Must-Do Things Before Flying to Japan

in this video I'm gonna share with you the must do things before you fly to Japan so I've already done a video of what to do when you arrive in Japan especially when you get to the airport but in this video I wanted to focus on what you need to do before even getting on the plane so what a lot of people don't know about coming to Japan is that it's very much a reservation based culture meaning that if you want to go to some of the higher class places or if you want to go to some like high-end restaurants or some very very popular spots here in Tokyo or throughout Japan you have to make reservations in fact some of the things that we'll be talking about in this video it's so difficult to get in that you have to book months in advance and by the time you arrive in Japan it's already too late so I want to share this information with you so when you get to Japan you don't have that Ono moment where you're like I really wanted to go here but I can't also what you'll find is if you do a little bit of prep work you can and save some money so that's another advantage of planning ahead and doing all these things before you fly to Japan overall the whole point of this video is to help all of you out so you can maximize your time here in Japan but before I start like always if you want to help support the channel check out the Tokyo merch you're gonna see what I'm doing on a daily check out my Instagram account and if you have questions about your upcoming trip to Japan or you want to connect with people who love Japan then have recently created a discord community for you to connect links are always in the description and finally I wanted to give a quick shout out to our sponsor Mobile SIM cards without them I couldn't make all of these videos for all of you in fact my first tip before coming to Japan is organizing a SIM card having a SIM card overseas it makes life so much easier I'm able to connect to all of my social media I'm able to connect to all my emails as well as just be able to navigate throughout the entire country what's nice about mobile is that they offer free shipping all throughout the world and once you've ordered it it'll come within a few days so that when you land in Japan you'll have your SIM card up ready to go and for those of you who are watching this video just before your trip you can actually make a same-day orders and pick it up when you arrive in Japan Mobile has a free pickup spots at the airport as well there's a free pickup spots in cities all throughout Japan making it super convenient all a little bit more about mobile later on in this video but for now let's move on to some more things that you need to do before flying to Japan well there just seems to be too many cars here so I'm gonna move to a quieter spot alright that's a lot better less cars less noise alright so let's continue here this video number two Michelin in a high-end restaurant so what you'll find with a lot of these michelin high-end restaurants is that the seats booked up for really quickly because a lot of these restaurants only have maybe 10 to 12 seats available and the fact that they're already popular means that they get booked out 3 to 6 months in advance so just be very very careful my first recommendation in all of this is just to kind of know which of the high-end restaurants Michelin restaurants that you want to go to and then once you know then have a look on their website on their Facebook page and check to see whether or not you can make reservations in advance and to see what the reservation weight is like Oh we'll find is some of these restaurants and don't accept online reservations they only accept phone reservations and even worse some of the really old-school restaurants only accept reservations from regulars so many of these restaurants that no longer accept booking directly from foreign travelers because they've experienced too many no-shows by travelers but what I wanted to share with you in this video is there's kind of a workarounds around this so the first thing you can do before you come to Japan is contact your hotel concierge a lot of the times although they won't accept reservations from people overseas some of the restaurants will accept reservations from your hotel concierge so give them a call and see if they can make a reservation for you and then the second thing if that's not possible has actually online websites that will let you make reservations but if you do decide to use one of these online reservation systems be aware that you're going to have to use a credit card to make the booking the two Mo's travel friendly websites are pocket concierge and table check they're very similar and what they do but what I found is that table check is a bit easier to use in terms of the calendar there's more request options like what type of room you want and that kind of sort of thing and three the booking is secured right away so that you know you have to see it's but with websites like pocket concierge with payment then later you'll receive a confirmation whether or not you actually got the reservation the thing is not all of the high-class and Michelin restaurants are listed on these websites so you might want to check a couple of them especially the old school ones they're probably not gonna be listed and finally one of the last workarounds to getting into these high-end restaurants is to actually use your guide if you're having a private tour and you've scheduled a private tour guide here in Japan and they can actually make the calls for you and since usually they're Japanese or they're local it's easier to make those reservations through them and if you're looking for a private tour guide in Tokyo I actually have a friend that does it so I'll leave a link in the description next is hotel reservations this one might be pretty obvious yes before you come to Japan you need to make Hotel Reservations these days a lot of people use a goda Expedia or booking com to make those reservations those sites are great especially for English speakers but if you want more local websites you can use websites like rocket and travel or jot on they have better deals and more options especially when it comes to food options at the hotel but something to note about these websites especially when you're making reservations for like hotels on sans real cons outside of like major cities like Tokyo is that a lot of them are sometimes just on Japanese web sites and a lot of them offer more deals on the Japanese web sites in fact a lot of these onsens and real cons frequented by Japanese people but you'll find this that you need to make reservations even more advanced compared to booking your hotel in the city in fact a lot of the higher end ones will get booked up quicker now let's talk about the junior pass so for those of you who don't know that junior pass is basically and all you can use unlimited ride train pass or junior trains locally as well as a Shinkansen bullet trains that go all throughout Japan so this is kind of a must especially for travelers who are looking to travel quite a lot throughout Japan and not just a say for example in Tokyo but get so much more of a discount if you use it wisely a lot of Japanese people wish they can have but the junior pass is only for travelers so definitely he should look into this if you're gonna be doing a lot of traveling you can purchase three different durations you can get a seven-day a 14 day and a 21 day pass and then you can get a regular car or you can get a green car pass the green car pass allows you to get into nicer seats you should really really consider ordering this before you get to Japan I'm a lot of countries have designated places where you can buy the jr. pass and it's not to say that you can't buy the jr. pass here in Japan but you will save 10 to 20 percent if you buy it ahead of time so definitely if you want to save that 10 20 % buy it beforehand but there looks like to be some uncertified websites that you can buy the jr. pass in advance to reason I say it's uncertified is because it's not actually listed on the jr website I'm not saying that these websites one actually work but just be careful when you're buying them from these online websites before buying these is to make sure that you're eligible and that you meet the requirements because even though you buy the passes you might not be able to collect the passes or you might not be able to use the passes if you don't meet the requirements or you're not eligible oh and something worth mentioning about the jr pass is that you can not only use them on trains but you can also use them on buses and ferries exceptions that do apply so definitely check the website to make sure that you can use it for that specific location in area also we've been riding the Shinkansen on the jr pass you can ride unreserved seats but if you want to ride reserved seats you will need to go to the ticket booth in advance to reserved before you ride also if you're flying in or out of Narita Airport and taking the nettie to Express you can use the jr. pass to ride it and save 6000 yen round-trip which is about 55 US dollars so quickly I wanted to talk a little bit more about mobile SIM cards and all the cool things that they have to offer Mobile SIM cards are suitable for short and long term stays basically all plans come with unlimited data as a standard you get seven gigabytes of data at 4g LTE speeds super super fast but if you do need more data then you can definitely upgrade to one of their larger plans and if you need you can get a real Japanese phone number which makes it super convenient if you need to call people here in Japan or if you need people to call you after already in the card online it'll come in a package like this it up like so so this is the actual SIM card that they send to you as you can see it's a soft Bank card in fact it's on the same mobile network that I use on a daily basis which covers 99% of Japan's population so you know you'll be covered just like me also Mobile offers English language support and best of all mobile guarantees that a majority of their profits go to charity so if you want to get your mobile SIM card and be connected when you arrive here in Japan check out the link in the description now let's talk about reservations for Disney so what you'll find with the restaurants at Disneyland and Disney Sea is that's it's really difficult and extremely hard to get in if you don't have reservation especially the higher-end restaurants the good thing though is all the restaurants can be booked on the Disney website so if you want to have dinner at a nice restaurant in Disney you should definitely book ahead I mean just to give you an example Myka and I have been to Disney see so many times our favorite restaurant is Magellan and every time we go there try to look booked a few days in advance and it's all booked up and like the only seats we can get are like for really really hard times maybe like at 4:00 p.m. we have like an early dinner I'm if you're okay with 4 p.m. that's fine but if you want to have dinner at say like 6 or 7 p.m. then definitely make a booking in advance also something to note about the Disney resorts is that the hotels at Disneyland and Disney see get booked up especially like the Ambassador Hotel and Mira Costa those get booked up at least like 1 month in advance so be careful if you want to stay there the good thing compared to restaurants is that they have up to 5 months advance of booking so you do have time and another personal story Michael and I have tried to stay at the MiraCosta with a park side view we try to book one week in advance and the rooms are all booked or they're just super insanely expensive like several times the cost of a normal hotel if you booked a few months in advance so we like to end up not doing it because we're like oh we'll just booked it a few months and that's the next time and we never do it so that's kind of another reason why I wanted to show the Disney experience with you because if you are excited to come to Japan and check out the Disney Resort you're gonna want to make all of these reservations weigh in a fan and I don't want you guys stuck not getting to actually experience Disney here in Japan or having to pay through the roof to get that Disney experience just plan ahead finally if you want to get Disney tickets you don't actually need to buy them in advance but if you do buy the tickets in advance you are able to skip the lines at the entrance and just like scan your ticket so and in fact if you want more tips about Disneyland and Disney see I've actually made a complete video on that for tips and hacks so check out that video I'll leave a link in the description next let's talk about visas now this one is probably a no-brainer before coming to any country you want to make sure you have the proper visa to get in so if you're currently a citizen of one of the 68th countries listed here and you granted a general visa exemption and you only need to show a valid passport to enter Japan as a temporary visitor which allows you up to a 90 day visit except if you're from Brunei and Indonesia which gets 15 days for United Arab Emirates for 30 days but if you're not from any of these countries and you're gonna need to formally apply for a visa it may vary per country so definitely check on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website you may need to prepare items like photos birth certificates invitation letters and guarantor documents which takes time so be prepared now let's talk about special events so for sports and related offense like sumo or baseball you definitely need to check the season schedule because it doesn't go all throughout the year but it has its own season and what you'll find is that earlier in the season tickets part easier to get but as you go through towards the end of the seasons then the tickets are harder and harder to get so let me go through sumo so sumo seasons are a bit different than your typical sports they run in tournament forms six times a year called partial in various locations in Japan here's the 2020 schedule and the 2021 schedule for reference basically there are three tiers of seats ringside box seats and balcony seats ringside being the most difficult to obtain there's also juice ecchi which are free seating tickets but they're not available for pre-sales and they sell out quickly from 8 a.m. on each day of the sumo so I wouldn't rely on those tickets if you want to guarantee a viewing so you can purchase tickets directly online in English on the official sumo site but be warned they to sell out quickly at times until you should mark the dates when the tickets go on sale so let's go through baseball baseball is quite popular in Japan so tickets can be hard to get sometimes so definitely plan ahead you can simply go to the team's website for example the Tokyo Giants which is also in English just so you know better seats more popular teams and the end of the season will make it more difficult to get tickets so again plan ahead but let me go through concerts concerts it really depends on who's performing on how advanced you need to buy the tickets the Japanese people usually buy their tickets online on a site called ticket PA the site is in Japanese unfortunately they also have their site available in English again all of this information is listed in the description and here are some other things that you should probably be aware if you're going to one of the team lab museums like borderless or you're going to cup noodles museum you can usually get tickets while you're here in Japan but if you have a short stay and sometimes it's actually best to book one week in advance and make reservations what you'll find is that weekends get really really booked and if you're only staying here for a few days and you're arriving on a Friday it may be too late so that's just something else to consider when coming to Japan something that you should make reservations for before coming here oh and I should also probably mention this medicines and prescription drugs first of all this one we need to be a bit careful I should note that I'm not a lawyer and I'm not providing you with legal advice in this video you definitely need to check the laws in Japan before you bring in medicines from outside of the country many common medications and over-the-counter drugs in countries like the United States are illegal in Japan it doesn't matter if you have a valid US prescription for a medicine or drug which is illegal in Japan if you bring it into Japan you risk being arrested or detained by Japanese authorities so you're gonna need to check with the Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare whether or not your prescription medicine is okay to bring into Japan for example all medications containing stimulants are prohibited this includes adderall a standard medication used ADHD symptoms in the US you can bring prescription medicines into Japan with you without any special procedures on the condition that one you bring it only for your own use to it's not any prohibited drugs such as methamphetamine in Japan three it's not any especially controlled drugs such as narcotics in Japan and for its quantity is up to one month supply so if you have exceptions to this rule you need to bring special medicines we'll have to apply for a so called you can show me an importation certificate and receive it before you leave home and then declare to the customs officer when you arrive in Japan this process could take several weeks depending on your country and requirements so plan ahead aside from that if you guys like this video help me out as always by hitting that like button and if you guys want to help support the channel check out the Tokyo merch and if you guys want to see what I'm doing on that daily check out my Instagram account also thank you again to our sponsor Mobile SIM cards if you really come into Japan and you want to be connected just like me definitely think about getting a plan from mobile and finally if you want to see more guides about Japan and then the live videos definitely hit that subscribe button and the Bell button and I'll catch you guys in the next one

Channel: Paolo fromTOKYO

Views: 325,168

Keywords: Paolo, japan guide, japan, japan travel, japan travel guide, jr pass, japan rail pass, japan tips, travel guide japan, japanese restaurant, japan restaurant reservation, japan sim card, japan rail pass exchange, sim card japan, japan travel hacks, japan must know, japan travel must know, flying to japan, japan preparation, japan planning, Japan sumo, bringing medicine to japan, Japan perscription medicine, japan michelin star restaurants, japan baseball, purchase jr pass

Id: oQ8Ls8e9M6U

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2020