Tips for your first trip to Tokyo
Run out of yen? No problem. ATMs at Japan Post Offices and convenience stores Seven Eleven and Family Mart across the city allow cash withdrawals from international cards. They have language buttons too so you can conduct your transaction with English guidance. The convenience store option is the best, as the Post Office ATMs are only open during business hours.
Tokyo has something going on in every season, but some are more comfortable for travelling than others.
Mid to late Spring (March-April) is cooler which means its pleasant for getting around and the bonus is its cherry blossom season. It is worth going to see this at least once, with the city blanketed in pink and the locals out celebrating the revered flowers with picnic parties under the canopies. The whole city goes cherry blossom crazy, with seasonal sakura (cherry blossom) flavoured foods and drink on the menu across many hotels, bars and restaurants and cherry blossom decorations around the shops and streets. Its also a great time to visit the Japanese gardens in the city with their array of fresh spring flowers. The blossoms bloom at a different time each year so keep an eye on cherry blossom reports on the internet to time your visit perfectly. Just be aware that accommodation prices tend to go up around this time due to the popularity and avoid Golden Week in late April when there a numerous public holidays which means a lot more locals moving around the city. In May the weather is already warming up.
Summer means humidity and sometimes very hot days. June is not ideal as it tends to be the rainy season which means high humidity and lots of wet weather. You’ll be sticky travelling in July and August, but if you can brave it, it’s worth going to experience the numerous summer festivals, rooftop beer gardens and annual fireworks displays. The Sumida River Fireworks are the largest and can be viewed from multiple vantage pints around the river. It’s also the season for shaved ice-a traditional summer dessert. If you’re lucky you’ll find a traditional vendor with a cart shaving the ice by hand.
Fall/Autumn offers cooler weather again, but you’re under threat of typhoons in October. November is beautiful as the leaves begin to turn and Autumn leaf decorations go up around the city. From mid-November, Christmas ‘illuminations’ go up around the city, draping streets and buildings in beautiful lights. Don’t miss the annual Christmas Illumination at Tokyo Midtown in Roppongi, a spectacular annual light show. You’ll need to rug up but it’s worth it for the sights.
Winter is very cold, though rarely below zero, and is best avoided unless you’re visiting Tokyo as a side trip to a skiing holiday elsewhere in Japan.
If you’re staying in a hotel with a stocked minibar, clear it out and fill it up yourself! Tokyo’s convenience stores sell alcohol and snacks at prices much cheaper than your hotel will be charging you! Convenience stores are also a great place to stock up with breakfast foods like bakery goods and yoghurt if you’re not planning to dine at the hotel.
Vending machines are literally everywhere in Tokyo – on footpaths, in hotels, at train stations and sometimes on incredibly random corners. They tend not to be the press-grabbing risqué ones though and are mostly drink machines, sitting quietly in wait, reminding you you’re thirsty at every turn. With drinks so readily available and the novelty of such convenient supply, it’s easy to drink you way through the day! Need a soft drink? A sugary juice? Perhaps a hot coffee in winter? The vending machines offer them all. And you can pay with notes, coins or your train card. Indulge yourself to your heart’s content, but you might want to think about saving your calories for the breakfast buffet!
Tax free shopping is readily available at stores across Tokyo. If you want to save yourself the 8% consumption tax on your purchases, make sure you carry your passport with you on your shopping jaunts as you need to present it to receive the discount. Be aware that the transaction method varies between stores. Some of the larger chain stores like Uniqlo offer dedicated Tax Free checkouts that allow you to pay the tax free price straight up, whereas some department stores require you to pay the price plus consumption tax then present your receipts at a Tax Free counter to have the consumption tax amount refunded to you. Note that at some stores there is a minimum spend required to treat the purchase as tax free. The sales assistants will glue or staple the paperwork associated with your transaction into your passport that the staff at border control will remove when you depart Japan. The best part about tax free shopping in Japan is that you don’t need to produce the goods to be sighted at the airport. You can simply pack them in your luggage, a much easier process than in some other countries.
With increasing numbers of tourists visiting Japan, many restaurants now offer English menus to save you trying to decipher what can seem as foreign as hieroglyphics! If the staff don’t offer one up, simply ask ‘Ayego no menyu wa arimaska?’ i.e. ‘Do you have an English menu?’ and see if they offer one up. If that fails, lots of menus have photographs of the meals you can simply point to! You are likely to have the most difficulty in smaller, local restaurants that may only display their menus written in Japanese on wooden boards. If you’re brave enough in this situation, you can try locating something your neighbour is eating to gesture to if it appeals!
If your eyes have been bigger than your luggage when faced with the temptations of Tokyo shopping, post your purchases home! Japan Post’s EMS parcel service is incredibly fast, safe and efficient and an easy way to offload any excess weight from your luggage. High end hotels will arrange all of this for you, but if you’re staying somewhere that doesn’t, you can do it yourself at either the post office nearest your hotel or even at Narita or Haneda airports before you depart. You will just need to box your belongings up, with either a box supplied by your hotel or one purchased at the post office, fill in a form listing your goods along with their monetary value and approximate weight and present them at the counter to pay. Note that cash is the preferred payment method and the only method if using the airport branches. Need to post something outside office hours? There is a 24-hour post office available in Shinjuku that you can visit in the middle of the night if need be.
Tokyo’s train stations have multiple exits, from just a few, to as many as 200 at Shinjuku station for example! The fact that many of them are underground can also make it difficult to get your bearings when you arrive at a destination and may leave you wondering which way to go to get to where you’re going. Thankfully the train companies have found a way to make it easier for you.
When you arrive at your destination station, you just need to find a yellow sign with black writing, either on the platform or just outside the ticket gates, that lists the exits and the key attractions and places in English. Simply find the attraction or place you are looking for on the list, match it to the corresponding exit letter and/or number and head for that one, following the black and yellow exit signs to the one you need. This way you can be sure when you pop up on ground level that you will be the closest to the attraction or place you’re looking for. You’ll find while doing this that it is not only tourists referring to these signs – many of the locals rely on them as well.
It’s not a myth that Tokyo hotel rooms tend to be small. This is because most of the more economical hotels were originally built to service Japanese business people who only needed somewhere to rest for a night or two while travelling for work. They weren’t built for foreign tourists more used to a bit more space.
Be sure to check the square meterage of hotel rooms via the hotel or travel website you use before booking to ensure you are comfortable. As a general rule, many of the mid-range and lower priced hotels tend to have small rooms. It’s the more expensive hotels and international chains that tend to have room sizes more common in the West. If you’re travelling solo, a room around 18m square is perfectly comfortable, without being roomy. But selecting a room that size or smaller for a couple will see you climbing over each to move around and struggling to find floor space to open your suitcases.
Travelling in Tokyo involves A LOT of walking. Even if you’re moving between areas by train, you’ll be surprised at how high your step count will go in a single day. So do like the locals and wear trainers or other comfortable options for your daytime forays and save less practical footwear for going out at night.