Japan trip: Transportation

In Japan, there are many types of transportation you named it: shinkansen, subway/metro, bus, taxi, etc. The most popular one for tourists is JR Pass; you can use it to travel through all cities in Japan. They have 7 or 14 days pass and should be used in consecutive days. This pass can be booked online through JR Pass website or official travel agents in your country. BUT you should pay attention that they also have regional passes! I often browse the website but didnt realise it until a week prior to my departure. We went to Japan for two weeks and decided to only buy a 7-day JR Pass. You can reserve seat too with this pass by coming to JR Office in the stations and search for the schedule you want.  Before riding the shinkansen, it's best to take a look which car is for non reserved and reserved seats they put in on board because if you ride the wrong car, you should pay the fine.

  

 

If you decide to go to some cities which are close to each other, JR Pass maybe isnt your best choice. For example, I went to Miyajima, Hiroshima, Okayama, Osaka in the first five days then after reading here and there, JR Kansai Hiroshima Area Pass would be my best choice because I needed JR Ferry to go to Miyajima and with this pass, I can ride either Nozomi or Mizuho shinkansen. These shinkansens are the fastest as they stop in mostly main stations compare to Hikari or Kodama. They arent covered by the ordinary JR Pass; by using JR Kansai Hiroshima Area Pass I can save quite some time. Hikari runs in the similar track with Nozomi but stops more. To see which type of pass suits your trip the best, you can click here.

Besides JR Pass, there are also other railways run by private companies such as Kintetsu, Hankyu, etc. In my Nara day trip, we used 1-day Kintetsu Rail Pass as Kintetsu station was closer to Nara city centre and you can use it in Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto. Japan really give tourists lots of benefits; there are many local passes for one day, two day, three day, or five day provides with discounts to tourist spots if you show them your pass before your payment. You can read more about it when I explain it through the day trips. 

JR Pass doesnt always cover the city area so using IC cards will be the best choice. This card can be used in subways or buses and I really recommend it since it's also rechargeable. Sometimes it takes time if you always pay cash yet at the same time, you only have big amount of money. Just tap it at the station entrance and tap again at the exit. It's also accepted in paying for coin lockers in station, vending machines, shops, and restaurants. Most popular one will be ICOCA, Suica, and Pasmo. ICOCA can be bought in Kansai area, whereas Suica and Pasmo can be purchased in Tokyo. Now these cards can be used in whole Japan so it's really convenient. One thing I learnt during my trip was it's the best to get the city map when you arrived in the main station so that you could choose the most efficient and budget friendly transportation.

Note: Everything I share here is based on my own experience. Maybe it's suitable for me but not for you so please read and search for more information. Let's enjoy the trip!

Japan trip: Preparation

Two weeks ago I went to Japan and this was the first time my family went abroad by ourselves not through the travel agent (excluding Malaysia, Singapore, Hongkong, and China which were familiar cities for us). These posts series will be about how I and my sister prepare for our trip and the results of it. Let's start!

First, we bought the flight tickets a few months before our departure. We planned to go for two weeks as we wanted to enjoy and have fun throughout the vacation. Next we decided which cities we wanted to go. Your relatives or friends' itinerary would be really helpful in this step if you were like me as a first timer to Japan. After the date and cities had been decided, I (the unofficial tour leader), with the help from my sister searched for our stay. It's the most difficult part because we needed to view many properties to choose the best one. We searched through Airbnb, booking.com, agoda.com, etc. We were a 5-member family so it's quite a dilemma to choose a hotel because we needed two rooms and in Japan, hotels were expensive. Usually people prefer for Airbnb or apartments and these were our choices for this trip. We took quite a long time to decide our stay, viewed here and there, spent around two weeks because we read everything to details. Finished deciding our stay, we started to search for transportation. The most popular one was of course JR Pass but I will make another post for Japan's method of transportation because this also confused me before I went there and experienced it myself. Date checked, accomodation checked, transportation checked, what's next? We decided which places in each city we wanted to go; you only have limited time yet there's A LOT of it in Japan. For food and snacks, it wasnt a problem for us since we didnt have any restriction in food and planned to try everything! We only brought four luggages and it's not that big since I heard from my relatives that we needed to walk everywhere in Japan and mostly they used stairs. Later I found out they always had elevator in each station because the facilities for disabled people were super complete. Spare time to do lots of research before you go, either through blog posts, websites, or youtube to make sure you are at least a bit familiar of the places you want to go.

Wanna One World Tour in Jakarta

Hi finally Im back (again)! I dont know how many times I have gone on hiatus, but the urge to write again suddenly comes back. This time I will share my story about my experience in watching concert in Indonesia for the first time for Wanna One. My first kpop concert was JYJ Asia Tour in Hongkong in 2014, then continued by TVXQ Special Live Tour T1STORY in Bangkok. I always like going to kpop concerts for my bias because I can meet and watch them closely and the thought of being in the same place together really makes me happy. Back to the main story, I started to like Wanna One in January this year right before my final national exam. If you are unfamiliar with kpop, they are trainees coming from Produce 101 season 2. I suggest you to watch the show first to understand how hard they have worked to be able to debut. Im not the type that easily changes my bias from one to another. I've liked TVXQ as five members for 11 years now and Wanna One is the other group that I like right now. After the announcement that they would be holding a world tour, I was so excited that I kept on following the updates on twitter about when and where the world tour will be hold. Jakarta was on the list! I was hesitated for days on whether I should watch in Jakarta or in another country that's still close to Indonesia. It's mostly because I didnt have any experience in going to concerts in Indonesia and I knew how chaos it would be watching from previous kpop concerts updates. In the end I chose to watch it in Jakarta with my younger sister and we bought the standing section CAT 1 because I wanted to watch as close as possible to the stage but with reasonable price. 

 

15 July 2018: D-day

We arrived quite early around 11am and I went to search for the person who helped me to buy the ticket. It was really crowded at that time; I was surprised because early in the morning I saw people updating in twitter they were already at the venue around 6-7am. After getting my tickets, I went around to buy merchandises and search for freebies. It was so damn hot and humid that I kept on sweating. We entered the venue at 5pm where they did body check. This was where the problems started. It was not that strict; they only checked if we had foods or drinks with us. Swing Ent as Wanna One agency has been really strict with cameras and videos in concerts yet Indonesian promotor only did superficial check? Yes. We were led to a holding area where the section has been separated. I was confused at first because the room was huge and the sign wasnt clear enough and there's no one to ask. People around me confusely queued and we didnt know if we were standing at the right place. The categories were VIP right left, CAT 1 right left, CAT 2 right center left, CAT 3, and CAT 4. The first three sections were free standing and with queue number to enter the venue but in Indonesia, of course, queue number has no use. I was in CAT 1 left and all of us waited for so long to enter the venue. In the end, you know what happened? They told all of us to enter at the same time and of course everybody ran! I didnt know what was in their mind at that time. They didnt think about their own safety. I and my sister stood in the back; it was less crowded and we still could see the stage clearly. The concert started at 7pm and this was when the chaos started. After singing 2-3 songs, the show was resumed. I was confused at first, but then the promotor told us to step back a little bit because the front crowd had been really packed and kept on pushing each other. Being paused for 30 minutes, the concert was resumed again and it ended at 10pm. During the concerts, it wasnt allowed to record or take pics but once again, people started to take out their phones to record. The promotor was unable to control the crowd and it happened. Despite all the dramas, the concert itself was amazing! Wanna One didnt disappoint me at all; they were beyond my expectation. Of course Kang Daniel was really cute and sexy the whole time!!! I sang and danced along throughout the concert lol I had expect myself to lose my voice the next day because of too much screaming (this happened to me twice at JYJ and TVXQ concerts) but thankfully nothing happened. I hope I still can watch their next concert as they are going to disband this year :( Perhaps the final concert in Seoul. Should I go?

 

All I wanna do WANNA ONE!

From one of my favorite fansite Peach UP!