Japan Trip Tips: Prepare To Go To Tokyo

Flying laser kitty visits Japan. Via.

When Japan Society announced it would give away a trip to Tokyo as part of the spring membership drive, the rush of entries was incredible. After processing over 4,000 applications, a winner was chosen today at random [right column], and the lucky Nina Hazen will receive round-trip tickets for two courtesy of United Airlines and three nights in a deluxe suite at The Capitol Hotel Tokyu.

For the first-time traveler—a person who may never have dreamed of going to Japan—how does one prepare to go to Tokyo?

Help abounds online. Tokyo’s official tourism site has some amazing resources on visiting the city, and the national tourism site covers the country as a whole equally well.

For hip goings on each week, Time Out Tokyo lists everything from the local music scene to the latest restaurants and gallery openings. CNNGo’s comprehensive Tokyo Insiders Guide explores the best eats (Japan leads the world with the most Michelin 3-star restaurants) and attractions, including the top five museums. The site also humorously (and mostly helpfully) lists the “50 reasons Tokyo is the world's greatest city”. Lonely Planet highlights which seasons are the best times to visit, and Fodors has some helpful cost saving tips.

Sometimes important-yet-culturally-subtle travel tips are missing from mainstream guides, so we asked Japan Society staff members what their top tips are for first-time Tokyo goers:

✈ You’ll find ATMs everywhere, but they may not accept foreign bank cards. Be sure you take some Yen with you, so you do not have trouble getting cash right away. If you're in a pinch, look for ATMs with the U.S. postal logo. They accept American bank cards and there is usually no fee beyond the regular bank transaction fee. Also, don’t spend all your money on vending machine and conbini (convenience store) drinks. You will find yourself out of cash sooner than you think.

✈ Bring lots of new and clean socks! It is customary in Japan to remove shoes when entering a room, but there are not always slippers available.

✈ Even though you may not be visiting for business purposes, bring a bunch of business cards. Everyone you meet will want to exchange cards, even if they know they will never see you again.

✈ Don’t forget a hand towel and pocket packs of facial tissues. Japan is a famously clean country, but most public restrooms don’t have paper towels or toilet paper. Everyone in Japan knows to bring supplies when out and about, but this tip doesn’t often make it into the guide books. In shopping areas, you will probably find people handing out promotional tissues with advertisements on them. Take them!

✈ There is no need to bring pajamas because whether you are staying at a traditional inn (ryokan) or a commercial hotel, the room will come with yukata (thin, comfortable kimono-style robe) for men and women to wear when getting ready for bed.

✈ Likewise, you don’t have to bring your toothbrush or toothpaste. Hotels, no matter if ritzy or more economic, always provide these for free.

✈ When shopping, try to make it to the depāto (department store) basement, which is filled with luxurious food vendors. Be sure to try  fresh fruit in Japan. It is über expensive, but super delicious. And pick up some Japanese Kit Kats. There are over 200 different exotic flavors to try from  cantaloupe to ginger ale to wasabi.

✈ While Tokyo is typically the prime destination in Japan, visit other cities to get a better sense of the country. Consider a daytrip to Kyoto, which is steeped in Japanese history; Osaka, a mecca for street food; or Hakone, known for their onsen (hot springs).

✈ Other daytrips can include a spectacularly beautiful mountain hike at Takao-san (an hour away from Shinjuku station on the Keio line) with endless mountain staircases for hardcore hikers and easier paved paths for casual walkers; the Indian cuisine in the Waseda/Takadanobaba area is a must—try the restaurant Daruma for its to-die-for nan and happy atmosphere; or take a trip on the Arakawa line—the last remaining street car in Tokyo.

Finally, Japan Society President, Motoatsu Sakurai says:

Take an enthusiasm to experience an incredibly vibrant and engaging culture. In addition to the sights of Japan, be open to meeting the people and sharing stories. This is especially true after the tsunami and earthquake that devastated the northeast coast last year. People are very thankful for the thoughts and generous support from America and people around the world and want to share their thanks. For this very reason, visiting Japan is one of the best ways to help it recover.

Ambassador Sakurai also notes, “Just as important as what people take to Japan is what people bring back. In addition to an experience unlike any other, I also recommend bringing back Pocky. Anyone who knows me knows it has been a good meeting when I share Pocky from my most recent trip to Japan.”

--JS Staff

UPDATED 5/1/2012.

News Blast

Copyright © 2010 AFP

Tokyo samurai women punish fat with sword workout

Japan's ancient samurai swords were once used to slice apart enemies, but in a new fitness craze they serve to slash away at extra pounds and cut down on modern-day stress instead. "Cut down!", a sword-wielding instructor shouted during a recent "Samurai Camp" gym session in Tokyo as a squad of sweat-drenched women warriors followed suit, slashing the air with their shiny blades. "Put your right foot forward, cut down straight, thrust out your chest, no bending of the back," the instructor yelled to the sound of a techno dance beat and swooshing weapons. "Punish the extra fat with this!" To avoid turning the health workout into a bloodbath, the swords are made of wood and urethane foam, but the determination of the participants is steely: the goal is to shed five kilograms (11 pounds) in about a month.

U.S. transport chief test-rides Japan magnetic train

The U.S. transport chief took a test ride Tuesday on Japan's super-fast magnetic train, a contender for President Barack Obama's multi-billion-dollar national high speed railway project. Japan is up against China, France, Germany and other bidders as it seeks to sell its Shinkansen bullet and magnetic train systems for the American rail plan, which is backed by 13 billion dollars in public funding. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he looked forward to "the thrill of a lifetime" as he boarded the train for a 500 kilometre (310 mile) per hour ride at the Yamanashi Maglev Test Line near Mount Fuji.

One-on-one counselors to be introduced to support jobless people  

The government decided Tuesday to introduce counselors to support those who are unemployed over a long duration one-on-one in fiscal 2011. At a meeting to tackle the unemployment issue, Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, "It is necessary to support needy persons individually and continuously." The government plans to allocate the costs for the program in the fiscal 2011 national budget. The counselors are expected to help unemployed people find jobs and accommodation.

WHO: Japan's life expectancy longest at 83 years

Japan and San Marino in Europe have the world's longest life expectancy at 83 years, according to the World Health Organization. On Monday, the U.N. body released World Health Statistics 2010, which is based on surveys conducted in 2008 and covers 193 WHO member countries. By gender, Japanese women boast the longest average life expectancy at 86 years, followed by France, Andorra and Monaco at 85 years. Japanese men were ranked 4th at 79 years, following San Marino at 81 years, and Iceland and Switzerland at 80 years.

Tokyo matchmaking services getting more diverse

Matchmaking services in Tokyo now come in a variety of forms -- even one aimed at bringing together cat lovers. So-called "cat cafe" Nyafe Melange in Tokyo's Ebisu district, where cuddly cats are on hand to be petted, is hosting lessons for singles on photographing their favorite animal. "There are many people who are getting bored of the ordinary style of matchmaking events, in which men go around the seats to talk to women," said Kazumi Nokajima, organizer of the event for cat lovers.

News Blast

AFP/File/Yoshikazu Tsuno

Risk of Japan going bankrupt is real, say analysts

Greece's debt problems may currently be in the spotlight but Japan is walking its own financial tightrope, analysts say, with a public debt mountain bigger than that of any other industrialised nation. Public debt is expected to hit 200 percent of GDP in the next year as the government tries to spend its way out of the economic doldrums despite plummeting tax revenues and soaring welfare costs for its ageing population. Based on fiscal 2010's nominal GDP of 475 trillion yen, Japan's debt is estimated to reach around 950 trillion yen -- or roughly 7.5 million yen per person.

As violence escalates, Japan firms cringe

The nearly month-long street clashes in Bangkok have bought much commerce to a standstill. Japanese companies with operations in Thailand are no exception. Because of its location, Bangkok is ideally situated as an export base for Japanese companies with business dealings in the West and in Asia. Some business leaders fear that a prolonged suspension could hurt the trend toward a global economic recovery.

ANA prospers while rival suffers

Business was booming for All Nippon Airways Co. in February as ailing rival Japan Airlines Corp. suffered its second successive double-digit fall in international passenger numbers. JAL said Monday that the number of passengers on international routes stood at 804,191 in February, down 10.3 percent from the same month in 2009. Passenger numbers fell 10.7 percent in January.

Start-up rents out Tokyo's tight spaces

Japan is famous for its ability to make the most of limited space. The cocoon-like capsule hotels were first developed here and many single city dwellers live in tiny studio apartments known as rabbit hutches. Now, a new online real-estate marketplace is taking that trait to new levels. Nokisaki.com, named after the Japanese word for the space that juts out from the edge of a building, seeks pockets of "dead space" around cities and converts them into short-term rental property. In Tokyo, where every sliver of land is at a premium, a few feet of unused private property near the front entrance of an apartment building can be used to sell muffins.

Not shaken, Japanese martinis are stirred. And stirred.

Thirteen stirs. Plus one-half. That's just part of the recipe for a classic Japanese cocktail called mizuwari. Cocktail culture in the United States has blossomed, with bartenders across the country rejecting syrupy sweet-and-sour mixes and fluorescent cherries for homemade bitters and microdistilled spirits. But in Japan, things are even more serious. Bartenders spend 10, maybe 20 minutes, carving individual cubes out of blocks of ice. After liquids and ice are poured into a shaker, bartenders jostle the thing just so, to achieve the right temperature and texture.

Tokyo Collection Week

The Mainichi Daily News has a great photo series on the 10th Tokyo Collection Week, which took place from March 23 to March 26 and was held primarily at the Tokyo Midtown shopping complex.

 ENTOPTIC

Aimed at sharing Japanese fashion with the world, some 40 brands unveiled their 2010-2011 autumn/winter collections. Collection newcomer Entoptic, by designers Wataru Matsumoto and Kenta Kakinuma, kicked off the show. Mainichi described the line as expressing "threat and protection" in clothes adorned with thorns and furs wrapped around models' bodies, depicting independent, modern urban women.

GUT'S DYNAMITE CABARETS

To get the complete lowdown on designers featured, notable collections, and killer photos, go to the official site for Japan Fashion Week.

Japan and Friends: Foreign Relations

There has recently been some friction between Japan and the United States over the Futenma base in Okinawa and over the existence of secret Cold War-era agreements with Washington that, among other things, had allowed American nuclear-armed warships to sail into Japanese ports in violation of Japan’s non-nuclear policies. Martin Fackler for The New York Times summed the issue up succinctly:

"The existence of the pacts, known in Japan as the “secret treaties,” has long been known from declassified documents in the United States and the testimony of former American and Japanese diplomats. But successive prime ministers denied their existence, turning the agreements into a symbol for many Japanese of how Liberal Democratic governments had turned their country into a stunted democracy run without full consent by the public."

After ending the Liberal Democrats’ nearly unbroken 54-year grip on power last summer, the new Democratic Party government opened an investigation into the pacts as part of their promised housecleaning of Japan’s postwar order. Exposing the truth about their nation’s secret dealings with the United States was also part of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s pledges to put Tokyo on a more equal footing with Washington. This fed concerns among some in Washington, particularly conservatives, that revealing the treaties was part of an effort by Mr. Hatoyama’s administration to push away from the United States."

Tobias Harris contributed some much-needed perspective on both situations in his essay Japan: The importance of open diplomacy for East Asia Forum, which was posted today. Here is a snippet:

"The Hatoyama government deserves some blame for not being clearer about why it wanted a review in the first place, which enabled some to paint the government as anti-American. But those who see the Futenma dispute in the worst possible light have misinterpreted the Hatoyama government’s position. I think that the Hatoyama government is approaching Futenma less as a foreign policy issue than as a domestic policy issue, because a bilateral agreement as complicated the realignment plan involves too many actors within Japan to be simply a bilateral matter for governments in Tokyo and Washington. Indeed, if the 2006 agreement has a flaw it is that the Koizumi government acted without the full approval of Okinawan constituents, which explains at least in part why subsequent LDP governments did little but drag their feet on implementing the agreement."

According to The New York Times, by March 3rd the Japanese government had approached United States officials with a tentative proposal for resolving a festering dispute over the American air base in Okinawa. The proposal would relocate the Futenma Marine Corps air station, a busy helicopter base, from a crowded city in southern Okinawa to a less populated area in the island’s north, but would be smaller and have a diminished impact on local residents and the environment than previously agreed upon.

It is unclear whether the proposal is going to be acceptable to Washington, or indeed to members of Prime Minister Hatoyama’s own coalition, particularly the Social Democratic Party, a tiny leftist group that wants the base removed from Japan altogether. Harris concludes:

"But whether or not the Hatoyama government succeeds, it is important to recognise that it is acting on the basis of an old idea, that a democratic foreign policy must necessarily be conducted in the sight of the people in whose name it is being conducted. In its pursuit of this aim, the Hatoyama government has also implicitly suggested that an alliance conducted behind closed doors is inappropriate for a more democratic Japan, that the alliance will not endure if it continues to rest upon secret agreements and understandings."

Ramen!

Another food-related post to whet your appetites for j-CATION!

 

This one comes from a fun article in The New York Times entitled Exploring Tokyo Through Its Ramen Shops:

 "Ramenate! is hardly the only ramen blog out there. There are dozens, many in English, many more in Japanese. Together they constitute but one small corner of Tokyo’s sprawling ramen ecosystem, a realm that encompasses multilingual guidebooks, glossy magazines, databases that score shops to three decimal places, comic books, TV shows, movies (like the 1985 classic “Tampopo,” in which a Stetson-wearing trucker helps a beleaguered widow learn the art of ramen) and, according to the Shinyokohama Raumen Museum (yes, there is a ramen museum), the 4,137 shops selling bowls of noodles in broth.

Still unclear? Well, combine New Yorkers’ love of pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers, throw in some Southern barbecue mania, and you’ve still only begun to approximate Tokyo’s obsession with ramen."

News Blast

Tokyo Sky Tree to become a new peak for Tokyo -- but of what?

Despite the recent economic recession, Tokyo's pursuit of height shows no sign of slowing down, providing a lot more opportunities for its residents to enjoy the new facets of the city. The Tokyo Sky Tree, a broadcasting tower currently under construction in Tokyo's Sumida Ward, is now visible from various locations as it grows taller every day. The tower has already reached 300 meters high, and once completed, it will be the world's tallest self-standing tower at 634 meters.

Japan Plans to Ignore Any Ban on Bluefin Tuna

Japan will not join in any agreement to ban the international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna under the United Nations treaty on endangered species, the country's top fisheries negotiator said. The negotiator, Masanori Miyahara, said in a telephone interview this week that Japan "would have no choice but to take a reservation" - in effect, to ignore the ban and leave its market open to continued imports - if the species was granted most-endangered species status.

Asia’s Boom Conceals Some Darker Prospects

Taiwan grew at an 18 percent annualized rate in the fourth quarter. Japan is about to have its biggest initial public offering in more than a decade. A big Hong Kong property developer quickly sold hundreds of apartments in a remote suburb over the weekend after bringing in thousands of potential buyers with free buses from the city’s center. It is beginning to sound a lot like 2006 in Asia. Or is it?

7 Websites That Feature Incredible Photos of Japan

1. Stephen Wirtz Gallery: Michael Kenna

Check out the exhibition pages for Kenna's ghostly landscapes of Hokkaido in winter. Sublime photography adds an eerie quiet to the snowscapes shot in black and white.

2. Travel Japan Blog

Looking through this site means thumbing through the photo album of a sublime photographer and his adventurous family. Photos range from his children perched in front of breathtaking cityscapes to portraits of ancient Japanese temples to shots of quirky vending machines to an elegant series on the unpainted napes of geisha's necks.

3. More glimpses of unfamiliar Japan

Consistently beautiful gems of photo series found off the beaten track in Japan that span nature, architecture, culture, history, hidden nooks, and much more.

4. Tokyo Daily Photo

An almost daily photo from Tokyo, Japan that spans the absurd to the simple, the manga to the art history.

5. Fixed in Japan

A cyclist with a spunky attitude that shines through in all his vibrant photos.

6. Photographer in Japan

A finalist in the Photoblog Awards for Best Asian/Oceanian Photoblog 2008, has a knack for catching people and scenes at the perfect moment. Every shot is infused with spectacular emotion.

7. The Mainichi Daily News Photo Journal

Excellent snapshots of Japanese life from all over the islands from day to day with an interesting blurb accompanying each shot.

 

ENJOY!

5 Mind-Blowing Japanese Dance Performances

1. Tokyo Shibuya 2009

2. Contemporary Dance Showcase 2010

3. Sony Robots 2006

4. Ame to Ame (Candy and Rain) 2009

5. Swiss Butoh dancer Imre Thormann's performance at Hiyoshi Taisha Shrine

Ear To The Ground: Tokyo

An exclusive collaboration between LimeWire Store and New York – Tokyo! 

LimeWire Store’s Ear To The Ground series of FREE digital music compilations spotlights a different city for each release, and Ear To The Ground: Tokyo is the series’ 15th installment!

New York – Tokyo has selected a group of artists that represent the current progressive music scenes of Tokyo. They are the tastemakers within their scenes: from their fashions to the artwork on their album covers, these creative artists are making an effort to stand out in the crowded urban setting of Tokyo.

Within the U.S., download HERE

Outside the U.S., download HERE

Photography in Japan

Here are some great blogs that consistently have beautiful photography from the Land of the Rising Sun:

More glimpses of unfamiliar Japan
Off the beaten track in Japan:- Nature, Culture, History, Spirit, Art…

Tokyo Daily Photo
An almost daily photo from Tokyo, Japan…

Fixed in Japan
Fixed Gear and Life From Japan

Photographer in Japan
A finalist in the Photoblog Awards for Best Asian/Oceanian Photoblog 2008

Travel Japan Blog