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You need a passport and a return ticket, but there's no other governmental requirements; you don't need to apply for a visa to visit as a tourist.
The State Department has an information page about travel to Japan. Something that surprised me from that page: Adderall and other prescription stimulants are illegal drugs in Japan.
Many places including Japan allow foreigners to register and bring a reasonable supply (3 months or so?) of most drugs that are illegal there but legal in their home country with a valid prescription (most of Europe and North America, Japan & Singapore all do), and the places that don't let you register them to bring them legally often let you bribe your way out even if you are discovered with them (eg Uzbekistan/Uganda/whatever)
I went digging and found this page from the Japanese Ministry of Health.
Turns out we're both half right! Adderall "cannot be imported into Japan, even for treatment purposes" but Vyvanse and some other ADHD stimulants can be if you apply for an exception in advance.
I looked into only taking insulin there and apparently you need to get a 30 day permit before arrival.
I would disagree with renting a car.
Get a JR Pass instead - it lets you ride the bullet train unlimited for a specific period of time. This is a steep discount over buying tickets in the country. You need to get this mailed to your house in the US while you are outside of Japan, before you travel. They mail you a voucher and you bring this and pick up your pass at the airport (Japan is big on physical paperwork). Don’t forget to get an eki ben when you ride - it’s part of the experience.
The Ghibli Museum may still be closed to tourists so if you want to do that verify before you go. If it is open to tourists again, you also need to buy your tickets to that from outside Japan, have voucher mailed to home, and pick up as well from JR iirc.
Look into booking TeamLab Borderless (Tokyo) ahead of time, Kabuki is fun, sumo is fun (depending on when you go there may or may not be a basho going on & the city switches), and then just wander around and enjoy temples, sights, and food!!!
Oh yeah also get a suica card ahead of time and you can install it on your phone to tap in the subway and also pay for snacks at Family Mart if I recall correctly.
Wasn’t the JR pass made uneconomical recently, maybe even this month? I haven’t used the pass in a while but back on Reddit I feel like I heard about an incoming 70% or so price increase. Some commenters there indicated it would no longer be worth the price.
My last visit I paid for all the trains individually and didn’t come anywhere near the $500 or so it would’ve cost for a short two week visit on the new pricing. At the time it wasn’t in place yet, but it should be now. I like to visit just a few cities at a time though, so maybe if you’re trying to pack a lot in the pass may still be worthwhile?
Note that there are various rail passes, and the often-overlooked JR east pass gets you access to all of Tohoku from Tokyo (and as far west as Nagano) for only ~$200. If OP comes during festival time in late July/early August it would be well worth hopping up to Akita or Aomori to see the festivals around there.
JR pass massive price hike recently
If you do plan to rent a car you’ll need an international driver’s license. You need to set that up in advance. Ask about it at the passport office.
But for Japan it's not really necessary. Travelling by train is faster and easier. Shinkansen (high speed trains) are reliable and go between major and minor cities. Buying a rail pass before you travel is cheaper than buying in Japan.
Also, you should check your visa requirements. If you are a US citizen and are only travelling for a holiday, you are exempt and don't need a visa. You should check the validity of your passport. There may be a minimum requirement of time remaining. However, if you've never travelled, you may need to get one.
Renting a car would not be a good idea. As others mentioned, public transit is excellent so you'd be making it harder in many ways (parking, traffic) but also driving in another country can be so unexpectedly different in minor but important ways. Different rules of the road, and driving on the left side just reverses so many instincts in where to look in the road.
I've traveled around a lot. The only times I've really been glad to have a car outside the US was in Oman (public transit is terrible) and to a much lesser extent, Norway (visiting family in smaller towns)
I know a lot of people are saying don't rent a car, but if you like to drive, the roads in Japan are great, the rules are followed, it's very relaxing place to drive. And a great way to see the countryside.
So I 100% recommend you get a car and drive around if you like driving around and exploring things. Just avoid the big cities. Any of the second or third tier cities should be fine to drive out of, and the countryside you absolutely need a car.
Hey, this is an exciting first step in planning your trip. I'm 27 and have traveled a lot on my own and with friends, if you need any advice or have any questions feel free to PM me.
That's the bare necessity. I got to stop now but like I said, I'd love to help past that.
Depending on where you're going transportation can be handled entirely by public transit. Don't get a car.
Even the yanks need a visa for most countries; Japan being an exception not the norm. Just pointing that out because I have seen multiple USians confused by thinking they have the ability to travel everywhere without a visa.
"Most countries" is a hell of a stretch in my opinion. I've traveled to something close to 20 popular countries and only needed a visa for China when visiting, Singapore when studying, and Germany when moving there.
Here's the official list and I'd wager a guess that more than 75% of native US Tourist Traffic goes to these countries.
Someone else said you can’t bring some meds, make sure to double check what you can and can’t import to and from. There are things you can’t bring back (e.g. agriculture like potted plants or seeds) too.
It’s pretty easy like they said, doesn’t require a lot of planning or thought. Restaurant reservations for some places can be difficult to acquire if you don’t know locals though. You’ll have to go through your hotel concierge
I personally recommend avoiding touristy things. I’ve found they’re invariably kinda mid. Depending on how much time you’ll have, and how many times you plan to go, I would suggest spending a few days to a week in single cities and not overdoing it with activities. Exhausting oneself isn’t necessary if you’re going to go back, and you don’t really experience it to the maximum if you’re on a strict itinerary with limited time
Oh, also do the immigration paperwork online. Ezpz and saves you time on arrival. Give some leeway for learning transport, a lot of Americans don’t have or use public transport and my first time I struggled to get places on time.
Get passport
Buy Ticket (kayak, price alert, etc)
Book Hotel (cheap is fine, hostel is fine, japan is generally good)
Pack Bag (only one bag, carry on is best, you need far less then you think you do)
While waiting for your flight learn some basic Japanese, Use Tinder, or Hello Talk to make some contacts where your going.
Arrange Cell Phone data (google fi, Arelo, etc), Get a International Drivers License ($20 at AAA), Travel Insurance (international sos is good), install google translate and google lens, practice translation. Learn how to use Chrome built in translation of websites (restaurant ordering through japanese QR code menus.... its really helpful)
Money you will need $20-$50 (above hotel fees) a day walking around money, plus access to emergency funds (Schwab investor checking has a great international atm card)
Fly, once your on the plane keep japan time, don't sleep unless its night in japan.
Arrive in Japan, wait in Customs, they will stamp your shiny new passport, and you will be in Japan. Use public transportation, or hire a taxi (uber works) to go to hotel.
Enjoy!
Rent a Car, Visit museums, Find new friends to explore with, invite people to dinner!
Eat food at the convenience stores, or go out and explore, meet people, have a great adventure.
..... time passes ......
Pack up your stuff, and fly back..... plan your next trip and post a journal entry about it.
Visit [email protected]
Speaking of plane tickets. As a man who flies to Korea to visit family every other year or so.
Always brows tickets in incognito. Airlines may change rates based on whether you're a return visitor to their site and not having cookies can help.
Start with Google flights. This will give you an idea of when (what days and times) tickets are cheapest. Though generally Tuesday or Thursday are the answer.
Once you have your time frame use kayak or some other ticket agregator. This will let you find the airline and flight that you want.
Take that flight number and time and go directly to the airlines website. Aggregate sites like kayak rates are generally slightly higher that the airline because they gotta make dollars somehow.
Though not always I've found that some foreign Airlines charge native fliers less. E.g. if you're flying Korea air change .Com in your web address to .kr. This makes the site in Korean but Google translate page can help here
It's a bit of a process but I generally pay less than 1,000 round trip for flight to Korea and I live in a state with no international airport so I always have layovers.
Speaking of layovers. Use them. See a cheap ticket but it has a 24 hour layover in Paris? Fuck it, that's a day in Paris :). Just be aware that you need roughly 3 hours in customs depending on your destination. So a 5 hour layover is gonna be a boring 5 hours. Long enough to wait, not long enough to do anything.
Bonus tip!! If you have good credit. Look for a credit card that offers a huge bonus or mile's up front then immediately cash those in for a cheaper flight. Side note though on the ones that give you 5% cash back or whatever. You always have to book through them and it's almost always, in my experience, like 5% more expensive. Fuck you Chase.
Man, I flew to a Korean last year for around $800 a ticket but I CANNOT find anything under 1k this year so far. And I've been looking all year, I even use most of these tricks... I'm afraid flying there is just a lot more expensive now 😞
It can be. I'm actually headed there in 4 days. Tickets this time around were definitely higher than usual but I managed to get them for $940 ish. Not ideal since the whole family is going and my bank account is hurting. Also not ideal was having to choose a 3am flight with a trash layover in dfw... but fingers crossed cheap shopping while were there makes up for it.
Great list! The only thing I'd add is to check with your credit card company if you plan to use it abroad. Some require you to notify them if you're traveling, otherwise they may flag your transactions as fraud and deny them.
This is all very helpful thank you so much. Also is it true Japan isnt very liking towards tourists? I'm just your typical white guy..
Japanese people are great, if your polite and don't have expectations, you will be treated nice in return... just like every other country I've ever visited.
There are some people who don't like tourists, but they will just pretend you don't exist, so you can ignore them right back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRIklga9IBQ
This video matches my experiences in Japan, people are curious, helpful, if you have a mission and purpose the whole world is open to you. Be interesting, dig into some small fun detail, history, mission and people will pop out of the wood work.
The fact that people need to say get a passport is weird as an european
The problem is that international travel simply doesn't make sense for many Americans. The U.S. only has two international borders - Mexico and Canada. Any other international destination is going to be a flight across an ocean (South America isn't, obviously, but the distances/costs are similar), which can be $400-$1200 per person. The cost/duration of flights and need to adjust to a dramatically different timezone means that it really only makes sense to travel internationally when you can go for at least a week at a time. However, Americans tend to have very limited paid time off - usually only 10-20 days or so per year - and that is often a combined pool for vacation, sick time, etc. This means that a single international trip can chew up over half of the PTO for the entire year. So even if you can afford to travel, you don't have enough time off anyway. Most of the time it makes much more sense to travel domestically and just take Thu/Fri off for a long weekend.
(This is speaking from experience, if you couldn't tell, lol)
Yeah traveling abroad is the least of most people issue right now. And with how diverse north america is I understand why they don't do it sadly
I mean, I didn't have a passport for most of my adulthood either. As long as you only travel within the Schengen area and you live in a country that has ID cards, you don't need a passport.
I would be curious to know where you're from, I don't know anyone in France without one. Maybe because we needed it for the UK ?
Pre-Brexit, an ID card was actually enough to enter the UK. I guess that may have changed since. (Also, Germany.)
UK was in the EU for the most part of my adulthood, so I didn't need a passport (I'm from Germany).
To enter, you didn't need a passport, but for most flights you did for the last few years. The airlines stopped accepting any I'd and required a passport. UK was never in Schengen but was in free movement, being part of EU.
Ireland is still not in Schengen as there is "borderless" travel between Ireland and northern Ireland.
Oh, I just got back from there.
For a vacation less than 90 days, you only need a passport from your home country, and proof of your return flight in less than 90 days. Drugs were covered in another comment, but dont bring veggies or meat products into Japan, even if its like a Slim Jim thing you got at the airport, they'll give you a hard time over it. The trip can be long, so its worth planning it out to give your future tired self less things to think about. Expect to be sleep deprived your first 2 days.
Travel agencies are good for booking hotels in advance, which i highly reccomend to do 1 month before. I stayed 2 weeks and that I think was a great amount of time. I booked the hotels and plane in advance, then had $2000 in savings to convert to cash yen for the actual trip. Use cash, Japan is very cash heavy. That was way more than enough spending money actually, i probably could have done it with half that amount. Fall time has great weather, and I avoided the more expensive spring season / cherry blossom bloom. That sounds nice, but tickets are more expensive that time of year.
Travelling in Japan, there's the fast way and there's the cheap way. For trains, they have the shinkansen and the regular regional trains, and for roads theres the side streets and the expressway. Beware expressway tolls. Getting out of Osaka wasnt too bad but getting back in beaned my wallet for ~$90 USD. Theres toll gates less than 5 minutes apart there. If you have 4 or more people in a car the expressway might be cheaper than the shinkansen, which you need individual tickets for each person. Using the expressway isn't required, you can take side streets the whole way.
I had local friends who knew the language and could drive. They made my trip amazing. I tried to study some japanese language but when it really came time to interact with people i could not cut it. I really needed my friends to do anything more than sightsee and shop outside of tourist traps. My appearance and dress alone indicated me as an Obvious Foreigner and so people were quick to help and give me menus to point at. Even if your speaking skills were terrible, manners make up for it. Learn the local customs and formal etiquette, and people should forgive awful broken sentences and be patient with you. If you remember only one phrase: sumimasen. It's excuse me / sorry / can i have your attention all rolled into one phrase.
Go to a travel agency that does organized trips. With a guide. I've done it and it was really nice. Plus you don't need to figure out in which business hotel to stay and you don't even need to speak the language because you don't really need to organize all the stuff. And it's not too expensive.
Japan has really nice trains and subways. you can get practically everywhere without a car. Well maybe except for that strange place in the mountains. But they have taxis there, too.
You can always do the second trip on your own. After you've seen how everything works. Mind you can't talk to people and sometimes not even read signs if you only speak english.
Yeah, bring enough money. And a credit card that works at an ATM. I think Japanese people like cash more than paying with credit card.
You should read a book about that topic. There are lots of travel guides that teach you the important stuff.
And a credit card that works at an ATM.
I wouldn't recommend using an actual credit card at an ATM because it'll almost always be considered a cash advance and interest starts accruing immediately. Use a debit card instead. There's prepaid travel debit cards that often have better exchange rates than banks, too.
Thoughts on vacation types, tour groups, and the like. You know yourself the best, so obviously go with what you like.
For myself I've always found tour groups to be limiting, and frustrating, and you spend a lot of time dealing with the tour group rather than experiencing the place. So I try to avoid any group tour if at all possible. The only time I do them is with relatives who book them and insist on them, and I just grin and bare it. I did a bus tour of Yellowstone, with a huge group of Chinese travelers, the tour guide spoke Chinese, my Chinese is terrible. Did not have a good time do not recommend. But my relative was happy so that was that.
My preferred mode to travel is to rent an inexpensive place to live, for at least two or three weeks, a couple months if I can swing it, and just seeing what daily life is. Just going with the ebb and flow of the city. Taking time slowly exploring, not trying to fit in a huge activity list. I'm more interested in seeing how people live, operate, cultural differences, than seeing things that have been built.
Travel within Japan is very expensive. Very convenient but very expensive. Decide where you want to go and then look into a train pass for the area(s). You'll mostly be wanting to take the shinkansen if you're not staying in one small area--Japan is pretty spread out and travel otherwise takes a while.
Food, on the other hand, is mostly very affordable.
First, get a passport. Go to the US State Dept. website and you can find all the requirements. iirc they have a list of countries that require a separate visa. You can apply for the visa online.
If you've never been, I'd suggest looking for tour groups.
In terms of international travel, I would ask yourself what kind of experience you want with others. Japan is a relatively easy country to move around in if you don't know Japanese, but English isn't universally understood.
I'd recommend taking some English tours at minimum to give yourself someone to talk to in a language to understand.
You also aren't going to be able to see all of Japan. I would focus on a few parts you are interested in instead of trying to see the whole country.
Make sure you have a plug converter so you can charge your electronics
Converters aren't needed for phone chargers. If you read the fine text they say 240/120 50/60 Hz.
You'll need an adapter, though.
