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.