights of the trip.
Rather than detracting from our trip, I actually think that weirdly our food restrictions ended up making the trip even more memorable.
I have opposite reaction after I return from my trips to Japan. I look at my country with a new deficit lenses. Why can’t everyone walk more? Why can’t we have real authentic Japanese food, why does our convenience stores suck, and why can’t we keep our streets clean, and why does my country have such lax immigration policies.
the walk-topic is so important! i am a fit person with daily cardio and weekly running. but 24/7 walking for weeks kills you. so in december i was really fine when i started the days in the morning and went around 2p.m. back to the hotel and had an hour rest on the bed. no sleep!!!! just some chill time for the legs. afterwards there was no problem with the rest of the day. exceptions were those days on which i had completely daytrips to other cities.
Main solution, don’t have kids. It prevents 99% of your problems.