After planning my upcoming trip for months and reading about nearly every possible thing there is to do in the Land of the Rising Sun, I’ve come to the realisation that, in spite of the existence of the internet and globalisation, there simply isn’t adequate information on certain areas, visit lengths for certain attractions, and, worst of all, public transportation.
If you visit Japan for 2-3 weeks and do the obvious stuff (e.g., some version of the Golden Route, a straight line between Tokyo-Hakone-Fuji-Kyoto-Osaka-Hiroshima, with day trips to Nara, Miyajima, etc.), you’ll be fine. But in the countryside, most of the information is in Japanese. Many websites include meagre (and often obsolete) information in English, particularly now that COVID has annihilated foreign tourism in Japan for the last 2.5 years.
Long story short, I found myself forced to navigate sites in Japanese to get the whole picture. Moreover, some remote adventures can be booked only on the phone. So, as I travel, I’ll post my daily itineraries, in case someone finds them helpful.
Japan-guide.com is a behemoth and the BEST English site for anything Japan. Nearly everything can be found there, a lot of it updated post-COVID, too. I’m pretty sure I’ve read every single guide they’ve got. But as I planned more and more, I stumbled upon things that even they don’t mention.
GaijinPot is a good rival site with information that fills in Japan-guide’s gaps. (Also a good place to rent an apartment as a foreigner.)
Reddit.com/r/JapanTravel offers tips from fellow travellers. I posted some questions there about stuff I couldn’t find any information on, and they helped me figure things out.
Ultimately, I found it best to get a general sense of a place through these big websites, and then see if it has its own dedicated website. For the cities it’s not really necessary – mostly for towns and national parks. Examples include:
IyaTime.com for anything Iya Valley. It’s mind-blowing that such a remote place has such an in-depth English website.
TB-Kumano.jp for anything Kumano Kodo; Kumano-travel.com for booking guest houses, luggage service… I heard it’s best to book everything through them so they know your itinerary, in case something goes wrong during the hike.
Booking.com is unsurprisingly the best place for accommodation. I spent HOURS booking places on my phone (it’s cheaper than on the computer) just for peace of mind, because boy do they fill up MONTHS in advance. When I finalised my itinerary, I cancelled the reservations I no longer needed (weeks in advance, so other people would have ample time to snag them).
Yet even the monstrous booking.com doesn’t carry every single fruit in its basket.
Agoda.com is a nice alternative, although in my experience a bit dodgy / annoying. Not as informative or productive. Sometimes it shows you amazing promotions, only to egregiously raise the price (sometimes double or triple) upon booking. They should change the website’s name to Tantalus.
JAPANiCAN.com is better.
Hostelworld.com for hostels, though I think booking.com has a wider selection.
Hotels.com is another decent alternative.
Japaneseguesthouses.com is THE place for those unique stays you can do only in Japan. Their selection is very limited, because they don’t work with every cool place you can stay in (some ryokans / minshukus I booked on booking.com or by contacting them on their Japanese website), but the places they do work with seem to be the best of the best. You give them several options, they contact the places themselves, and get back to you with an offer. I booked only a couple of places there, because “unique stays” in Japanese roughly translates to “kiss your dough goodbye”, but travellers with a bigger budget can have a field day with this one.
By the way, finding a place through one of the above and making a reservation on its offical website can sometimes be cheaper.
I wouldn’t recommend Airbnb. I think it’s common knowledge by now that it’s actually more expensive than hotels? (And there are plenty of city-centre business hotels in Japan for less than 5,000 yen a night.) I booked one place on Airbnb for my birthday, just to splurge, but ultimately cancelled it in favour of a ryokan better suited for a solo traveller. Maybe it’s more affordable when you’re in a group.
Google Maps is, needless to say, a literal lifesaver when it comes to navigation (I always download offline maps on my phone when I’m abroad) and planning your route, but even it has its limitations. It doesn’t carry all the information about transportation in Japan; it’s much more reliable to use Japanese apps and sites. Again, for the megacities it’s fine, but if you want to brave the countryside without a car, expect things to get complex.
I often discovered alternative bus routes on rome2rio.com, and then verified the information on the official (non-English) site of the bus company. This saved me HOURS of redundant railway detours courtesy of Google Maps, which were also more expensive.
Checking out the official Japanese website of a certain area (like Hokkaido) helped too, because it sometimes has an up-to-date map of every line in the area.
There are plenty of Japanese sites and apps alternative to Google Maps, but I’ve found Navitime’s Japan Travel to be the best. It even includes projected cab fare.
Klook for discount tickets.
HappyCow.net for vegetarian- and vegan-friendly food spots.
Japancamp for campsites.
Note that Japan has a very strict policy regarding importing medicine. Some over-the-counter painkillers and meds for ADHD are forbidden. Also, if you want to bring more than a month’s supply, you must apply for approval first.
Of course, this is just my two cents - I haven’t even set foot in the country yet - we’ll see how it goes…