Ha ha no. Every year, me and my kids try to avoid picking the piece with the yolk.

Went out last night with the kids and their lanterns and my kids noted an interesting parallel: the Japanese also use lanterns at Obon.
This summer, at Obon, they used a lantern to lead the spirits of ancestors to the ancestral altar at home. When Obon was over, the lantern was used to lead the spirits back to the grave.

Pretty interesting to mix Chinese and Japanese festivals. 2 weeks from now is Undoukai (Sports Day) - my kids are looking forward to that! Too bad that one is in the akagumi team and the other is in the shirogumi team this year.

I think (s)he was just having some fun and messing with you lah. RM1200/night will get you a 5-star Tokyo hotel and the Metropolitan is not a 5-star hotel.
Look around (e.g. rakuten, zuji, orbitz etc) and I'll bet you'll have no trouble finding a hotel for your price range: Tokyo has something for everyone. Enjoy.

It's around 15,259yen/night (MYR560) for a standard room all taxes inclusive with free internet at zuji/travelocity (test dates Oct 12.)
Or RM499/night if picking the cheapest room.

I wouldn't call this price point expensive, certainly not RM1200/night although I guess that depends on the type of room. 5-stars go for at least 10,000yen/night more.

Rakuten shows business-class hotels in the Ikeburo area (e.g. Dai-ichi Inn) for 5600/yen. That's cheap and perfectly illustrates how Japan has been in a deflationary spiral for some time - I would've paid the same or more in 1994. Point is, Japan is not as expensive as people think (until the recent en-daka or rise in yen that is). I think for example, it is comparable to HK and SG. I am always shocked at how SG expensive SG has become when I visit there. The one thing that is expensive in Japan is intercity travel and also the propensity for hotels to charge by head.

There exist many criticisms of the Japanese educational system but above is pure generalization. There are good schools and bad schools everywhere. My kids' school is fine. My nephews'/nieces' schools are OK. All public schools.

Suica is very convenient, esp. for the reasons that matt85 states - you bypass lines at the machines. You won't save money but you won't lose money either with Suica - you can get a refund when you no longer need the card. JR charges a 210yen fee if there is balance and the 500yen deposit is fully refundable. If you deplete the card to a zero balance before refunding, there is no 210yen fee i.e. you lose exactly zero. Plus, you'll probably burn through the 1500yen Suica card easily over several days of travel. Also, it is secure, you can register the card so if you lose it, you can get its value back. What's not to like?

To travel around Tokyo, bad idea. Parking is tough, expensive. Overnight parking even harder to find. Traffic is bad. Expensive toll roads. Most of all, Tokyo is a maze, you will need a GPS, however address input will be in Japanese.

Renting a car to go out to the countryside makes more sense, especially if say you need to lug along lots of stuff e.g. going surfing. But still, rail network covers almost everywhere.

In the kanto area, passmo and suica are perfectly interchangeable i.e. no difference. You can use either wherever you might want to use a stored value chip card e.g. recharging, retail, taxis, buses and of course trains. And, of course, you can use passmo on the Yamanote line. The main difference between the two is that suica is a JR East offering and passmo is the other railway companies. So for example, you can buy a new suica card only from JR and if you are at a Keisei or Tokyo Metro or Odakyu counter, you can only buy passmo. Other than that, no difference in Tokyo.

All this stems from the fact that there are *multiple* separate railway companies in Tokyo, much less Japan. JR East != JR West. Back in the day before stored value cards, circa early 90s or so, it was quite challenging for me to calculate fare discounts/topups needed when transiting between 2 different company lines without exiting.

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Added on October 20, 2010, 12:52 amI've posted my experiences on the bmobile 3G service in the past. You might want to search for my post.


This post has been edited by tatsuyachiba: Oct 20 2010, 12:52 AM

Echigo-Yuzawa's a great place for skiing/boarding. We've been there 4-5 times but always out of peak season (i.e. mid-December, weekdays) before school's out. Short lines on the lifts. Multiple slopes and relatively cheap. Never been to Nagano.

http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopi...&#entry29745381

Feb is still in the middle of winter. Ski slopes will always have snow from Nov to March (even April for some) - they do not depend only on snowfall - they augment with man-made snow. You will see often the snow guns at the side of the slopes. All ski slopes will publish a daily condition report - what type of snow, whether it is packed/powder, what depth, and whether is was man-made.

You can always go to Echigo-Yuzawa and not ski. You don't have to buy a lift ticket to just walk around at the base of the slopes.
Stay in a ryokan and enjoy a natural spring onsen. The last ryokan we stayed at was a place called Hakuginkaku in Dec 2008 - we got a good deal, paid I think 10,000yen per head/night. That time, we booked everything separately: called the ryokan to book rooms, bought lift tickets when we got there and took the JR shinkansen from Tokyo Sta.

Edited to add:
There are many many other places too accessible from Tokyo besides Echigo-Yuzawa. For example, Gunma prefecture, for one, has a lot of snow and is known for good skiing. Last year, we went skiing in Yamanashi prefecture - mid-December - when we got there it was in blizzard-like conditions - you couldn't see more than 5 feet ahead.

This post has been edited by tatsuyachiba: Oct 26 2010, 01:09 AM

You cannot take a ski lift and decide to walk down the slope. Slopes are meant for you to ski down - they are very steep - too steep to walk down. In fact, I don't think they''ll even let you on the lift if you do not have skis on.

What it sounds like you're looking for is a cross-country ski trail - not downhill skiing. You could walk such a trail. I've not done x-country skiing in Echigo-Yuzawa but more than likely it will have more than a few of such trails. You can ask at the ski rental shop

Depending on where you stay, you would also have to travel to the slopes (not far). All the ryokans in Echigo-Yuzawa belong to an organization and they have shuttle bus (free) services to the 3-4 big gerende (ski slope) in the area. If you want to go to a smaller gerende, you can ask the ryokan to call them for a shuttle (that's what we did). The trip before last, we stayed at another ryokan that had its own small "family" gerende so it was literally outside our door.

Another option for you if all you want is to see/experience snow is to go to the Gala ski resort. JR built a special station for this resort - you get off the train right at the doorsteps of the resort. JR advertises this as a "One Day Ski" package. This is a huge resort - it has everything: food, ofuro (bath), rentals, classes. You take an early morning shinkansen (make sure it stops at Gala - which is one stop after Echigo-Yuzawa town but not every train stops at Gala) from Tokyo Sta. and ski or do what you want, soak in an ofuro, and come back by evening. No need to stay overnight. Lift tickets maybe 5000-6000, rentals maybe 3000, train ticket is less than 8000 (check hyperdia) if I recall correctly.

This post has been edited by tatsuyachiba: Oct 27 2010, 02:25 AM

BS. 44th president was born in Hawaii

akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!

20, not 18.

Anybody here a fan of J-pop? e.g. Arashi, AKB48, Green, Ikimonogakari etc. Could you PM me where I could find a download site (paid or otherwise, doesn't matter)?
My kids are crazy about them and want them on their ipods.

Anybody watch the recent Kouhaku 61st? My wife and daughter always cry when they hear Uemura Kana's song - Toire no Kamisama.

The Keikyu line automatically becomes the Toei Asakusa line so yes - it goes to Asakusa Sta. Only one ticket needed.
Note the reverse is not always true i.e. not all Asakusa line trains go to Haneda - you have to look at the train's destination (front of train or on display boards)

For both the Keikyu line and monorail, last trains are just after midnight. If you miss those, then you can also perhaps take the airport bus - they end just a little later (but not much) after midnight. You could take the the bus to Tokyo Sta. or Shibuya and then take the Yamanote line (which ends a little after 1am). Might not be cheaper then just cabbing it to Tamachi Sta. direct from airport.

Great report. Just curious - what exactly is a "kansai-ben souvenir"?. "ben" means "dialect".

I too have not been checking in often. Sorry to hear of your challenging situation - however, I totally understand. My wife is also Japanese, we went through the exact same experiences early on, many years ago. As they say in Japanese, yoku wakarimashita

First, I would try to make Malaysian life more accessible for your wife. Does she have a support group, is she plugged-in into the Japanese community? This is important. One of the ways you could do this is through her job for instance. Or through the Japanese school (you may not have kids yet though). It is very difficult to make an adjustment to an alien culture by diving in head-first, you have to take baby steps.

While I don't work in finance (and I don't live in Japan), I know a little since many of my customers are financial companies in Japan. In the past, I've spent a lot of time in the Otemachi area (near the palace/Hibiya) where all them are headquartered. There are lots of non-Japanese working there, esp. in foreign banks, of which there are many. Many of them do not speak Japanese at a business-level of proficiency - in fact, most meetings I have in Japan are in English. However, most of them don't need to speak Japanese because they bring a specialized skill to the table - foreign M&A, programmed trading algos, experience on the major bourses of the world etc. If you want to work in finance, you have to ask yourself, what specialized skills do you bring?

If your experience has been on the retail-side of banking, then it is difficult to parlay that to Japan. You will need to speak Japanese.

Instead of Japan, have you also thought of moving to a "neutral" country that your wife may fit in better? Singapore comes to mind. Very Japanese friendly - in the mid-90s, there were 30,000 expats living there although the numbers must have dwindled quite a bit since. Still lots of Japanese there, and if your wife gets a job in a Japanese environment with Japanese colleagues, she might adapt better. But not all is rosy, the last time I was in Singapore for a visit in November, I was shocked at the increases in cost of living there.

Try to see if you can fix her living conditions in Malaysia. Think out of the box i.e. consider other countries. If Japan, then you have to be there on the ground to find opportunities but there's a risk: if you take up menial jobs, that will leave a hole in your resume's timeline that you'll find hard to explain or recover from.

Good luck.

This post has been edited by tatsuyachiba: Feb 24 2011, 03:47 AM

3 options:

1) Leave your bags at hotel. Pickup on your way back to airport
2) Tokyo Sta. has coin lockers
3) Takkyubin service i.e. luggage delivery service from multiple companies like kuroneko yamato etc. Very common in Japan - we use this every time when we arrive. Around 1000-1500yen per bag. They pick up (usually 1 day before; sometimes 2) your bags and you get them back at their counters at the airport. As this is a common service, all hotels will have their phone numbers.

The answer depends on the airline. Baggage allowances and practices differ among airlines and countries as they have 2 different set of regulations to follow: international and national. For example, on Japanese airlines, they cannot serve pre-departure drinks in premium classes because it is not allowed by Japanese aviation law.

You are correct about guitars being allowed as carry-on on some US flag carriers. There is space onboard - a thin hardcase will fit in overhead storage (that is, if you pre-board and grab the space) depending on equipment operated and if none are available, you can have it stowed in a coat closet etc. Even then, to pull this off, you need to pre-board i.e. you are either an elite frequent flier or fly in a premium class. Otherwise, more often than not, the flight attendant will probably gate-check the guitar. Unfortunately, no US flag carrier operates service to KUL.

You may have more success if this is an electric rather than an acoustic.

I would check with the operating carrier or do what Yo-Yo Ma does when he flies with his Strad: he buys an extra ticket for it

Perhaps you guys don't work in frontline positions for the airline. I too work "kind of" in an airline - from the consumer-side that is . I fly a lot (> 100K miles) as part of my job. After doing this for many years, I am intimately familiar with the CoC (Conditions of Carriage) for flying. Flying is like a contract between me and the operating carrier - I need to know what I can and cannot do. Of course, I am still learning all the time and sometimes, actual practise is not the same as what is laid out in the manual.

About the comparison with golf clubs, the reason some airlines specifically allow musical instruments is that they are fragile. Not so golf equipment. Instruments are also personal and sometimes can be very expensive. Not the thing you'd like to check-in.

Here are some facts:
1) There is enough space for a guitar onboard depending on the operating equipment. More so, if it is an electric guitar but also enough space for a regular acoustic if using a thin hardcase. Enough space most Airbus and Boeing wide and narrow-bodies.

2) Yes, a guitar will take up lots of overhead space and will prevent other passengers from using the space directly over their seats. Flying economy compounds the issue because of the increased density of seats. Is this fair? Maybe not, but then again air travel is hardly fair: people have dedicated check-in counters, bypass security lines, board earlier because they are elite frequent fliers. But are there any rules against this? No if the airline allows it. That's why I wrote earlier that you would want to pre-board to carry this out successfully. First-come-first served.

3) There is other space on an airplane besides the overhead compartments. There are multiple vertical closets onboard for coats etc. You ask the flight attendant to permission to use these.

4) At least 2 major US airlines: Delta and United, explicitly allow guitars (this may be academic since none of them fly to KUL)
http://www.delta.com/traveling_checkin/bag...ments/index.jsp
http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6867,50773,00.html

5) However, specific to KUL, MAS seems to allow "musical instruments" bigger that the carry-on sizer
http://www.mas.com.my/my/en/book-and-plan/...pment-pets.html

In the end, carrying a guitar onboard will be YMMV. If it were me, I'd pack it carefully just in case, carry it through security and if there is no space onboard or they deny it for a reason, ask them to gate-check it. Gate-checked bags, at this moment, do not incur fees on major carriers.

I appreciate your insight since you're close to the ground. As it so happens, ANA (NH) is one of the airlines I fly a lot with.
However, NH does not operate flights to KUL so their baggage policies do not apply. It is the operating carrier - MH on the direct route - that counts.