Holiday in Japan; Advice?

My boyfriend and I are going to be holidaying in Japan for three weeks next spring/summer, so we're getting planning out of the way now. For now we're thinking of going the route of Airbnb instead of a hotel because it's waaay cheaper and if we stay with some people we could get help with directions and stuff, if not then we can stay in a really nice apartment. We aren't sure what area to stay in, but we'd like to be reasonably close to an airport and with good travel connections.

 

Stuff we reckon we'll need;

Train Cards

Phrase book

Money (very important! We were think we might need up to £2000 each for all of our expenses. Minus flights and accomodation. We've also thought about getting a low limit credit card for the trip.)

Phones

Camera!

 

With train cards, how much money should we put on them? We're going to be travelling most days if not every day, and would prefer not to get taxis everywhere.

 

As for places to visit, we aren't too sure, but thankfully we have plenty of time to figure it out. We know we'd like to go to some themed cafe's, some really touristy places, and some really nice restaurants. I'm a little more adventurous than he is, so I'm fine with throwing my comfort zone out the window on this trip. So if anyone has any restaurant reccomendations, suggestions on places to visit, all that good stuff.

 

If there's anything we've missed let us know! Also, any general advice you think we should know about any customs, how we can expect to be treated as foreigners, different things we can expect to experience and all that.

 

Thank you!

business hotels can be a lot cheaper than your standard western style hotels, usually 1/3 to 1/2 of what a western hotel costs. It's what I usually stay in when I'm over there, we got some for as low as 3500yen a night in hiroshima and about 13000 yen/night in tokyo. If you're a single traveler or a pair, it's a good option. If you have kids, not so much.

 

If you're never been before, it's quite easy to get around, maps are almost everywhere, I do suggest bringing a compass, it's very helpful to know which way you're pointed so you don't walk in the wrong direction for too long.

 

If you're going anywhere near kyoto I suggest booking accommodations asap. We had to book hotels in september to have any sort of selection in kyoto for a reasonable price to be there for late march.

 

 

Credit cards are not widely in use in japan, it's still probably about 80% cash. Big chain stores take credit, but little mom and pop shops aren't going to. Worst case you put all your hotels/flights on credit and you get your yen ahead of time out of pocket. I felt perfectly safe with 200000 yen in my pocket walking out of the airport, doesn't mean you're 100% safe from pickpockets, but the chances of that are very low.

 

Learn your japanese before hand, the phrasebook probably isn't going to help you on the ground. Important things like where, station, toilet, please, thank you. You can be completely uni lingual and still get by. They appreciate the effort very much though. Most do understand some amount of english, but not enough to reply back to you in english. Broken japanese, basic english, charades and soundeffects from both sides is enough to communicate. Never got lost enough that I had to go into the neighborhood police office to ask directions. Stare at a map or signboard too long and a local usually asked if we needed help, moreso in osaka and kyoto, tokyo not so much.

 

For train cards all you need is a suica or passmo, they will cover about 90% of the transit systems you will encounter. Not sure if kyoto city bus is concerted over yet. You can constantly reload them at any station ticket machine, so load however much you want. The turnstiles will tell you how much is left when you pass through.

 

If you will be there for a multi city trip, consider the JR pass. Maybe you won't need it for all 3 weeks as it gets expensive, but 3 or 4 rides on the shinkansen in a week pays for a week of JR pass. Also instead of riding local trains to get from say osaka to kyoto which will take you about 1+ hours, you can jump on the shinkansen for 10 minutes. The JR pass covers all JR local trains as well as the miyajima ferry from hiroshima, so that also saves money on your IC cards. Tokyo subway and non JR lines (mostly suburbs) don't take the JR pass, so you will still need a suica/passmo. Train rides for local trains and subways are priced on distance traveled. You check in with the card and check out when you leave the system. I don't think I ever saw a charge greater than 400y on my card, but they add up. Another reason to rely on the JR pass, it's a lot of walking, and as nice as it is to walk to be in and among the people, sometimes taking the train saves the feet and legs. 3 weeks is a long time to be constantly on your feet. Pick your cities and determine the costs for going from one city to the next, and see if it will be worth it to get the JR pass. You can use http://hyperdia.com/ to price out train costs to help you determine if you need the pass.

 

If you want to go to the ghibli museum you will also need to prebuy your ticket. Some agencies that sell the JR pass also deal the ghibli ticket. You can prebuy at a lawson ticket machine when you're on the ground but daily attendance is capped. We tried to buy tickets a couple months before we left for the museum but they were sold out.

 

If you're Caucasian, you'll stand out a bit in some places, but generally people are very polite to tourists. If you're above 6 feet tall, you will stand out and maybe draw attention to yourselves, but being foreigners some locals might just stare a bit, the older folks are SHORT. Young ones are definitely taller. Just be polite and mindful of others and be observant and adapt on the fly. Do as the locals do.

 

Hope you guys are open minded about food. I've traveled with picky eaters before and the hardest thing to do is find a place everyone can agree on to eat. When people are willing to try anything it makes it a lot easier to just walk into a place at random and try it.

 

 

also translate things like commonly used pills or travelers medical conditions, diarrhea, headache, fever, etc.

 

This was an actual interaction with a pharmacist I had on my last trip:

 

me: sumimasen, eigo wakarimasu ka?

pharmacist: shook his head, said something along the lines of, not really, but ask anyways, I sort of understood it.

me: do you know ibuprofin?

pharmacist: so, so, ibuprofin, (points to a whole shelf) kore ga ibuprofin (motions to all the different brands)

me: arigatou gozaimasu ^_^

 

That was pretty much it. The sound effects came from a waiter explaining what to do with the raw egg that came with my friend's rice dish, we all had a laugh about it because he felt silly miming and making the stirring noise, I thought it was hilarious and my friend smiled and nodded and thought it was cute. When all else fails, point at the menu.

 

Learning hiragana and katakana will get you a long ways.

Really great advice from sklurk!

I went 6 years ago to Tokyo and Kyoto, only knew a few phrases of Japanese and got along fine. Convenience stores and large shops like Animate took credit cards, but sometimes asked how many payments (you just want 1) or if you have a members card. Otherwise shopping was painless.

 

Suica pass is easy to use and can be reloaded at the stations. If you get the tourist-only JR Pass you will need to pass through the customer service line to validate instead of regular turnstyles at the station, sometimes you'll have to wait for other lost tourists/old folks before you can pass through ^_^

 

My #1 recommendation, and my friend who went recently vouched for this as well- rent a portable wifi access point. You can have it mailed to your hotel/bnb and it comes with a prepaid envelope for returning via any red post box you find. Then you can use your phone, google maps, etc while on the go or research next day's plans while resting in your hotel room.

 

My #2 recommendation is figure out what shops, landmarks, etc you wish to visit and save the coordinates to your GPS device or google maps. Find photos of the entrance if you can. Addresses in Tokyo are fairly useless and I ended up playing hot/cold to locate everything.

 

#3 is bring medicine for cold, allergies, upset stomach, etc just in case you get sick, it'll save you a trip to the store when you just want to stay in bed and not even deal.

 

As far as restaurants, everything I ate in Japan was really delicious! I think they have higher standards for food than USA, even the convenience store rice balls and pastries were sooo good. A safe bet seems to be the upper floors of shopping malls, they usually have many restaurants to choose from with photo menus or displays of dishes. And if you take the bullet train then you can buy a train bento, it's a great chance to try some traditional, seasonal cuisine for a fair price.

Most of the important advices already said.

 

I will be back to Japan for the 7th time in a coulpe of days and these are my 'lifesavers' in Japan:

- JR Pass

Riding with the shinkansen is sooo much fun. I would recomend at least going from Tokyo to Kyoto. If your lucky you can see Fujisan

- 'Hyperdia' Train App on the smartphone. It's in english, just type form and to stations and the time and it gives you all informations including the track number etc.

- Suica Card: You can pay with it almost everywhere and use the subway in Tokyo and Kyoto

- Google Maps on the smartphone

- UMobile Card for your smartphone. Cheaper than a pocket wifi. You can get it at the stores in Narita and Haneda Airport.

- Most hotels have much cheaper rates if you book them more than 6 month in advance.

Go to a cat cafe if you can! They've become less of an exciting peculiar novelty now that there's more and more appearing outside Japan (there's at least 3 in australia now and I know the US has a fair few) but they're still tons of fun if you like cats. Otherwise there are other interesting animal cafes like Owl cafes and even a reptile cafe where you can hold snakes/lizards.

One of the most interesting theme cafes I went to in Akihabara was a seiyuu (voice actor) cafe. It was owned by a veteran seiyuu and the staff were all up and coming seiyuu - you could order regular cafe things but also order performances - they had a menu of character archetypes with set scripts they would read. You'd make the requests and then they'd do it later in front of the whole cafe. One of the archetypes was 'ghost', so I made the request to one of the male seiyuu 'do 'Ghost' as a cute young boy'. The result was was adorable! (I was hoping he would give a performance that would suit a character like D from the Nintendo DS game 'Another Code' and it was spot-on). They were all very talented and gave all kinds of unique performances from the request that they got. The cons of that though are a) it was pretty expensive and b) I doubt you'd get much out of it if you cant understand Japanese. But hey, if anyone else is reading this thread and is interested it's just called 'Seiyuu Cafe' so I'm sure you could find it if you googled it. (I mean, it existed in 2013 at least)

 

Remember to take your passport to the Volks store/s cos if you spend over 10,000 yen you get it tax free. (and this is not remotely hard to do in a Volks store lol)

 

I cant tell you how much money you'll need for the trains because I dont know how much you're gonna be travelling. It would vary a lot but like others have said you can just keep topping it up.

 

Most restaurants are going to be decent and most of them are going to be pretty cheap as well so dont feel like you need to spend a lot to get something good. (That said there are some REALLY good restaurants that are pricey. If you like meat, going to a pricey yakiniku/bbq restaurant is recommended cos that stuffs amazing) Not sure how it is in the UK but tipping is a strange custom that is virtually unheard of in Japan - giving them more money than the total cost will confuse people. It's not really a thing in Australia either so I didnt notice this at first but I frequently hear of American people trying to give tips in Japan.

 

If you like dogs try to go to some big parks such as Yoyogi park or the grounds around Osaka castle - both will be beautiful in spring anyway - but you always tend to see a whole load of people walking their dogs there. (if you dont like dogs its just pretty in general and i recommend getting a bento from a convenience store or a chain like HottoMotto and taking it to a park to have a picnic)

 

It might be difficult if you cant speak Japanese and I'm not 100% sure how useful a phrasebook will be if your pronunciation is off but most signs have some english, a lot of restaurant menus have pictures and there is the occasional english-speaker who will come to help lost-looking tourists if only as an excuse to practice english with them. People apparently go to Japan all the time without knowing the language, I'm not sure how they do it and wonder if it's as scary as that sounds to me but if they've lived to tell the tale I'm sure you can too.

 

to tell the truth merely saying your going 'to japan' doesnt really narrow it down for me because there's so many different things the country has to offer that its hard to give recommendations without knowing specifics. Do you know exactly where you're going yet, or is that not decided?

free wifi is pretty prolific now, in osaka we got on the wrong train, we were trying to get to a blacksmith's shop in sakai but ended up on a train to koya-san. Sakai can be considered pretty suburbian vs osaka proper but there was an imitative to install free wifi access in much of osaka's downtown and luckily some of the stations on the errant train line we traveled on, so we jumped off the train and I was able to get some signal to give us a gps locator on my phone for google maps, from where we walked the 20 minutes to the blacksmith's shop.

 

Tokyo probably has more given the higher population, and most of the major stations already have free wifi provided by JReast. If you're paranoid, get the wifi access point, but having gps with you all the time sort of takes some serendipity out of the trip. Getting lost in japan won't get you mugged, kidnapped or killed. lol.

 

Don't forget to look up either. Some stores are located on upper floors if you're walking through a shopping arcade.

One important tip, you may have trouble using your bank card at common ATMs in Japan. However, all 7/11s have international ATMs if you need one. That really saved my butt, I spent too much at the Dolpa (･･')

 

Remember to take your passport to the Volks store/s cos if you spend over 10,000 yen you get it tax free. (and this is not remotely hard to do in a Volks store lol)

I was never able to get them to do that at the Akihabara store

 

Edit: here's some tips I wrote somewhere else before,

 

I recommend the Lonely Planet Japanese Phrasebook. I got the first edition (or second?) years ago on my first trip to Japan. When I went again I was wondering if getting the latest version would be useful because of how easily you can run Google Translate and stuff. However it gives you a quick list of useful sentences you can fire off at any time, a 'map' of the basic alphabets (hiragana and katakana) so you can easily lookup words, and generally just boosts your confidence being able to fall back onto useful phrases when you need to.

 

Especially in Tokyo, signs at train stations & stops will have roman (English) letters, and in the trains they now have English announcements to go along with the Japanese stuff ("the next station is... get off here to transfer to..."). Most of Kyoto's good too, but outside of Tokyo you will run into places where you're at a train station and nothing's in roman letters. That's when Google Maps & Translate is your best friend

 

Edit 2: Here's some past posts on the subject,

 

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=11831&start=0

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=12262&start=0

@Foo really? When were you last there? and were you a tourist or living in Japan? I was at Dollpoint as a tourist in February and they did this for me, so it could be a recent thing. Or the woman who served me was just nice like that.

Wondering if I can do it now that I live here or if only tourists are allowed.

@Foo really? When were you last there? and were you a tourist or living in Japan?

Tourist. I definitely remember it when I went in 2015 and was at the After Event at Doll Point. That was well more than 10,000 and I couldn't claim it I was like 4th in line so I bought almost everything, it was all available (･･')

 

This year when I went in March I'm pretty sure I spent more than 10,000 when I asked, and was told no :/ If it was because I didn't spend enough they didn't say that.

I'll be spending a bit more than a week in Tokyo with my sister in November so all of the info in this and the other topics is really helpful to me as well. I've been studying the language/culture/etc for a while but this will be my first time actually going there, so I'm really grateful for all of the practical tourist-centric insight shared so far. Locals using public transport is practically unheard of where I live so among A LOT of other things I'm really excited about being able to use trains everyday! Making sense of rail and station maps is pretty confusing but I'm getting there. xD

 

But hey, if anyone else is reading this thread and is interested it's just called 'Seiyuu Cafe' so I'm sure you could find it if you googled it. (I mean, it existed in 2013 at least)

Ahh I remember reading about this cafe! Apparently it closed in March 2013 though, unless there are others around Akiba. Is this the correct one? I was excited about it because Matsukaze Masaya, the owner, voiced my favorite pokemon character lol xD

 

Remember to take your passport to the Volks store/s cos if you spend over 10,000 yen you get it tax free. (and this is not remotely hard to do in a Volks store lol)

I believe you only need to spend over 5,000 yen now to qualify for tax free shopping? I was wondering about this earlier and found that Japan's national tourism agency had a cute page with all the details. Not all stores offer tax refunds though. Briefly looking through the tax-exempt store locater page, Amiami(!) has a physical store in Akihabara now, and that shop IS tax-free so that's definitely on the 'must-go' list now. Volks Doll Point is listed too though, so it's a bit worrying if store employees won't allow it...

I believe there is no spending minimum for tax free shopping at any designated tax free store. Nothing was mentioned to me when I was there, they just asked if I had my passport.

 

If there are any canadians that read this thread in the future, my TD access card only worked at JPpost ATMs, they did not work at any other plus marked atms. This apparently is a TD issue or an issue with other PLUS network providers. My friend's RBC card worked on any PLUS network machine. I raised this with TD and they said nothing was wrong, but I tried at least 12 ATMs while I was there on 2 trips spread 2 years apart, 7/11 to any other ones I saw with PLUS network signage, only JPpost worked.

 

I ended up using my credit card for a couple purchases just to be sure I had my cash reserve to see me to the end of the trip. I'd rather spend a few bucks more on exchange rate on credit card and have left over yen to reconvert back to home currency (losing a little) than be short yen and trying to find an ATM or bank that worked or was open. Lest I be short on cash to put on my suica or bus fare or food midway through the trip.

I found that Japan's national tourism agency had a cute page with all the details.

::checks link:: yup, it's actually cute.

 

I raised this with TD and they said nothing was wrong, but I tried at least 12 ATMs while I was there on 2 trips spread 2 years apart, 7/11 to any other ones I saw with PLUS network signage

I've always used a TD bank card in Japan, at multiple ATMs :/

 

Although for a credit card I use an RBC Travel Visa. I have a TD travel visa (which I use most for the wonderful reward points), but RBC calculates the Japanese exchange rate to CDN directly without going through USD conversion first. Most credit cards, including my TD Visa, only do direct conversions for ~five popular currencies including USD, GBP, and Euro. Everything else gets converted to USD then USD to CDN, but the RBC Visa goes from JPY to CDN directly.

Its weird that the tax-free things works for some people and not others o_o Anyway someone from my local doll club back home is going to Japan next week so I asked her to see if she can get tax-free with her passport and will report back if it works for her. I would laugh if it turned out that only Australians can do it.

 

I recommend getting a travel card if any UK banks supply those - I'm with ANZ in aust and have a travel card with them which I always use when I go overseas. It's useful because when you put money on it, you can choose the currency and it locks the exchange rate in so you dont have to worry about it changing. You can use them at the banks in 7-11 convenience stores as said (sometimes you can randomly find 7-11 ATMs on their own though. When I first moved here I didnt get paid for about a month and so had to keep some cash on there just in case - it made it super easy to get money from my australian account to my japanese account without a bunch of fees (could just move money from my au account to the travel card online, withdraw from the travel card IRL then deposit that cash IRL). like many people have already said, Japan is VERY cash-based. I'm so used to this I forgot about it but when I went back to Australia before I was actually really shocked about it because Australians use EFTPOS for just about everything. I dont even think EFTPOS exists in Japan. There are some stores that have prepaid cards you can load cash on, but you can only use them at those stores and they arent really bank cards. Places that sell expensive things often have credit cards but since I dont have a credit card I've only ever used cash in japan.

 

If you do use mostly cash make sure you keep it safe as since there will always be some kind of withdrawal fee, even from a travel card, its best to get a lot than to keep getting small amounts, which means having to carry a lot of money around. Japan is relatively safe compared to other countries when it comes to things like theft but it does happen. Back at my training orientation some guy lost 90,000 yen plus his credit card in one night - his third night in the country - because someone nicked his wallet out of his back pocket (i am NEVER going to understand why anyone would put a wallet full of cash in their back pocket no matter what country they're in though) so dont be like that guy and assume theft doesn't happen in Japan lol.

 

@elianti that was the cafe! Aww, sad to hear its closed down :c I'm glad I got to go when it was open then. Just take my story about it as an anecdote to the kind of unique cafes you can find here.

 

It'd be cool if anyone's trip to Japan matched up with a time I was going to Tokyo again cos it would be a nice chance to meet some of you guys and help you get to some of the lesser known doll shops hidden in Akiba and Ikebukuro (since Fu kuoka usually isnt on anyone's radar and most people dont come here as tourists lol. I mean I love the place but its a better place to live than visit to be honest (just as Tokyo is a much better place to visit than to live) and if its someones first time in Japan most of the other famous places are a lot more exciting...)

I raised this with TD and they said nothing was wrong, but I tried at least 12 ATMs while I was there on 2 trips spread 2 years apart, 7/11 to any other ones I saw with PLUS network signage

I've always used a TD bank card in Japan, at multiple ATMs :/

 

 

 

in the great words of charlie brown "aaaauuuuuuughhhhhh"

 

very strange then. Maybe I need a new card or something is wrong with my account.

 

I picked up the amazon visa card (in canada) it has 0% transaction fee for foreign exchanges, so you get pretty much what the market rate is of that day. I used it while I was in LA back in the spring and the rates were probably 5% less than what a normal visa card is, so for anyone making purchases in foreign currencies, you should look into a credit card that has 0 foreign fees. Especially if your hotels are booked in yen or if you do a lot of online spending in general.

 

Sadly I'm not planning to go back to japan any time soon. I've taken over full ownership of my house and bought a new car so funds are pretty tight at the moment.

Wondering if I can do it now that I live here or if only tourists are allowed.

Only tourists are allowed for the duty-free shopping: you need one of those 90-day landing permits in your passport to qualify. Any other kind of visa is a no-go, sadly, according to the government's rules. I ran into the same "problem" when I lived there.

We aren't sure what area to stay in, but we'd like to be reasonably close to an airport and with good travel connections.

haneda or narita...?

 

I recommend around ikebukuro station

because its big station and have many lines including yamanote line, shinkansen and narita express

usually a tourist destination in Japan (tokyo) is around yamanote line

 

for train card/ticket

like other said

JR Pass is a (very) good value

Tokyo only...? you can buy JR Tokunai pass (780jpy) for 1 day in Tokyo

We aren't sure what area to stay in, but we'd like to be reasonably close to an airport and with good travel connections.

haneda or narita...?

 

I recommend around ikebukuro station

because its big station and have many lines including yamanote line, shinkansen and narita express

usually a tourist destination in Japan (tokyo) is around yamanote line

 

for train card/ticket

like other said

JR Pass is a (very) good value

Tokyo only...? you can buy JR Tokunai pass (780jpy) for 1 day in Tokyo

 

 

Not sure why being near the airport is a requirement, closest one to tokyo would be haneda as it's "downtown" vs narita being around 1+ hour outside of tokyo. Staying near narita makes no sense, you'd be wasting an hour travel time each way and it's an expensive train ride to and from vs being in tokyo. You have the world's best mass transit system in tokyo. Finding a hotel within walking distance of the yamanote line should be very easy. If there is nothing suitable you can extend to some of the spur lines that connect off the yamanote that go into more of the suburbs like chuo or keihin tohoku.

 

If you're afraid of getting really lost I would find a hotel close to a station on yamanote line but not shinjuku, or tokyo stations, those 2 are the busiest train stations in the world. There's a nice business hotel right across the street from shinagawa station called the shinagawa prince hotel, but shinagawa is also very busy since it's another station where several train lines converge. Most of what you'd want to see in tokyo is probably going to be on the yamanote line, or be very accessible if you start on the yamanote line.

I hope it's okay that I bumped this up with this wall of text

 

So I just came back from my trip! It was GREAT but also super tiring lol;; This was my first time in Japan and I went with airbnb for lodging. Since I was just there for a bit more than a week I only went around Tokyo and surrounding areas. I've also long decided that a first Japan trip for me would focus on my main hobby/interest(Pokémon~) instead of dolls so the only doll-related stores I went to were Radio Kaikan for Volks Doll Point/Azone Label Shop and Amiami's Store, and Nakano Broadway for Parabox/Mandarake. That was definitely enough for me though since I got everything I wanted anyway. Here are some tips for anyone with a similar trip in mind.

 

- When choosing a place to stay, definitely go with somewhere as close to a train station as possible! Personally I'd stay away from the really busy stations though.. Shinjuku was pretty crazy and I really wouldn't want to lug all of my (big and heavy, especially when going back to the airport!) baggage in that crowd. Ikebukuro was also reaaally crowded, but if you don't mind that...

 

For maximum convenience I'd choose a place near one of the stops on either the Narita Express/NEX or Keisei Skyliner lines, both train lines that go straight from Narita Airport to the heart of Tokyo. The tickets for these trains are more expensive but the dedicated luggage area, reserved seating, and fewer stops will likely make the trip to your hotel/airbnb/etc a lot less stressful..

 

Personally I went with a place in Nippori, a quiet but charming area but is also one of the stations on the Yamanote Line which circles around central Tokyo as well as the first stop on the Keisei Skyliner after it leaves Narita. It's serviced by several other lines too so it made trip planning easy in my opinion.

 

- About the Pasmo/Suica/other IC card you WILL be getting(it'll make your time in the station SO much easier if you don't need to fumble around to actually buy a ticket each time you use the trains), maybe try putting in ¥2-5k to start? It really depends on how many places you intend to visit each day. You can always top up your card if you are running low of funds in the fare adjustment machines at every station.

 

- Be ready to walk A LOT! My sis and I averaged around ~15km+ a day and we didn't stay out late at all and I didn't make our itinerary super packed. Comfortable shoes are a must! I REALLY wanted to wear the cute pair of boots I brought(I naively thought that the heels were low enough to still be comfy for walking in Japan since I can wear them all day back home--nopenopeNOPE! I have no idea how those Tokyo girls do it ;____;"""). I ended up getting an ugg-lier but much comfier pair within three or so days.. I'm kinda at a loss as to what to do with them now because I live in a tropical island lol

 

- Arrange to get pocket wifi before you get there. A lot of Airbnbs provide one but not all so try to choose one that does, though proximity to a station takes precedence imo. You can also rent a pocket wifi thing at the airport too. My sister rented one from the airport to have alongside the one our Airbnb provided. It may or may not be overkill depending on how important it is to be sure you're connected to family/work/etc. Iirc, the airport rental wifi costed ~¥8,000 for about a week.

 

One other thing to note is that check in times are usually around 3/4:00pm so depending on your arrival time you may be out of internet for much of your first(and last) day if your lodging comes with pocket wifi. I'd recommend taking some extra care with planning for those days so you have a clear idea of what you want to do/where you want to go and how to do it. I think public wifi is getting more widespread, but I can't really vouch for it since I only really used it in the airport. Narita's wifi worked very well though!

 

- Continuing from that, I recommend getting google maps too. You can search for something like "Tokyo Sky Tree to Mirai Store Tokyo" and it'll bring up the cheapest/most efficient train route(complete with train fare prices) as well as walking maps. A total lifesaver both when planning the itinerary at home as well as on the ground every day of the trip.

 

On to some reports on doll-related shopping...

- Radio Kaikan is impossible to miss if you go to Akihabara Station and use the Electric Town exit. Volks is on the 8th floor. I got confused for a moment because the first thing I saw from the escalator were military model kits but the dolls are on the other side. xD The displays are kinda amazing.. so many lovely and rare/expensive girls in one place ;-;" If you are thinking about getting a DDH-08/09/10 and/or heart hands Doll Point is the only place you can get them at the original price so if you only have one time in Akiba you shouldn't hesitate. ^^" I was able to get my purchases tax-free too since the costs were over ¥5,000. I know that body parts count and makeup materials like paint and chalk pastels don't. I'm not sure about clothing sets and other items like wig mist sprays and accessories though. I wish they had their tan girls up for display but they didn't. ;o;"

 

- Azone's shop isn't tax free from what I know but Amiami's is! They opened a physical store in Akihabara as well earlier this year. The building Amiami's shop is in is kinda shady imo but the store itself is nice and new. I was able to get some nice Azone stuff there for my 50cm azonebitsu(and now dd hybrid too lol) that are either out of stock or more expensive at Azone's own store. Of course they have a lot of figures and other anime-related goods for sale too. ^^ Their shop is actually 2 floors--doll stuff and most of the anime merch were on their first floor and the second floor was mostly gunpla/model kits/ero figures. Allllll tax freeee

 

- Nakano Broadway was kinda a letdown for me tbh(it wasn't quite the treasure trove of pokémon merch or dolls I expected, though I probably didn't look hard enough). It did have one of Parabox's stores though and I like them so it's okay and I still ended up getting some doll stuff on that day anyway. (plus I got to see the new 40cm boy! what a cutie) ^^

 

- I also visited the Mirai Store, though just to look. ^^" I'm relieved to know that Snart Doll tan is fine for my guy(though still unsure of Eiji/Crimson's head..), though in effect it also means that one of my girls would now need to go through a full body dye treatment... ulp. Moonlight looks just as beautiful in person as in pictures(her faceup is just so.. pretty?) and Miho... well. idk in person I feel like she's more different than Mirai but not at the same time. She's still cute but definitely not for me. There wasn't anything about any other unannounced dolls, as expected. No Spike either, though Danny was still out when I visited.

 

I kinda wished I could've gone to more doll places but the places I went to already did a significant amount of damage to my spending budget(thanks Volks..). Next time I hope my girl is more complete so I can take pictures of her as well as her partner pokémon(in plush form).

I just want to say thank you to everyone for all the advice, and we've actually had a huge change of plans. Turns out I'm actually going to be living in Japan for a year while I'm in University. I'll be going as an English second language teacher and I hope to be in or around the Tokyo area.