I’m itching to go on a trip right now. I’m at that age (22) where traveling is easy and I finally have the money to do it (I wasn’t meant for the backpacking life!). I’ve never been out of Western Canada before, and I’m pretty sure I’d like to go to Japan.
Because I’m naive with the whole world traveling thing, don’t have anyone to go with, and have no idea how to deal with being in a country where I don’t know the language I’m obviously looking at tour groups. I know you don’t get an ‘authentic experience’ being a tourist like that, but I need some guidance.
The thing is, when you go to a traditional travel agency, the tours of Japan are aimed at staying one or two days in many of the major cities and just going to shrines. I don’t want to do that. I mean, of course I want to see the scenery and shrines, but I’m also a big internet geek. If I only get a week, I want to focus on Tokyo and sections of it like Akihabara and Shinjuku.
I’ve been looking at companies that try to cater to the otaku crowd like Pop Japan Travel and Intermixi, but I’m also just floundering around. What I want to do seems more suited to an independent trip, but like I said, I just wouldn’t feel comfortable doing one in a faraway country where I don’t know the language.
Advice, suggestions? I know we do have many Dopers that have visited and lived in Japan!
That’s what my friends and I did.
We did two weeks. We stayed in Akihabara and spent most of our time there.
Sure it was easier because there were three of us. I think just exploring it by yourself would be a lot of fun.
Don’t worry about the language barrier. You’ll be able to muddle through well enough and in emergencies locals might actually break out their english.
…okay, as long as you distract the hired man my family will get to prevent me, a young and naive girl, from going to a new continent where I can’t communicate with anyone except through miming.
Did I mention going to an unfamiliar country alone is a bad idea for anyone, whether or not a single woman? Japan has a low crime rate, but I still can’t shake the movie Taken out of my head.
Most signs use the english alphabet spellings of names/places. So you don’t need to learn a new character set.
(BIG TIP) almost all younger people (probably 30 and younger) learned english in school. But it was mostly reading/writing - not speaking. If you’re ever in a bind, simply write out your question, and they’ll be able to understand it, and write back a reply.
If you mostly want to hang in Tokyo, maybe use a travel agent to book a flight and book a hotel with easy access to the light rail. The light rail (not the subways) makes a big loop around the city, and there are stops at places like Akihabara. It is pretty easy to use, and not as threatening as the subway system.
If you do go to Japan, however, I would recommend taking the train over to Hiroshima. I think the bomb museum is a “must see” for Japan. Not depressing, and extremely well done. Will put a whole new perspective on the “just nuke 'em” attitude.
Stay away from Roppongi and you really don’t need to worry. You’re probably in more danger wandering around outside your house than you are in Akihabara, female or male aside.
Don’t worry about being alone. Do you think there will be no other travellers in Japan when you are there? Stay at the youth hostels and you will meet lots of other travelers who are just like yourself. Its easy to find traveling partners in a foreign country. Everyone is usually a lot friendlier because they are alone, too. Heck, I met someone on the plane before I even landed that I spent some time with.
I spent 3 months hitch hiking around the entire country and had the time of my life meeting both locals and other people from all over the world. I’m male, but I met groups of 2 or three girls hitch hiking together just like I was doing.
Get out of the big cities! Get the Lonely Planet travel guide and a Japanese English sentence book. Unlike most Asian languages, you can actually read a sentence to someone and they will understand you.
Be careful though, I left California for Asia and didn’t make it back for over seven years!
Japan really is fairly safe, although Tokyo is a big city and you should exercise normal caution and good sense there. But FWIW I am a woman and I up and moved to Japan when I was just a little older than you, and with sub-beginner Japanese language skills at that. While in Japan I took a week long vacation in Tokyo by myself and didn’t have any trouble there.
Since you’re concerned about traveling alone it might be best for you to go with a group or at least a friend, just so you’ll be more at ease and have more fun. If you do go alone then staying in youth hostels is a good way to meet other travelers (again, exercise normal caution when it comes to trusting new acquaintances), and the hostels often have English-speaking staff and can give you information and advice about the area. You’re unlikely to be the victim of any crimes or scams while in Japan, but the language barrier is very real so if you’re alone you cannot count on being able to find a bilingual person to help you in dealing with a problem, making plans, or even just ordering off a menu.
Again, I never encountered anything I couldn’t handle, but it was sometimes frustrating and I sometimes wound up doing things the hard way because I couldn’t for example read train timetables by myself. Maybe you’re okay with that kind of thing and maybe you’re not, it’s your call. If you are, I’d say go ahead and go alone. If not, go with friends or an organized tour.
Go online right now and buy a ticket. Run down to your local bookstore and buy a copy of the Lonely Planet. After that, all you have to do is get on that plane. Ta-da! You are suddenly a world traveler. It’s really no harder than that.
Really man, when I was your age I took a totally unplanned three month trip to India- the most chaotic travel destination in the world- alone (and yeah, I’m a girl too.) Don’t be a wimp. Don’t be one of those people with a thousand excuses for why they never did the things they dream of.
You’ll meet some awesome, amazing people in hostels and traveler’s cafes. You’ll deal with the language- I live in a country where I don’t speak the language and I do fine. Millions of Japanese women live in Japan every day without ending up raped on the streets or whatever you are afraid of. Just use the same common sense that keeps you safe in your hometown.
Your family will deal. You’re a grown up.
So get off the Dope and go buy that ticket. It will change your life.
I never plan my vacations down to the last detail anyway - just enough to have somewhere to stay and some sights to see. I agree that you should do some research on any country that you plan to visit, but that’s just learning the local rules, laws and customs, to make sure that you don’t break any of them. You’ll be fine.
Count me as another who says go for it. I’m older than you, kushiel, but I’m going alone after taking the JLPT Yon Kyuu at the end of this year, and can’t wait.
My favorite part of traveling when I was young was the freedom of not having a plan, of being able to pick up and go to a city (or country!) of my choice the very next day. As others point out, you will meet other travellers, travel with them for a while, and then part ways if you choose; you won’t lack for company if you desire it.
Also, the language barrier is not a problem. My theory (tested in many countries) is that if you can write down numbers and point you can travel pretty much anywhere and get by just fine.
Traveling in Japan is pretty easy and safe in the cities. Just avoid the night-clubby places and it should be ok.
It would be useful if you outline a schedule for your trip early and get the logistics out of the way.
I would recommend a one day Hato bus trip to get the major sights out of the way with minimum planning. I used it when my friends were here, and it was not as bad as I expected.
You dont need to know much Japanese to see interesting places. Though, If you are serious about trying out Japanese food, I would recommend getting a bilingual food guide. Most places have picture menus which give you a fair idea about what you are getting.
Also, its starting to get hot in Tokyo about now, so you might want to be prepared for humid and hot weather.
If you want to hunt some specific info, Ill be glad to help!
Let’s not candy coat things. Of course the language barrier is a problem. It’s not a HORRIFIC problem – in Japan it’s far more likely to lead to inconvenience than serious trouble – but not being able to read signs or ask for directions is definitely a problem when traveling in an unfamiliar place.
It’s up to the OP what kind of potential inconvenience she’s willing to put up with in her travels. It’s certainly possible for a young woman to travel alone in Japan and have a great time, but such a trip may involve things the OP would consider unpleasant. If for instance she has dietary restrictions then it may be very difficult to figure out what she can and can’t eat.
I don’t want to be discouraging because I did travel in Japan alone and had a great time, but one person’s “getting by just fine” may be an awkward and frustrating waste of time and money for someone else. The OP needs to think about things like how comfortable she is with eating food with ingredients she may not be able to identify, whether she’d be okay with sharing a hostel room with strangers (possibly strange men since not all Japanese hostels guarantee single-sex rooms), and if she’s willing to take on the responsibility of making all her travel arrangements herself.
kushiel, I’ll echo chromaticity’s advice of making a rough schedule early on. You can often book hotel rooms or hostel beds online, and it makes things easier later if you already know where you’ll be sleeping each night. If you’ve just got a week you may want to be based in Tokyo the whole time (there’s certainly plenty to see and do there!) and make day trips out to other places like Nikko and Kamakura if you like.
A good way to save money on food is to do as many Japanese people do and grab lunch or dinner from a convenience store or grocery store. A variety of boxed sushi, onigiri, and other prepared Japanese food is available this way. You can also get plenty of snacks, sweets, and drinks this way, and sometimes sandwiches (although they usually looked like pretty sad sandwiches to me) or even frozen burritos (pretty good in my experience). For restaurant meals lunch is usually a better bargain than dinner.
When traveling within Japan if I was staying someplace that didn’t have breakfast included I’d usually visit a 100 yen shop on my first day and buy a bowl and spoon. Then I’d go to a grocery store to buy some cereal and milk and be all set for breakfast for the rest of my stay.
100 yen shops are also a great place to pick up cheap souvenirs, they tend to carry a lot of knickknacks like paper fans, beckoning cat statues, Asian-style dishes, etc. You can also often get snacks and soda or sports drinks there.
I also live in Japan at the moment and will second what everyone else said! If you are a woman traveling alone, Japan is definitely one of the safest countries to do it in. Sure, people will tell you that you need to take basic precautions, just as in every country, and this is true–but the fact remains that I have traveled all around Japan by myself, walked through Kabukicho at 5 AM, stayed at youth hostels in one of the most ghetto areas of Tokyo, and never felt even half as threatened as I did in my own neighborhood back in college. And I lived in a pretty average American city neighborhood! And yes, I am a woman. I also went to South Korea, Taiwan, and New Zealand by myself, not knowing those countries at all, and had no problems. The world is not as scary as it might look at first, trust me!
It is pretty easy to get around Japan without any Japanese, especially if you stick to the big tourist draws–Tokyo and Kyoto, maybe down to Hiroshima. Almost all of the big stations in Tokyo will have English speakers ready to help you, and the same in Kyoto. Kyoto and Tokyo have many English-speaking residents and lots of English language brochures and information desks. Japan desperately wants more tourists and will sometimes bend over backwards to accommodate these tourists. For example, the Japanese rail pass is one of the best travel deals in the world, and only available to non-residents. Food is also pretty easy to deal with. There is American style fast food available everywhere if you get desperate, and lots of restaurants have the infamous plastic food outside, so you can point at what looks tasty. There are plenty of English menus too, even in some surprising places! I can read Japanese pretty well now, but the most unexpected places still bring out English menus sometimes…
If you are really nervous about your first trip, it is perfectly understandable. But it is very possible and Japan is one of the safest countries to stretch your wings, so to speak. Sure, try to go with some friends or get a guided tour if absolutely necessary, but I would also advise planning it yourself. Anyone can do it, especially in this internet age. Japan is an amazing place and I hope you end up visiting it! Let us know what you decide, eh? We have plenty of expats here so we can give some good advice, I think.
I recently went to Japan for 2 weeks with absolutely know knowledge of the language. It was easy to get around Tokyo and the airports (I spend a week skiing in Hokkaido as well). I had not problems with the subway or train system for getting out of Tokyo on day excursions.
I checked up on the hotel I stayed at when I was in Tokyo a few years ago and found that it now has a different name, which I’m guessing also means it’s under different management. It was a nice and relatively inexpensive hotel when I stayed there though, and I liked the location a lot – right near the Asakusa Kannon Temple (Sensoji) and also close to a subway station. It is across town from the specific neighborhoods you said you were interested in, but you could get to Shinjuku on the subway in 30-45 minutes.
The current name of this place is the Chisun Inn Asakusa (listed some places online as the Hotel Chisun Inn Asakusa). You can book a room there through Travelocity, looks like the rates are around US $100 per night for this summer. This is the only Tokyo hotel I’m at all familiar with, other Dopers may be able to recommend places closer to Shinjuku or Akhibara.
I didn’t stay in any Tokyo hostels either, but I have stayed in hostels in other places and never had a bad experience. You can expect to pay somewhere around US $30-50 per night in a hostel. The trade-off in a hostel is between price and privacy – the cheaper the room, the more people you’ll be sharing it with. Hostels do tend to fill up in the summer, so you may have to move around a bit rather than staying in one hostel for your whole trip. You can check availability and book online at four different Tokyo hostels through the Hosteling International website. There are also plenty of independent hostels, you can search for them online or consult a guidebook for recommendations.
I’m just checking back in to say thanks for all the advice I’m still just in the ‘thinking about it’ stage, so I haven’t made any real plans yet, but I’ll come back and tell y’all when I do!
I spent a week in Tokyo and a week in Kyoto with my brother, no tour group. We had virtually no problems at all finding our way around (besides some typical touristy wandering) or navigating the subways.
Since neither of us speak a word of Japanese, there was a lot of pointing at things on menus or crazily gesticulating to communicate a point… but everyone was extremely polite (at least polite enough to refrain from laughing until after we left) so here’s another vote for “just go.” It was a great, great trip and I’m anxious to go back.
When you’re planning your activities/hotels, be sure to note which train/subway stop is nearby. Use Hyperedia to get approximate travel times. Find things close together for day trips and print out the “maps” page for the activity to show people for when you get lost. They’re usually listed in both Japanese and English.
Another thing about the restaurants: most will have either photographs of the meals or plastic models of the food outside. I don’t like tentacles and could usually tell just by looking at the menu/model. There’s no shame in pointing at the picture. Hell, McDonalds has a pictorial menu mat at the counter for just that purpose!
Like everyone else says, language isn’t a problem. I ended up in the wrong train station once, stared quizzically at the Japanese-language railroad map for a few minutes when a few schoolgirls, probably 10 years old, approached me and told me where to go. Boy, was I happy!
