Quote:
Originally Posted by aychseven
that suica thing looks very useful. i think some of the old vodaphone phones had it built in along with with felica, does softbank still do this and are they the only cell phone provider that offers this?
|
These days I think that most of the phones offer this. My Docomo has all the different payment systems built in.
Quote:
|
what about buying train and subway tickets? is there a machine with english readout or is there a ticket booth with people that speak english? i've never ridden a train or subway before (las vegas is so spread out that you need a car here and the bus system is really terrible.)
|
I`m going to imagine that Tokyo has a system similar to the one in Nagoya.
In general, you don`t buy a ticket for a specific station. You buy a ticket with a certain cost that is good for so many stations away. (Like, up to 6 stations away for such and such cost) There will be a big map showing the train line with the stations named, and the cost of the ticket you would need to get there. In Nagoya, some of the maps are in Kanji, some in Hiragana (presumably for children) and some in Romaji.
Quote:
|
oh and food! are most menus in japanese only, or are there usually pictures you could point at? i've eaten at plenty of japanese places, so if the names were in hiragana or katakana i could probably figure it out. i'm not quite adventurous enough to randomly point at something on a menu i can't read, and i'd rather not get stuck hitting up a combini for 3 meals a day because i don't know kanji.
|
Even better - there are extremely life like plastic/wax models of the food. As for pictures on the menu itself, I would say that really depends on the restaurant. Some big chains do, but most of the smaller places only have text (and the models)