H and I have a short trip to Tokyo in early March. We plan on spending one day in Kyoto but are just now starting to plan out the other three days that we can tour together. Any suggestions for don’t miss sights? Also, any tips regarding cell phone use and currency are appreciated.
Go to the fish market early in the morning.
Fish market is definitely a fun place to visit. For other places, it depends on your preference. Using US cell roaming may become expensive if you’re a heavy user. I suggest purchasing a local SIM card or renting a wifi pod. PM for other suggestions. I’m based in Tokyo. If you’re on the east coast, there’s a 14 hour time difference so reply may not be instantaneous.
We really liked the Ota Museum of Art - it a private collection of Ukiyo-e scrolls and prints. It’s also fun to explore department stores.
Department stores sound fun and will be a good thing for me to do on the days I have to myself. I am thinking of going to DisneySea one day.
It may be too early for cherry blossoms in Tokyo, but I would highly recommend some of the gardens there anyway. We walked to a beautiful garden near our hotel called Koishikawa-Korakuen, a peaceful oasis in the middle of the city. We also enjoyed Senso-ji, Tokyo’s oldest temple in Asakusa, and the Imperial Palace. We also went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Observatory for a view of the city from the 45th floor. The day wasn’t that clear, but it was fun anyway. We went to the Tokyo Skytree, but that day the top of the tower was partially fogged in so there was no point in going up.
If you want something really kitchy, go to the robot restaurant! https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/robot-restaurant-tokyo/index.html
If possible, plan to stay overnight in Kyoto and tour a number of the temples. Otherwise, as a day trip, it is hard to get to see much as it is about 2.5 hours from Tokyo Station to Kyoto on the bullet train and you have to get to Tokyo station from where ever you are staying. But definitely worth the trip, even if just for the day.
You can only go to the actual vendor part of the fish market by either going really early and possibly getting in or as a general public after 10am, which was not that exciting. But walking through the overall market was interesting and the fish were delicious.
The akihabara electric town area was pretty amazing and different. The Meiji shrine and the Tokyo national museum which is in Ueno Park were interesting.
Can someone speak about the language barrier? My fiance is really set on going to Tokyo for our honeymoon, but I’m nervous about all the stress that would come from trying to navigate without any knowledge of Japanese at all.
It’s a valid concern.
If using a taxi, always take a card from the hotel that has the address of your destination(s) in kanji or ask the front desk/concierge to write it down; the cab driver will often speak no English.
If hopelessly lost in the middle of the street, seek out a younger person versus an older one. If necessary, write your question, as some are more comfortable with written English than spoken English. Or go to the nearest major hotel chain, where there will always be English speakers on staff.
The good news: Almost all signs in the subway/train stations will be in Japanese and English, so if you can self-navigate, you’d be OK. Additionally, the locals will genuinely try to help you by finding an English speaker or by old-fashioned pantomime.
Rebeccar, my son who speaks no Japanese visited his college roommate for 3 weeks in October. The roommate has been there for 3 1/2 years and has not learned much of the language (he is an assistant teacher). Two of the weeks they were mainly in the Tokyo area, doing daytrips. The middle week they traveled by train and were in some areas where little English was spoken. He had a fantastic time and didn’t think the lack of language knowledge was a problem.
We did a trip to Tokyo and Kyoto (and some points in between last spring).
If you only have a few days, I would definitely allocate them more heavily to Kyoto than to Tokyo. It’s much smaller and more manageable, but there are many beautiful things to see there, and it’s a lot less familiar-seeming. Tokyo is not unlike New York – a huge, wealthy, cosmopolitan city that’s a great place to spend money, go to museums (except the museums are nowhere near as good in Tokyo), and spend more money, or at least think about spending more money.
Things we did in Tokyo that I would want to do again:
– Tsukuji fish market (but if you want to see the famous tuna auctions, you have to queue up by around 2 am)
– Kabuki-za Theater. You can get standing room balcony tickets for one act at a time (60-120 minutes). That’s enough to get some sense of the experience without blowing an entire day.
– Visiting a major department store, especially the food section in the basement
– Wildly expensive but incredibly good chef-selection sushi-sashimi meal at Michelin starred restaurant (the price and quality of the experience were both comparable to The French Laundry)(you can do the same sort of thing with tempura if you really want your food cooked)
– Housewares market on Kappabashi Street
– Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery – best contemporary Japanese art we saw by several orders of magnitude
– Ukiyo-e Ota Memorial Museum – small museum with fabulous collection of traditional woodblock prints on the edge of a happening neighborhood
Things we did in Kyoto that I would want to do again:
– Otagi Nembutsu-ji Temple – not on anyone’s list of top sites, in part because it’s not that old, and often not even on maps of the great temples, because it’s a little farther up the mountain in Arashiyama than the most famous places, but it was our favorite thing we saw in all of Japan. Like walking through a Miyazaki film.
– Nanzen-Ji Temple and Philosopher’s Walk , also Ginkaju-ji and Honen-in Temples – different styles reflecting different approaches to Japanese Buddhism, and a lovely path on which to walk among them
– Fushimi-Inari Shrine – a huge Shinto complex built up the side of a mountain, with thousands of torii gates and fox statues. Worth going to the top.
– Ippodo Tea store. Best tea seller in Japan.
– Kaiseki-style multi-course meal in which every course featured yuba (tofu skin), soy milk, or both (and in general the variety and quality of vegetarian food)
– Incredible variety of pickled vegetables! Kyoto pickles were outrageously good, and so different one to the next.
– Black sesame soft-serve ice cream
Neither of us had more than a few phrases in Japanese, and we really had no trouble anywhere, especially not in Tokyo. We used public transportation everywhere. We wound up using Google Translate to bargain over buying something at a tiny shop/factory in Kyoto. But even there, we thought it was clear that the owner’s daughter was pretty competent in English, but she didn’t want to displace her mother as the primary interlocutor unless the mother asked her.
ようこそ ジャパン (Welcome to Japan!)
You can be much better served by posting the same question on tripadvisor.
Please take a look at Japan Rail Pass since you plan to go to Kyoto. I strongly recommend you spend more time in Kyoto than Tokyo. Again, this really depends on what you would like to see. I have done one day tour of Kyoto from Tokyo before. It is definitely doable. If you use Japan Rail Pass, please remember you cannot use bullet train (called 新幹線 shinkansen) のぞみ ( Nozomi) express train, use ひかり(hikari) bullet train instead. You can save a ton of money by using Japan Rail Pass. If you just have one day in Kyoto, use taxi as transportation at Kyoto. Unlike in China, Japanese taxi drivers won’t cheat foreign tourists and they wear white gloves. BTW, use a fee-free ATM card like PNC bank card to withdraw money at airport for the best rate. Capital One credit card has no foreign currency transaction fee. I have verified that those cards use official daily exchange rate. Have a great trip.
I really enjoyed the Japanese tea ceremony in Tokyo. I also wanted to take ikebana class, but did not have enough time. Never had any problems finding English speakers, even though we traveled to Kyoto by train, took subway, and walked around a lot ( including several walks all the way from Roppongi Hills to the downtown). Roppongi Hills is a fun place to visit, including the Mori Garden and the observation deck. Tokyo Imperial Palace neighborhood is a great place for a nice relaxing walk without bumping into people.
We visited my brother’s family when he worked in Tokyo. The highlight was definitely Kyoto. We were there in early Mar. They had an early spring, so we were lucky to see the cheery blossom. We took a day trip to Mt Fuji. It was nice, but didn’t really wow me. We did a lot of shopping and visited many local temples. My kids loved their sushi conveyor belt and noodle shops. I remember their western cakes were very expensive.
Kamakura. Only an hour from Tokyo Station. It’s an historical town on the beach. Like Kyoto, it was protected from WWII bombings, so lots of temples and shrines remain. You can see a lot in a day in a relaxed, peaceful way.
I went 2 summers ago with H and two teenage sons; we were in Tokyo 3-4 days. We stayed in a hotel that catered more to Japanese guests so there was a bit of of language barrier (some signs in the room only in Japanese—like how to use the very complicated toilet!). The hotel’s location was awesome, being right above a major subway station and a mall and overlooking the Shibuya Crossing.
Some activities we enjoyed:
A bike tour (this alternated between relaxing and harrowing depending where we were and how busy the streets were)
The robot restaurant already mentioned above (we didn’t eat there though, just a drink and the show),
A tour of Akihabara and visit to a maid cafe https://akibaland-tours.jimdo.com
A morning tour of the fish market combined with a sushi making (and eating ) class–this was excellent and so much fun
Check out a Krispy Kreme if you see one, they have some unique flavors you won’t see in the US
I found a lot of these tours and activities through Viator dot com, they had many more I wish we’d had time for like calligraphy, tea ceremony, etc.
All the major sights and activities have been mentioned but my favorite remains the basement of department stores where they have all different kinds of food and colorful creative housewares.
CELL PHONE: I have travelled all around Japan many times and do not often need to use my cell phone to make calls unless I’m on a business trip. If you need to make a lot of calls, it might be worth it to rent a local cell phone or sim card because international roaming rates are ridiculous. Using the internet is much more useful. You can rent a wifi hotspot from the airport for about $20 per day. Texting is not too expensive. I think my provider charges 5 cents to receive a text and 25 cents to send one.
CURRENCY: Coins are used a lot, especially for transactions less than $10. It’s good to have a coin purse, even for men, so you don’t have to break large bills all the time. When I’m in Japan, I carry one of those plastic squeeze coin purses rather than have dozens of coins rattling around my pockets. Hotels, department stores, etc. will accept major U.S. credit cards like Visa and Mastercard, but your card provider may charge a 3% fee for international charges.
ENGLISH: In major metropolitan areas, English is fairly common. Especially in areas frequented by tourists (train stations, hotels, tourist attractions, etc.). In suburban and rural areas, English is not common. Written English is understood better than spoken. Google translate is not very good, but is better than nothing if there is no alternative.
When we were in Japan we spent some time on the southern island, and also at some ryokans where the room reservations had been made by local Japanese professors. We managed to find a fair number of people who did not speak any English, whenever we were off the beaten path, but it we managed to muddle through. We were there when kids were much younger and their favorite site was the Edo theme park north of Tokyo. We grownups enjoyed it too. 
https://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/spot/thempark/nikkoedomura.html