For me, Tokyo area alone I can spend 8 days happily. Same with Osaka/Kyoto/Kansai area. Hokkaido no comment cos I never go before.

What I suggest is you go read up more details first http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2164.html ... list down what attractions / activities you feel you would really enjoy / really want to go. Then build an itinerary and see how many days you need for Tokyo (and tokyo area side-trips) and then see whether you have enough days left for any other far away area.

If you are planning to go tuna auction, you should consider that you'll be awake by like 3.30am, so a full day itinerary all the way til late night might be ... tiring.

It's the tourist vs resident thing. I live in SG for like 3 years liao and a hell lot of the tourist attractions I also never bother going. When ppl ask me 'MBS skypark worth it to go or not' I'm like errrrrrrrrrrrrrr I dunno, you google and see lor lol.

Here's the thing about the auction, it really does kill almost an entire day. If it's worth it or not ... up to you lor. Basically you get cramped with like 50 other people in a corridor, can't really walk around or do anything other than see this



Is it worth it to wake up at 3.30am, travel and queue/wait for 2-3 hours just to see 10minutes of this? Only you can decide

Side note, after the auction finishes it will be relatively late in the morning and sushi dai / daiwa sushi queues will be epicly long liao.

^
This. Not exactly cheap though, I remember paying around 950-1000yen per day for it (so about rm30). But anyway in my opinion it's worth the money to have internet wherever you go.

Alternately ... I see some advertisements/promotions for this NAVITIME app which supposedly gives you a map of free wifi spots ... but absolutely no idea how useful/useless it is.

Like sacwoc and EdBaaBaa said, CC widely accepted in the larger stores. But smaller places, and especially for food, mostly cash only.

However for Cash Withdrawal from foreign ATM -- this one is tricky. Japan banks all very weird one don't sign up to those international network so majority of ATM you can't withdraw money. Last time I only know seven bank ATM can, but apparently they also stopped liao so now I dunno which ATM can withdraw.

This post has been edited by deodorant: Mar 10 2014, 10:57 AM

Yeah I used to withdraw at 7-11 there (i.e. seven bank atm).

http://www.sevenbank.co.jp/english/ir/pdf/...20131216_E1.pdf

Last year April they suspended mastercard (cirrus) overseas withdrawals but it seems this year january they re-instate it again. So I guess 7-11 ATM all now OK.

Can, but haneda only got premium delivery option extra 1220yen. better send to your hotel.


Can rent additional eneloop from them as well.

I've visited Sushi Dai twice. Both times start queue at around 6.15am. Summer 2011 - 1.5 hours queue. Spring (Sakura season) last year - 4.0 (!!) hours queue. No idea why the huge difference in queue times. When you turn up the lady will tell you roughly what's the expected wait; in my opinion anything more than 2 hours queue not worth the waste of time.


My visit last year, I went at 3.30pm and got a queue ticket for 5.30, not so bad ba (weekday). Also, agreed that tokyo banana is way overrated, I still prefer this snack over anything else:

Thought the forecast for this year was first bloom 29March. So he won't be able to see full bloom but at least better than nothing? lol.

http://www.jnto.go.jp/sakura/eng/city.php?CI=27

RegentCid response already so obvious, why you still need to ask this ...

haha yeah true that. one day walk around can easily get half dozen free packs

at nishiki market area got gogyo ramen is quite famous. the soup black colour one and got strong burnt/char taste. miso ramen is better imo.



then there is another place called hanaore which serve sabazushi - this one is like uh, vinegar mackerel sushi on rice but kyoto/kansai style which is pressed very tightly rather than edo style (relatively) loose rise. worth a try if you are foodie



also kyoto is the home of kaiseki ... http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3963.html ... got too many restoran serving kaiseki from cheap to those 2, 3- michelin star expensive places. i went to kichisen and the meal was super nice. blogwhore link here:

Why not skip kansai area since you are flying to Tokyo and from Tokyo? Just do day trips from Tokyo instead of trying to cram in kansai IMO.


Osaka to Kobe less than 1 hour train, if you are foodie then worth the trip to go just to eat then back

If Tokyo really is that dangerous, wouldn't all the Tokyo residents who live there breathe the air drink the water eat the local produce for the whole year get horrible mutations and miscarry all pregnancies? But you see Tokyo fertility rate before and after fukushima also no change (around 1.0x).

So if locals also no problem, why would you go for 1 week, get exposed to only 1/50 the radiation, and suddenly have all sorts of problems?

tokyo? tokyo already like full bloom 1-2 days ago. by the time you reach there probably starting to fall liao. which IMO actually is a quite nice time to view oso, cos when the wind blows you get a lot of petals like raining.

depends what you wanna see there, but in general no 2 days not enough, you wouldn't be able to cover most of the more popular attractions

so late, u need to look for those late blooming variety of sakura cos the normal ones will be half gone. in Kyoto look for ninnaji temple grounds, got a decent sized late blooming sakura collection there. it's near kinkakuji so not that big a detour if u planning to go there anyway. dunno any other places with majority late blooming flowers.

Wow this is getting more and more ridiculous. I went once in 2011 (1.5hr queue), once in 2013 (4.0hr) ... now already 5.5hr? Crazy.

random question, what are you supposed to call sushi chef ah? as in like if u wanna get the chef attention to order (e.g. in conveyor belt sushi place). takkan say excuse me right