Weeks 15 - 20 report (April 14th - May 25th)
Because I haven’t written anything in here for more than a month and didn’t do anything significant in my opinion, I decided to do it on Saturday rather than on Sunday or later.
Anyway, a lot has happened and the most important event was that my trip to Japan finally happened and it exceeded my expectations! 
I decided to travel this year because I turned 30 and I wanted to do something special this year. Travelling to Japan was something I wanted to do for years at this point, so it wasn’t hard to come up with an idea on what to do.
My trip started on April 26th when I flew from my home country to Finland and transfered to another plane which arrived to Tokyo about 13 hours later. This was the very first time I flew on a plane in my life; on top of that, I have never travelled outside Europe, but I decided to do it on my own. While I knew going alone could’ve been risky, I insisted on doing it solo and I have zero regrets. This was a life-changing experience and I’d like to go back to Japan eventually. The trip lasted two weeks and I boarded the plane on May 9th, then eventually arrived home on May 10th.
Lenghty list of my advice in case you're interested in travelling alone
For anyone considering such a trip, especially on their own, here’s some of the important advice from me:
- Have some cash in Yen before travellng (and of course, take at least one credit card with you that can be used in Japan such as MasterCard),
- Make sure you are medically insured in case something happens to you,
- Have every accomodation reserved months in advance because the most desired rooms get taken quickly and the prices may increase if you do it too late,
- Have at least one electric plug adapter for your charger with you (the Shinkansen trains only provide standard electric sockets for example),
- Pack as lightly as possible (Japanese trains don’t have much space for oversized luggage and you need to have certain seats reserved - these are VERY QUICKLY taken),
- Doing laundry is very easy in Japan with the automatic washing machines and driers being widely available, especially in hostels - make sure to have lots of 100 yen coins because the machines only accept this specific coin and nothing else (expect up to 600 yen for each laundry session).
- When drying clothes, do it for at least 1 hour for good results even if you have a small amount to dry (30 minutes was never enough in my case).
- If you’re travelling for the first time and you plan on riding across the country, get the Japan Rail Pass because you can save up A LOT of money (ex.: one way travel from Tokyo to Sapporo costs over 100€ and if you go back to Tokyo from Sapporo, this is already about half the cost of the 14-day ticket),
- Get the JRP on the official website because you can make reservations for the Shinkansen free of charge on it,
- Reservations can be done up to 1 month in advance or ~10 minutes before the departure; latter is very useful in case something unexpected happens, but you can only do it after 10 am Japan time,
- In case you need to do it before 10 am, you’ll need to interact with train station personnel; fortunately for you, the tickets are still free and the personnel is very friendly,
- The JRP ticket is one of your most valued items while travellng because if it gets lost, it’s gone FOREVER and no one can recover it for you; keep it safe and available at all times,
- Smartphones are essential if Japan is completely unknown to you, so consider repairs in case your phone needs them,
- Powerbanks are recommended if you plan to be outdoors most of the time (a 10,000mAh one with 20W output was more than enough for my phone and the mobile WiFi device that I rented).
- In Kyoto, I noticed that a lot of coin lockers that required an IC card were unoccupied while everything else was occupied. If possible, try to get one.
- Suitcases can be used immediately after being purchased tax-free (or at least that was my experience in Akihabara’s Bic Camera). Take advantage of that if your plane tickets allow a lot of baggage.
There’s so much I could talk about, but I’ll keep it as short as I can: my itinerary was Tokyo-Sapporo-back to Tokyo-Kyoto. While I did originally plan to go to Hiroshima, Osaka, Nagoya, and Kanazawa while being in Kyoto, I ended up not going because Kyoto was just too beautiful to skip on.
My plane from Finland to Japan was via Japan Airlines and I really liked their service. The personnel was bilingual, so anyone could enjoy the flight; I took the opportunity and started applying my basic knowledge of Japanese there, so that I’d get used to talking by the time I reach the country. I noticed that the Japanese tended to be much more eager to interact with me compared to other foreigners that didn’t speak Japanese and bow - this trend continued throughout the entire trip. Some even complimented my efforts to use their language, which I really appreciated.
Here’s my summary on what I did:
- Tokyo (arrival): had a good quality sleep because sleeping on the plane was very uncomfortable.
- Sapporo: witness the famous cherry blossoms
in Maruyama Park with my own eyes - worth the walk in the rain and riding trains 16 hours in total. Also, I visited the Clock Tower, Odaiba Park, and ascended the Sapporo TV tower.
- back to Tokyo: parks, imperial garden, Shibuya crossing, Shinjuku, Akihabara, and video game arcades. I had one rainy day and I decided to visit the 大仏 in Kamakura (Tokyo’s proximity).
- Kyoto (the Arashiyama monkey park, bamboo forest nearby, To-ji temple, Fushimi Inari Taisha, Nara park with deers, and Uji along with its Byodo-in temple). There was also one side trip to Iwata near Hamamatsu on a rainy day to visit the Yamaha Communication Plaza for my brother and get him a shirt from there since he’s a big fan of Yamaha motorcycles.
I did pretty much everything that I wanted to in two weeks of travel. My only regret was not being in Tokyo for at least a day or two more which I reserved for Sapporo . On the other hand, I managed to catch the last cherry blossoms in the country right before the petals started falling off, so the train rides were worth it.
My favorite aspect of the travel was actually using my knowledge of Japanese as much as I could. Despite being basic, I was able to do most of my interactions with the locals without English. The most complex ones were ordering multiple dishes in a restaurant one time and letting someone know that they were sitting on my reserved seat on a Shinkansen. The last one went surprisingly smoothly despite me only saying something like “すみません．．．あのおお．．．私の．．．” while showing the person my ticket. Of course, I said “ありがとうございました。” and bowed when the person went to their actual seat.
Overall, the trip was amazing and I’d like to return to Japan for my future vacations. It also gave me a massive amount of motivation for my Japanese studies, which is something that I needed. Now I no longer have to rely on my own self-rewarding process and certain video games to keep me motivated. I’ll have to update my first post eventually in that regard.
I’d like to learn as much Japanese as possible until my next trip, so you can expect me to start leveling up again and I’ll eventually join the book clubs on this forum in the near future.
Oh, and here are a few pictures I’ve taken (out of ~1000):
Pictures
The last few are taken from Kotobukiya and Super Potato in Akihabara. Didn’t buy any of that (no room for model kits or PS2 at the moment 
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. While I did significant progress with Genki I compared to before, it wasn’t what I wanted (only half of chapter 8 done 
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icon near my name right after replying. I would’ve never known that’s a thing here if I hadn’t posted. It’s already been one year since I joined, huh?
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