Here’s my Top tips to ensure you enjoy your time in Japan, have information at your fingertips, and embrace and respect the culture.
Save yourself time and complete immigration online!
I cleared through Customs and Immigration pretty easily, having pre-completed the Visit Japan immigration process online, meaning we simply had to present our QR codes and passports.
Whether you need a point-to-point ticket, or a JR Pass, it’s relatively easy to navigate once you get the hang of it.
We can arrange JR passes and tickets from here in Australia, so you know exactly what to catch and when.
You just need to find out where (ie which platform), which is pretty easy, especially as Japanese are, in general, super polite and helpful.
I easily purchased tickets for the Haruka Limited Express train to Kyoto – a 75 minute journey, via Osaka.
Decorated in Hello Kitty paraphernalia, the kitsch is alive and well in Japan!
Here’s my most tried and tested.
Do you have any great travel Apps to share? Let me know, so I can add them to the list.
To hear about my epic trip into rural Japan, and inside the home and lives of 4 different families (including staying in a Temple!), check out my “Into Rural Japan…” blog.
Gift-giving is a very important part of Japanese culture. I knew that in addition to staying with our family friends at their temple, we were to be guests in three different family homes, and participate in an Elementary School Cultural Exchange Day. So, I went with plentiful gifts. Local delicacies, including Vegemite (of course!), Nutella, Australiana notebooks, magnets, keychains, locally made handicrafts, stickers, honey, organic coffee – and more!
We also received some amazing snacks and treasures ourselves!
To take a bath requires you to first enter the bath house area, sitting on a little stool, (separate to the bathtub) and cleaning one’s body and hair. Then, after you are completed clean and rinsed, you may enter the bath. The bath is typically deep, and the water is hot! Hopping out of the bath, one is typically pink from being mildly cooked, and thoroughly and utterly relaxed and rejuvenated.
A bath in most homes is a version of this.
Thinking of visiting a sento (public bath) or onsen (hot spring), familiarising yourself with manners and etiquette is essential.
Japanese do toilets different (and better, in my opinion!).
Whilst the traditional “hole-in-the-ground” Japanese squat toilets are still around, relative to previous visits to Japan, I noticed a lot more Western-style toilets this trip. But Japanese Western style toilets are special!
The seats are heated, and you have a whole control panel of options, with bidet sprayers for your bottom and girl bits, so that toilet paper is used for drying only. There are buttons to increase water pressure, to flush half and full, and some other buttons, that I’m not even sure of, but dare not press, lest I make a mess in the toilet, or walk out with wet clothes! (What on earth is the volume button for? Can someone please enlighten me?) Usually the buttons have diagrams, and Japanese script, so it’s a bit of guesswork, but definitely worth exploring.
Coming home to Australia, it feel like we’ve gone backwards in this technology, we have some catching up to do.
