going to japan

[mishasu]

hey guys


im going to be traveling to japan next summer and i was just woundering weather you guys could answer a few questions for me. just so i get the full benifit of my trip you know?

1. can anyone think of any great places to visit that arent usually where most tourists go?

2. the hot springs, i really want to go into the hot springs and spas when i visit japan and have heard that they are seperated into male and female, as i am going with my boyfriend i will have to go alone i was just woundering if the japanese woman will maybe not talk to me because i am a gajin?

3.i speak japanese but i cant read it, will signs and things be totaly in japanese or will there be english versions too?

4.does anyone know of any good hotels that are a reasonable price?

5. how much money do you think i will need to take with me (you can tell me this in dollers if you want (i am from the UK though) or in yen i dont mind)



anyway those are a few questions going through my mind at the min so if anyone can answer at least one i will be very thankfull.

[godwine]

Originally Posted by mishasu

hey guys


im going to be traveling to japan next summer and i was just woundering weather you guys could answer a few questions for me. just so i get the full benifit of my trip you know?

1. can anyone think of any great places to visit that arent usually where most tourists go?

2. the hot springs, i really want to go into the hot springs and spas when i visit japan and have heard that they are seperated into male and female, as i am going with my boyfriend i will have to go alone i was just woundering if the japanese woman will maybe not talk to me because i am a gajin?

3.i speak japanese but i cant read it, will signs and things be totaly in japanese or will there be english versions too?

4.does anyone know of any good hotels that are a reasonable price?

5. how much money do you think i will need to take with me (you can tell me this in dollers if you want (i am from the UK though) or in yen i dont mind)



anyway those are a few questions going through my mind at the min so if anyone can answer at least one i will be very thankfull.

1. What do you like to do? What are you interest? And WHERE in Japan are you going?

2. Some resort allow (for a small charge) booked private bath, so you can be with your BF. Otherwise most people, unless friends going together, don't talk to each other at the onsen anyways.

3. Most signs are in Japanese, a few will be in english in the tourist area, but sice you mentioned that you don't want to be in a tourist area, are out of luck, but Japanese people are usually helpful, since you speak Japanese, you can just ask

4. Again, which area? There are a lot of online booking sites that give you a decent price. "HOTELS" are usually pricey, go with a business motel, motel or traditional Ryokan

5. Where will be and how long are you going for? My average spending, including all transportation and accommodation (flight as well), comes out to be around ￥20,000 a day, thats done with cheap business motel, street food and bus/rail pass, it also include ticket (Entrance) fee for shrines and other attraction, but doesn't include sovenir cost

[Firebird]

I am currently in Japan, but cannot speak alot of Japanese but read hiragana and katakana and i can only recommend you to learn these, as even the few things you will be able to read can be very helpful. Its alot easier spotting a ramen bar or a internet cafe if you can read the ~70 signs. It would be perfect if i could read many Kanji, but i cant, but i still came around till now, so dont worry, as said above, japanese are very helpful but many dont want to speak English or cant, so you are lucky you speak japanese (every word counts!)

[Paul11]

Check out the thread with the word "onsen" in the title. Onsen means hot spring. I started the thread a few weeks ago and people put up some great information.

Bring plenty of cash. Untill recently, japan was a mostly cash economy. A few years ago a friend went on my recommendation, but he brought credit cards and little cash. He had a difficult time because not all places like restaurants and gift shops took cards. I was just there about 18 months ago and used my card several times.

[godwine]

I actually didn't have any problems with credit cards. I carded most of my purchase back in 2005, 06 and then last year around october. Cash is definitely helpful for shrines and temples, small souvenir store and street food, but for the most part card is accepted to most places that i went to

I agree to the reply on hiragana and katakana, you will definitely benefit from it. Being conversational will definitely help you, but you might as well learn the writing, Hiragana at least.

[ChisaChi]

I'd start with katakana, since it's used for a lot of loan words from English and you'll be able to understand a lot of what you read fairly easily. Hiragana is less useful because most of the time it's mixed with kanji, which takes a lot more work to read, let alone comprehend. Some basic kanji like the numbers is pretty useful, I noticed some restaurants showing the prices in this way.

In terms of speaking, I found sumimasen (excuse me/sorry), ____ wa doko desu ka (where is ___?), and arigatou (thankyou) the most useful. If you're really keen you could read up on some useful phrases for tourists, like ordering in restaurants or understanding directions as well ^_^

I used cash for smaller purchases and card for hotels and big purchases. Card facilities were less common than here in Australia where even small stores have them, but it's not too bad.

[Wasabista]

As Paul11 says, cash (including ATMs) are the way to go in Japan. You may have trouble getting a credit card accepted, especially MasterCard, and don't even think about cash advances with your credit card.

For accommodation, check www.metropolis.jp for Tokyo and Osaka Time Out for Osaka. Many ads are geared to budget travelers.

For the onsen, you will be able to join your boyfriend in the rotenburo (open air bath) in many places in Nagano and Gunma, and just about anywhere if you go up to Tohoku. Most onsen inns (ryokan) also have private baths, just try the door, if it's unlocked it's yours.

I personally recommend Kanazawa. The geisha quarter is a smaller version of Gion in Kyoto, and though it is touristed the other tourists will be 99% Japanese. Himeji and Okayama Castles are of great historical interest.

Go to Akihabara in Tokyo and hang out in a maid cafe!

[godwine]

I actually don't kow if I agree, sure Katakana is used for names and a lot of loan words, but any meaningful sentences doesn't always have katakana in it. Japanese USE hiragana and Kanji for the most part in their day to day, if you go to asahi.com or any Japanese news site, you will see MOSTLY Hiragana and Kanji.

Your best bet is to have a decent Japanese-English dictionary with you, along with both a Hiragana and Katakana table. That way, you can look at the writing, visualize the romaji and then look it up in the dictionary

Also the downside of using the Katakana for loaned word, you have to really know the "english" equiv well. For example, Mr Smith will be Sumisu (スミス) San, Bus will be Basu　(バス). If you see Sumisu San and Basu, will you immediately knows that its MR SMITH and BUS? I highly doubt it

[ChisaChi]

For learning Japanese properly then yeah, katakana is pretty limited in it's usefulness. But in terms of what you'll get out of it versus how much time you need to spend learning it for your average tourist, katana comes out on top. I had been studying Japanese for a year when I went to Japan (part time and somewhat half-heartedly, admittedly) and couldn't read much more than a basic sentence in hiragana and kanji.

But for the most part I didn't need to - what I needed was to be able to tell if I was really buying a carton of milk (miruku!) or some chewing gum (gaamu!). I could have spent that time learning kanji right from the basics, but given my limited vocabulary and grammar knowledge it anything other than say, numbers or the kind of characters that come up in signs would have been utterly useless. If you're aiming to read a newspaper then yeah, katakana makes up a tiny portion of that. But if you just want to get by as a tourist for a few weeks and don't want to dedicate years to studying Japanese beforehand, then I still think katakana is a really good way to start. It's like how phrasebooks are useless for learning a language properly, but nice to use to get by in a country as a tourist.

I think once you get the trick to interpreting katakana it's pretty easy I find it helps to sound it out loud a few times, even though I probably look like an idiot. It helps if you already have a vague idea of the context - like when my friend was asked me if the bottle he was holding was chewing gum, I couldn't understand 99% of the label but could recognise the katakana for 'gamu', and it looked like a gum container so it all added up.

Oh! But I do recommend learning the kanji for different types of meat, especially if you can't eat a particular kind for some reason. I didn't know any at the time so we had a lot of mystery meat riceballs, some of which turned out to not contain any meat at all

[godwine]

Originally Posted by ChisaChi

For learning Japanese properly then yeah, katakana is pretty limited in it's usefulness. But in terms of what you'll get out of it versus how much time you need to spend learning it for your average tourist, katana comes out on top. I had been studying Japanese for a year when I went to Japan (part time and somewhat half-heartedly, admittedly) and couldn't read much more than a basic sentence in hiragana and kanji.

But for the most part I didn't need to - what I needed was to be able to tell if I was really buying a carton of milk (miruku!) or some chewing gum (gaamu!). I could have spent that time learning kanji right from the basics, but given my limited vocabulary and grammar knowledge it anything other than say, numbers or the kind of characters that come up in signs would have been utterly useless. If you're aiming to read a newspaper then yeah, katakana makes up a tiny portion of that. But if you just want to get by as a tourist for a few weeks and don't want to dedicate years to studying Japanese beforehand, then I still think katakana is a really good way to start. It's like how phrasebooks are useless for learning a language properly, but nice to use to get by in a country as a tourist.

I think once you get the trick to interpreting katakana it's pretty easy I find it helps to sound it out loud a few times, even though I probably look like an idiot. It helps if you already have a vague idea of the context - like when my friend was asked me if the bottle he was holding was chewing gum, I couldn't understand 99% of the label but could recognise the katakana for 'gamu', and it looked like a gum container so it all added up.

Oh! But I do recommend learning the kanji for different types of meat, especially if you can't eat a particular kind for some reason. I didn't know any at the time so we had a lot of mystery meat riceballs, some of which turned out to not contain any meat at all

Ok, so I agree that if thats the phrase that you are looking for then sure, but keep in mind that not all phrases can are as easy as "GAMU", in which case, if someone with limited experieince with the language, really can't relate GAMU to GUM

Actually, i was just thinking, isn't that funny? Gum is a almost a rubber base product, while its GAMU, rubber is GOMU in Japanese

Yeah, you really do want to know the Kanji for different kind of meat:

Beef - 牛
Pork - 豚
Lamb - ラム (YES, Kitakana)
Chicken - 鶏
Octopus - 蛸、章魚

I think this should wrap up the common list.. others, feel free to add to this list to help mishasu out