Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnBraden
Wow... I've never associated Tokyo with being small... There are about as many people in the greater Tokyo area as in the whole of Canada. Walking to train stations would be practical, because it could take you many hours to walk from Shibuya to Asakusa, for example....
Please say you were kidding!
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I think he is referring to the "Tokyo" as in Tokyo area around the station. Its insane to say tokyo is small, just look at the crazy transit map
And while you enjoy your rollerblading and biking in Canada (I am from Markham myself, so i do bike a lot), you don't want to make yourself stand out, "making a statement" in japan is not advisable. So do spend some time researching how everone else dress and act before making a decision on how you will travel
backpacking is doable, I've done it before, but its not easy, we only took about 4 days worth of clothing, thinking that we can just use coin laundry.. but we end up haing to buy a few t shirts and jeans when we were there.
I am not sure what do you mean by an "Efficient way to deal with airfare"? You mean how to pay for it, or how to search for a flight? To search for a flight, you can either go with JTB Canada, they are just off of Carlton and Yonge, or IACE travel, which I don't know their actual location, I usually just purchase E-Tickets form them
The hair thing, its a personal preference, I always keep my hair short because i sweat a lot and can't sleep with long hair, and the heat will be worse in Japan comparing to Toronto, its not just hot, its humid....
Not sure how you will "pick up" recipes on the trip, I copy most of my recipes online. You can find TONES of Japanese food recipes, and if you can read japanese, use Google.co.jp, it makes it just that much more authentic.
Japan is not just only about seafood, whoever told you that is ignorant, if you don't like it, you always have other non-seafood choices, for most of my trips, we actually rarely have any seafood, seafood is something that you really have to go to specific places for, most restaurante around will serve non-seafood items
Snowboarding, you will have to go to Furano for the best snow... but i believe there are some palces around Aomori for it too
I persoinally beleive that to really travel Japan, Tokyo shouldn't be your focus. Instead you should spend more time in places that is filled with more culture and history, so yes Kyoto will be a good choice. Osaka offer almost everything that Tokyo has to offer, plus good food. Yokohama, along the bay area has a lot of historic background that you can investigate into