Tips for Travelling in Japan!

Time to do this again. I had written this first, and then the site had glitched out on me when I pressed publish, and it deleted this entire post. Sometimes, life just likes to make me suffer.

Regardless, here's a nice vlog about travel tips when travelling around Japan! Emi and I had gone to Kyoto and Osaka, titled Kyosaka, which I believe might actually be a common name used for this trip and not just something we made up, and it was a rather last-minute plan, when we realized that we only had one completely free weekend left! Thus, we went on our way.

Our travel itinerary included having our plane get delayed by about 40 minutes, which thus caused us to not be able to get to our airbnb in time, as we would have taken the train halfway there and stopped in the middle of a transfer, since the trains would have stopped running. While there were a number of internet and manga cafes nearby and at the airport that were at our disposal, we figured this would be a good chance to try out a capsule hotel, which we could reach by train in time. I highly recommend it if you're travelling anytime! It was $30 a night, and included pajamas, bath use, toiletries, and a locker to store anything that you didn't want to put in your capsule! The capsule is essentially your bed, so you don't really want to put any roller luggage or large duffel bags or other in there. Unfortunately, it was around 1-2AM at the time, so I didn't get much time to explore and take advantage of the surroundings after a stressful flight.

Afterwards, we headed to Gion, Nishiki Market, Fushimi Inari Taisha, with its Senbon Torii, Kiyomizudera, with its fall illumination, Arashiyama, with its bamboo forest, and Dotonbori! We actually missed a couple of stops we wanted to go to along to way, as we spent more time at these places because there was more to see, and we had a little late start on our schedule. We had another positive experience at an internet cafe as well, as the first airbnb we stayed in didn't have wifi (whoops!). If you're considering your own trip, you might want to take a look at Kinkakuji, Kyoto Imperial Palace, Philosopher's Walk, and the Kyoto International Manga Museum! We had thought of these at some point, but had scrapped them for lack of time. We stayed 4 nights and 3 days, and it wasn't enough!

I won't say any of the travel points here, since you should watch the video, but as a stupid bonus point, don't wear shoes with holes in them. In fact, comfortable walking boots that likely won't get wet are the best, in my opinion. This comes from the girl who wore her casual, sneaker-like Sperry shoes that had a hole on the top of the right foot and stepped into the rain (with an umbrella, I may add) on the last day, only to soak her shoes completely. This same girl then had to stuff plastic bags around her feet and into her shoes after she changed socks, because her shoes remained wet until the next day. Don't be that girl. Don't be me.

Regardless, safe travels!