Kyoto

Kyoto is the cultural capital of Japan. It is a city of Shrines and Temples. It was the capital before Tokyo. Some places to visit.

Kingkaku-ji (Golden Temple) - Stunning Buddhist temple in a beautiful setting. 

Tokyo

Tokyo is a beautiful metropolis where more than 40 Million people live and work. Almost one third of Japan lives in and around Tokyo. It is Japan's biggest and most important city. It's the seat of power for the last 150 years. You can spend days and weeks in Tokyo alone. It's hard to cover everything in Tokyo. Some of the places to visit with pictures. By any means, this list is a very small list, you can spend a lot of time in Tokyo.

Senso-ji - Buddhist temple in Tokyo. Next to this temple is Nakamise-dori shopping street. It's a must visit to check out delicacies, souvenirs, jewelry and other goods.






















Nakamise-dori - The shopping street next to Senso-ji.
(McDonald's is omnipresent)

Imperial Palace Gardens - The lush and verdant garden around the Palace. Do visit the Wakadura Fountain Park Cafe, its a nice place to enjoy a hot cappuccino (a bit pricey, but totally worth it.)

Ueno Park - Green space in the middle of the city, kinda Central Park in NYC. There is a zoo as well. The picture below is of a Samurai show at Ueno Park.

Harajuku - Famous for checking out latest fashion at Takeshita street. This place has a nice vibe to it. If you want to eat decent Udon, try out Hanamaru Udon on the Takeshita street.

Shinjuku - Another happening place, lots of things to do.

Land of Rising Sun or land of million Arigato Gozaimasu a day (Japan)

Basics:

Dates: 2nd July 2018 to 11th July, 2018

From: San Jose, CA to Tokyo, Japan

Flight Ticket Price: $900 (Booked about 6.5 months in advance)

Japan is a beautiful country with interesting places to visit, great food (not for vegetarians) and super polite people. When you land in Tokyo, you realize that Tokyo is a very big city, approximately 40M people live in and around Tokyo. People are moving to different parts of the city without any problem as Japanese have cracked the public transport problem. You can go anywhere using Public Transport, which brings to me 4 critical points.

1.     You are going to walk, I mean a lot. You will be averaging anywhere around 20,000 steps a day. I averaged a bit more around 24,000 steps as I was a bit more ambitious. Without saying, it's kinda obvious that you need super comfortable shoes (I was wearing Brooks Ghost 11, they were awesome.)

2.     You better travel light - As you are going around in train stations, changing Train Lines, walking with millions of people, using escalators or steps, traveling light will keep your life easy. I usually travel with 1 backpack only (Osprey 45 liter porter). I love Porter as it handles all my cloths and 1 laptop without fuss. (More on travel gear later.)

3.     Japan is a cash society - A lot of places only take Cash, so it makes sense to carry a lot of cash and don't worry, Japan is one of the safest places in the world. Its ok to carry cash. If you are carrying a popular foreign currency (like USD), you can exchange pretty much everywhere. They have machines all over the place. You may have to scour a bit to get the best rate. I could get about 107.4 for a dollar at different places in Tokyo, Nara and Osaka, and it was not too difficult. Although a lot of places were giving only 105 or less. Do not exchange from Travelex counters at the Airport or Stations, they tend to give less. At Narita international, there are quite a few banks which will gladly exchange currencies at very good rate. I got about 108.2 at Narita. These rates will be fluctuating daily, but I wanted to give you an idea of relative rates at different places. Don’t use International ATM Machines, they will charge transaction fee, Japanese bank will charge a fee and to top it off your own bank will charge a fee. In my experience, after all the fees, the net exchange rate I got was about 104. Cash is King.

4.     Even if you have a phone service which has a data plan, I will suggest getting a Pocket Wi fi, they are inexpensive and are a life saver. I got one for 9 days for about $70. They will ship it to Post Office at Narita and you can pick it up when you land at Narita, they give a pre-paid envelope for you to drop the device. You can find the last Mail box while departing Japan just before you enter security check at Narita Terminal 1 (not sure about Terminal 2 or 3, but there are a few Mail boxes at all the Terminals.) These devices have decent battery life (6-9 hours) and they provide decent speeds. I connected about 5 devices and the approximate speed was 5 Mbps.

What about Language? - You will be fine with English, most places (including Trains/buses) have signs in English. A lot of Japanese do speak English but don't expect to exchange ideas about underlying pain in Doestoevsky's novels (I am sure there are experts in English, but I am referring to an average Joe only). Did I say Japanese were very polite? Well, they take politeness to new levels. Despite the general reserved nature, Japanese people are extremely helpful.

Is the JR Pass worth it? - There are quite a few passes available and it's hard to navigate all of them. The most popular one is JR Pass. I took JR Pass for 7 days and I think even without it, I would have spent about the same amount. Let's do the math.

JR Pass Price - Y 31,000

7/3 - Day 1 savings - Y 3000 (Narita express from Narita International to Tokyo) + Y 500

7/4 -  Day 2 savings - Y 800

7/5 -  Day 3 savings - Y 800

7/6 -  Day 4 savings - Y 13000 (Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto)

7/7 -  Day 5 savings - Y 800

7/8 - Day 6 savings - Y 1500 (Train from Kyoto to Osaka)

7/9 - Day 7 savings - Y 13000 (Shinkansen from Shin-Osaka to Tokyo) + Y 500

Total Net Savings = Y 33,900 - Y 31,000 = Y 2900

As you can see, JR pass only makes sense if you plan to use Bullet train at least twice. If you just want to hang out in Tokyo, don't even bother with JR Pass.

Japan Tax Free Shopping -  If you don't live in Japan, you can buy most of the goods and avoid the sales tax (ranges from 5% to 8%), which is a good deal in some cases. Make sure you are carrying your passport with you, it does not work if you don’t have passport with you. Shopping and street eating are some of the super fun activities in Japan.  Shopping is everywhere, there are so many funky things you can buy. There are Japan specific models of backpack from North face, Japan only Kit Kat flavors, funky shoes, souvenirs, Japan specific Nintendo console like Famicom etc. So yeah, you will end up with stuff you did not plan to buy, so go back to rule # 2 of traveling light and add a corollary to it. Keep some space for unknown unknown's.