JAPAN : the nitty gritty for a three week trip...

FLIGHTS

We flew Singapore airlines return to Tokyo ex Jhb.

HOTELS

I prepaid for all hotels on Hotels.com.  In the less touristy cities the hotels were local business style hotels but in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka the Remm and Vischio chain hotels were of an excellent standard. Modern and very well located near the main stations and subways. The rooms are small and compact of course but with fantastic amenities.

A good Ryokan in Kyoto is expensive.We just did 1 night for the experience and it was worth it.

TRANSPORT

The JR rail pass is essential and must be bought outside Japan before your trip.  The vouchers are couriered to your home address. We bought a 3 week pass but I would suggest spending your first week in Tokyo and then using a 2 week rail pass for the rest of your travels.

It covers all JR trains and almost all Shinkansen high speed trains.

The subways are separate companies to JR and local travel is very efficient and very cheap. 600 to 800 yen (ZAR 80 to 120 ) for a day travel card.

Uber is available as well as the Japan taxi app.

MEALS

Of course a big part of travel in Japan is experiencing the cuisine. You can eat relatively cheaply. A lunch set at most restaurants and chains will cost you ZAR 100 to 150 ( under 10 USD pp ) and you can find a Mac Donalds or a 7/11 sandwich for less.

Of course there's no upper limit when it comes to fine dining and Japanese specialities like Kobe beef or Keiseki. You can get awesome French or Italian cuisine too.

There are too many amazing foods to mention here ( do some research before you go ) but you may be surprised to find sushi is only a really small part of Japanese cuisine.

DRINKS

It's not all about tea even though Matcha is everywhere in every form at the moment.

Japan has a very sophisticated coffee culture which we really enjoyed exploring at chains like Tully( the Starbucks of Japan ) and Hoshino as well as at the little independent places.

Beer and Sake are popular. Japan has some excellent whisky and I quite enjoyed the very popular Highball, whisky and soda in a tall glass with a slice of lemon.

We learnt quite a lot about the Japanese wine industry and tried as many different wines as we could find. Wine bars are a growing trend in Japan.

In an everyday restaurant or bar a beer, a small glass of wine or a highball will cost about 500 yen each. (ZAR 70)

COMMS

We pre-ordered a mobile WiFi router with unlimited data which we could collect from the post office at the airport with a voucher and we were always connected. Google Maps is very useful and always in English and Google translate worked well too. All hotels and restaurants have very good free WiFi.

Japan has become a lot more touristy and a lot more English language friendly since we last visited and Neil worked there 15 years ago. But go! You should put it near the top of your travel bucket list for so, so many weird and wonderful reasons!