Visiting Japan
I’ve been asked a couple of times for advice on visiting Japan and so I thought I’d just blog it and send everyone here.
I’m no expert, I’ve twice visited Japan, the first time was a hectic 9 day self-tour of Tokyo, Hakone, Kyota & Osaka. The second, a more leisurely 9 days in Tokyo as part of the Manga Tour of Japan which I definitely recommend although you should definitely have a few more days in Japan afterwards. http://www.japanjourneys.co.uk/manga.htm
Anyway, this isn’t a proper tourists guide to tokyo, more a anime/toy collectors guide and a memory jog for the next time I go but hopefully you may find it useful. Please feel free to let me know if anything has since closed down.
I’ll leave the best till last so scroll down for Tokyo.
As for when to go, Sakura (Cherry Blossom) season is usually late March/early April, summer is hot and icky I was told by my Japanese teacher, personally I’ve only been during cherry blossom season and can vouch for the prettyness which isn’t something I say often and that the temperature was slightly better than the UK for the time.
Hakone
If you go on a day trip up to Hakone you can see Mount Fuji, there is a great cable car ride you can take which takes you up the active volcano there. There is a train you can take down which I recommend you take as it is unlike any other I’ve been on. Crazy tight turns and having to reverse the direction it is pulled from along the route. Great views.
Hakone also has my favourite place which was the Samurai Museum. Run by this great old guy who greeted us and then while were looking around the small museum, he shocked the life out of us by jumping out from behind a corner having changed into in full samurai gear. He posed for pictures too, most awesome.
There was a great castle here but I missed going in it by half an hour because of cramming everything else in (and getting on the wrong bus earlier which was how I ended up at the Samurai Museum LOL). There’s a fancy art gallery I didn’t go in.
Osaka
Osaka Castle is awesome. The most impressive of the castles I visited and absolutely huge gardens. It isn’t the original but a remake. I wish they’d do that with more of the ruined castles here in England. Oh look at the remains of a castle isn’t anywhere near as impressive as a whole freaking castle!
Universal Studios Japan is here, I chose the castle instead though as I only had one day in Osaka. There was a Full Metal Alchemist attraction to celebrate it’s opening so I’m guessing there should be a few non Universal anime attractions there too.
I didn’t spend long here so nothing else to add sorry.
Kyoto
Kyoto is just site seeing central, you visit one shrine or temple and can see another and can walk to that. You keep doing that and before you know it you are miles from your hotel. I didn’t have time to do anything other than that and I know I barely scratched the surface. Just make sure you have enough memory for your camera here. SD cards were harder to come by and more expensive than in Tokyo or Osaka. Have more than 1 day here. There really is a lot of sites to see, I didn’t even get to go to any of the shops here.
Tokyo Sights
- Stay in or near Shinjuku, from that station you can get pretty much anywhere, it is the most amazing labyrinth though so if you get lost at Clapham Junction station you may want to make sure you go with a tour. Sadly it does not have the blackboard used in City Hunter.
- You have to do the Tokyo Tower for obvious reasons.
Not full size but no midget either. The Iron Giant is awesomeness incarnate
- The Asakusa shrine will look familiar to anyone who’s seen Tenchi Muyo and regardless, is a great site to visit with the Senso temple practically next to it. A nice weapons shop here and some stalls with various anime tack and lots of Japanese food.
- Shinjuku park is a really nice park to have a little picnic in. It’s also fairly big.
- The Studio Ghibli museum is a must if you can get the tickets. On the roof is a statue of The Iron Giant.
- The Tokyo sword museum was cool but too small and out of the way to really recommend unless you are really into your swords. No swords for sale, not even a paper knife. They do work restoring ancient scrolls here, security is TIGHT.
- The Imperial Gardens – HUUUUUUGE and very impressive.
- Harajuku has the great Meiji Shrine, a good toy shop and a good tourist shop for buying tacky souviners. If memory serves, the park is supposedly best on Sundays. The main thing is watching the antics people in the park – they set up stereos and do live music, everything from j-pop to elvis. For normal (non-otaku) people there is a bunch of designer shops there.
- The full 1:1 scale Gundam is no longer there but there is still a Statue of Liberty and Toys R Us on Odaiba Island (Shiokaze Park) along with a nice mall and a great Hawiain Burger bar.
Tokyo Shops
This is an otaku’s blog so I’m not going to be posting where to find designer labels, well not unless the designer works for Shonen Jump 
- Akihabara is the place for current anime & manga merchandise and games. Cosplay cafes and electronics shops. Check out the shops in the big tower next to the station, one had TF animated prototypes for sale before Animated was out and a few floors up was the Revoltech store. There was a fantastic shop with a load of Japanese G1 Transformers at not so nice prices on the end furthest of the high street from the station. Also had the Dragon Ball Z bathroom scales which I regret not buying to this day as an amazing piece of tack.
- Nakano Broadway is THE place to go for hard to find old anime merch. The shopping mall looks naff until you go up to the 2nd and 3rd floors where it has a number of awesome shops. Whether it be toys (one of the Mandarake’s only sells robot related toys), anime, manga, soundtracks, video games, cosplay outfits or animation cells – you can get it here. To get there there is a train station of the same name. Easy.
- Don’t bother going out of your way to find a Toys R Us, it was more expensive than the Animate across the street for toys or games in Sunshine City. If you want to visit a TRU, I suggest the one on Odaiba island for sight seeing purposes.
A shop that only sells merchandise of Shonen JUMP characters... Now THAT's my kind of shop.
- The Shonen Jump shop on the site of the Tokyo Dome had some pretty rare stuff if you like Shonen Jump manga/anime and you may be able to get tickets for a baseball game or whatever’s going on at the dome while you’re in the area.
- There is a great American restaurant in the Takashimaya Times Square complex in Shinjuku which is perfect if you fancy a big steak.
- Also in the same complex is Kinokuniya Books which has a huge english section with one of the biggest ranges of English manga I’ve seen. It includes English language releases that were released in other regions. I picked up all of the Slam Dunk manga when in the US it had stalled at vol 5.
- HMV is just around the corner from there and is a great place for your J-pop/rock needs and has some soundtracks.
Things to Remember
I’m not going to do a list of useful phrases, there’s too many and to be honest, I barely spoke to anyone out there, just pointed and nodded. Rude in the extreme but Big Mac is the same in any language
- Make sure you have a map of the train system in English. You will need it to match up with their map which will be in Japanese and more likely than not, will have prices instead of stops on. Instead of zones they work on price in yen (public transport is dirt cheap compared to the UK and vastly superior, don’t bother with taxi’s)
- Forget travellers cheques – far too much hassle.
- Cash, you need it, and you need a lot of it. Credit cards are only taken in large stores. You will need wallets full of cash. Luckily Japan is a really safe country and you won’t get mugged (well shouldn’t unless you’re exceptionally unlucky or stupid. I had £1000 cash at the start and split it into 3 wallets, 2 stashed in my backpack – emergency, large buys and normal person’s use and then pulled out whichever would be necessary. Sneaky but effective. Note, that was nowhere near as much money as I could have spent but was perilously close to the maximum weight allowance.
- Do NOT put your cash in the shop keepers hands. They have a little tray or basket, put your money in there.
- The Japanese wear face masks if they have the slightest trace of a cold. At least cover your mouth/nose if coughing or sneezing.
- Sumimasen = sorry, general get out of jail free word for any idiotic foreigner behaviour you might do (such as the above). Also can be used as excuse me to indicate you’d like them to get out of your way if they are blocking somewhere.
- Do NOT cross the street when the traffic lights are red for pedestrians even if you can see there isn’t a car for the length of the road. You will get evil looks and probably a few snide comments you won’t understand.
- When you enter a shop, quite often you will be greeted. This is normal. The same on leaving so don’t worry. Nod politely if you want to be nice.
- PS3,PSP and DS games are region free, console accessories like joypads and arcade sticks are also region free. Blitz Akihabara! The Macross Frontier games on PSP and Initial D Extreme Stage on PS3 are must haves. Reminds me there’s a new PS3 Gundam game I need to import…
- There is no need to carry spare drinks around, wherever you go, there will be a vending machine nearby. Probably a Lawsons too (equivilent to a 7-11/corner shop).
- Even Lawsons sell anime tack. Usually the random luck mini boxed toys with gashapon machines as well. There is no escape!
- (item name) Kudasai – I know I said no phrases but I used this a fair bit as a lot of shops keep everything in glass cabinets (which is odd considering the low crime rate but perhaps also helps explain it). Tell them the toy or game name e.g. Goshogun or Mazinger please and point in the right direction and they will be able to help.
- You have to visit a Gera Gera manga cafe – think internet cafe, with more manga than you’ve ever seen in your life, as well as a selection of anime and games you can use there. Open 24/7, people that miss the last train often spend the night here. The inspiration for my collection which is a topic for another day…
- Mandarake and Animate are two of the best places I found for buying anime, manga and toys and associated stuff (soundtracks,games,tack). There will be at least one Animate in every city, keep a look out.
- DVD’s are region 2 so they will play on UK players, however they will NOT have english subtitles. Same applies to blu-ray, no subs.
- CD’s and DVD’s are, relative to the UK and especially United States, incredibly expensive (£25 for a CD is common!). Don’t let that deter you though, it’s cheaper than importing unless you want to import knock offs in which case you might as well just download them. Feel pride in supporting the content makers.
- If your airline allows, take 2 bags, one inside the other on the way out so you have 2 bags to load up with toys and merch to bring back. I take old clothes so if necessary (and it has been both times) I throw out some clothes so there is enough room for toys. Remember to keep some clothes though to cushion and pad out your luggage to keep toys safe
- Die cast toys and hand luggage don’t mix and you may be subject to a painstaking search of your hand luggage contents but they do look exceptionally awesome going through the X-ray machine!
- Baseball batting practice is a good way to kill some time, coin in slot and then a series of balls come flying at you at whatever speed it says on the door so you don’t need to worry about not knowing any Japanese. I don’t know jack about baseball and I enjoyed it.
Note: I’ve not mentioned karaoke, there were plenty of karaoke bars but I can’t advise which are good as I didn’t use any as it hurts me never mind anyone else when I attempt to sing.
If you can find it, I recommend the book, Cruising the Anime City: An Otaku Guide to Neo Tokyo. It has useful maps of the main otaku shopping areas. It’s out of date for the smaller shops and the Bandai Museum is no longer there but asides from that it has some great information on the culture that won’t age and is well worth a read.
