Suggest things for me to do/see in Japan

I'm going again in two weeks! YEEHAAA!

And yeah, Osaka is a definite probability. The cut-price airline we are looking at flies into Osaka.

Another thing we were weighing up is going by ourselves and figuring it out vs going on a train tour for a bit longer time all over Japan. I don't really like structured tours but I am worried that if I don't do something like that I won't know what to do or be able to do many things because I don't speak the language. What is the better option?

I do speak the language, though. That helps with that plan.
Getting from place to place: ask what bus to take at first place, get off bus, wander around loking troubled, asking high-schoolers and old baa-chan how to get to next place.
Rinse(self) repeat.

Kyoto is alright, but it's pretty overrated. Nearly everyone's first reaction is disappointment as you leave the ultra-modern train station, and are faced with nothing more than another very typical looking, largish Japanese city. Anything worth seeing is a pretty good walk, bike or bus ride away. The nightlife is surprisingly good though. For "old Japan" you're better off checking out Nara.

If you're around in July, the Nagoya basho, or summer sumo tournament is on - in Nagoya obviously.

Depending when in July you show up, you might be able to catch a fireworks festival somewhere. They're usually pretty fun. Thousands of people in traditional dress, lots of good festival food, and Japanese fireworks are pretty good.

If you want to travel around and save a lot of money, get a Japan Rail Pass. Both the one and two-week versions pay for themselves after only a couple of trips. You've got to apply for it before you arrive though, as you can't get one in Japan.

The Fuji Rock festival is on from July 27-29th in Niigata. It's not cheap, but I highly recommend it. I'll be there.

Shit, I need to plan that route...

I am very excited about this. Is the Sumo season all year round? If I go in September is there likely to be a tournament on then? Are they usually sold out so you have to book, or can you just turn up to them?
Thanks for the rail pass tip!

http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/

Every game the Tigers play, regardless of where it is, is like a home game. Those fans travel in massive numbers, and they're all insane!

I love baseball games. Especially insane and/or terrible ones.
EVERYTHING I hear about the Tigers tells me that they're like the Cubs, but somehow they deserve their following.
Well, kinda like the St. Paul Saints+Cubs.

I ALWAYS pick them in old baseball video games(Famicom et al) and I ALWAYS lose.
Granted, I lose with MOST teams, but I lose by a MUCH greater margin with the Tigers.

I haven't actually stayed at a love hotel, but consider checking one out. I think it's cheaper if you stay during the day for a few hours. If nothing else, you can enjoy a refreshing dip in a jacuzzi in the middle of a humid day. Watch out for the video cams. Rumour has it that some places have hidden cameras filming the patrons gettin' it on.

http://www.quirkyjapan.or.tv/hotels.html

I've always wanted to check out the Hello Kitty S&M room at Adonis. I went to Adonis in Tennoji, Osaka, but the room wasn't available. There were lots of other love hotels in the area, but my heart was set on Kitty-chan's chamber of horrors.

Er will think of more later. Kyoto isn't over-rated in my opinion.

In Kyoto there is one temple that is out of town a bit and set in a forested gorge with supposedly magic waterfalls running into it - it is very atmospheric and cool, as is the huge graveyard next to it.

Nara is worth a visit too

Re language - quite a lot of signage etc in Tokyo is in english but once out of tokyo there is a lot less. people are v helpful and kind if you ask though, lots of sign language.

it is v handy to look for restaurants with plastic models of food in the window, so you can just point and not stare blankly at the menu!

Shunjuku is pretty horrible - I only went to see the gay area (gay side street more like). The subway station is huge and has about 3 million exits so there is no chance of getting out where you want to. Then it is just huge tower blocks and a big plaza thing. There is a kind of sleazy area of bars and sex shops round there which is ahem atmospheric but I got sick of being accosted by sketchy blokes offering "chinese girls" every two seconds. There is a famous street of tiny bars each with about two chairs in them but it's not really worth the trip and all the bars looked v forbidding.

Yeah, I wasn't planning on going to Shinjuku for long.
More interested in the used game stores in Akihabara.

Kamakura (fairly near Tokyo: was the headquarters of Japan's twelfth-century military government), also, has some beautiful shrines and temples, but after a couple of Kyoto days you might have had your fill of those. You might feel a little more in-the-know going to Kamakura rather than Kyoto, I suppose, in that it's a less obvious Western-tourist destination (when I went there it was crammed with Japanese internal tourists, but then it was during the mass public holiday of Golden Week). Also the Kamakura Great Buddha is, I think, nicer than the Nara one: it's Amida rather than Rushana, it's slightly smaller, it's not boxed in (in fact it used to be but a tsunami washed the building away!), it has a friendlier countenance (cos it's Amida innit), you can climb inside...

In Tokyo, I really like Ueno and Asakusa - I suppose they're a bit dingier than other neighbourhoods, but there's something really charming about them, I think. Ueno park has lots of those huge highly self-posessed crows waddling around like they own the place, and also a bunch of museums, of which I really loved the science museum (nb: i love all science museums and last time i went this one had an exhibition on dinosaurs omg); the National Museum looked good but I've never given it enough time.

Other than that... I dunno, I spent most of my time in japan shopping and eating (I spent a lotttt of time hanging out in the shinsaibashi/namba/amerikamura area of Osaka but I don't think they've got much tourist value, although I suppose Amerikamura is the one place you see actual rubbish on the street, and Namba has some decent electronic-goods shops).

-- J-rock (juice_rock...), Yesterday 8:13 PM. (Julien Sandiford)

during the 7th inning stretch, Tigers fans let out these long balloons that squeal up into the sky. it's pretty amazing.

I was reading up about it, and this site seems to say that you can only get a Japan Rail Pass if you fly with JAL. Is this true in people's experiences? JAL seems to be about AU$500 more expensive than the budget airline we want to fly, so I would like to avoid flying with them if at all possible.
If it comes down to it, are the savings from the cheaper airline more than we would save getting the rail pass as opposed to paying trip-by-trip? Probably, right?

Also, what kind of price range are we looking at for accomodation? The JAL package puts a night at a three-star hotel in Tokyo as $350 each for two people per night. AU$700! I know cost of living is high, but surely not that high? Or am I just a sheltered foreigner?

they mentioned that in "in the miso soup"

Hotels are expensive, but I think searching around will get you something cheaper than that?

Or does this mean that I have to book a JAL flight if I want to get a railpass from the JAL office, but otherwise I could get a rail pass from any travel agent? So confusing!

omg i am so amped for this trip

Off to Japan for two weeks next weekend. We haven't tried to be too ambitious with our itinerary - a week around Kyoto/Osaka, a week in Tokyo. Railpass duly ordered, as recommended on this thread and others. We have a few plans, but not too many: Hiroshima, Ghibli Museum, Toyota factory, Mount Fuji, Kumaji(?) castle. So we've got a bit of time to play with, and it seems to be fairly fast and easy to get around.

What else would you recommend? One thing I'd really like to do is to have a wander in suburban Tokyo, except that I have no idea whether such a thing exists or where it might be found.

one great way to see a tokyo neighborhood you might not otherwise (not exactly suburban-it starts near ueno) is to take the last streetcar. it's fun and throwbacky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toden_Arakawa_Line
http://www.thetokyotraveler.com/tokyos-last-remaining-streetcars/

That looks good, I'd be up for that. I'm most interested in finding interesting places and letting the sights and sounds and so on come at me as they will, rather than actively seeking out attractions to gawp at - flâneuring, I suppose you could call it.

I loved just hanging around in Harajuku for a day, if you're into shopping and stuff it's fun to just people-watch. I went there first and there was quite a lot of English signage/menus so easy ish to get around (although some of the restaurants etc in guidebooks I couldn't find at all) but the rest of Tokyo had a lot less English/romaji signage/menus so it can be a bit hard to rely on them.

Here's a recently made thread about the best arcades in Tokyo

I hadn't thought of that, arcades do seem to be a quintessential japanese experience so I'd better check one out. We're staying by Shinjuku, looks like I'll be spoiled for choice there. Can you think of any other everyday, but really cool, experiences that I should try?

Hanging about in Harajuku is something that we'll definitely be doing. One thing I'm not sure of is the rhythms of life in Japan - what days are best for shopping/visiting the country/milling around/etc? Do things close down in the evenings?

One other thing I'd like to visit would be a picturesque smaller town. I liked the look of Takeyama, but I think it's too far away to be worth a day excursion. Near Kyoto, Uji and Nara look like they might fit the bill. Is there such a place on or near Mount Fuji?

Kumaji(?) castle

Do you mean Himeji castle? That's my wife's home town, so I can tell you from experience there's nothing much else to do there for sure. Luckily the castle is pretty near the station so you can hop off, see the castle and garden near it then go.
I'm not sure if there's anything much to do in Hiroshima apart from the Peace Museum, but that's definitely worth going to if you don't mind a fairly harrowing experience. It's a fairly large city so could be interesting to see how most Japanese urbanites live outside of the Tokyo / Osaka megalopolises I suppose.
In Tokyo, Akihabara is a fun place to go, loadsa maid cafes, cosplay teens, electronics superstores, collectors superstores for otaku types etc. Shimo-Kitazawa is good for record shopping and it's pretty suburban, maybe a good place for a random wander but be warned - you WILL get lost wandering around Tokyo randomly!

Nara

Upthread recommendation seconded.

Do things close down in the evenings?

In Tokyo the public transport closes down pretty early and I don't think they have nightbuses, so you have to get (expensive) cabs from late evening onwards.
One thing to note about Japanese cities is that they feel really safe (certainly compared to London), you get drunk people but none of that air of menace that can be found elsewhere.

Have fun!

Thanks. It was Himeji castle, of course - I couldn't be bothered stretching for my guidebook, that's how lazy I was feeling last night. It sounds like we might be able to do it and Hiroshima in a single day.

Wikipedia makes maid cafes sound intriguing: "Other options include taking polaroids (either of the maid alone, together with another maid or with the customer ... or even slightly more unusual ones, such as being slapped by one or more of the girls ... additional related services have become popular ... One butler cafe has its waiters cosplay as teenage schoolboys, in an effort to appeal to the fujoshi who enjoy Boy's Love". Is it safe to assume (given that I'll be with Mrs K) that anything actually dodgy will be obvious before we find ourselves somewhere we do not want to be?

I think I remember seeing something similar on BBC4's Japan season recently, but it was on a high floor of something that looked like a normal office block. Is that a common arrangement, that things should be hidden away from street level? If so, how do I find such places?

The last JR and Subway trains in Tokyo are ~1am.

I'm going to Okinawa next week, if anyone has any tips and recommendations. Spending 3 days in Naha, 2 days in Nago, 3 days in Ishigaki.

suggest jaban

if you're in shinjuku, you're well placed to go drinking in the tiny all-night bars in the golden gai district - like really tiny, some of them don't hold more than 9 people.

tokyo art beat is an A+ resource wrt arty goings on.

we went to some amazing restaurants while we were there, helpfully i can't remember what any of them were called...

the golden gai is awesome, esp. at night!
theres the famous bar there,where tarantino, coppola and other directors go to drink when in tokyo...la jetee i think it's cold.
the lady who runs this tiny place knows them all...really worth a visit

"i think it's called" lol

the arakawa-sen tram is super charming! if you get off and wander around you can find all sorts of cute places (i wish i could remember the name or whereabouts of that one coffee shop: if you are into coffee shops for ambience rather than necessarily coffee there are a lot of lovely/strange independent places: i remember one in edogawabashi that seemed to be devoted to country music). Just don't get off in Otsuka as that place is horrible. Just up the hill from the Waseda terminus there's a tiny but perfect park in very traditional style, with a great taiyaki vendor (taiyaki being... fish-shaped waffly things filled with bean paste).

While you're in Tokyo I recommend checking out Yanaka - or really anywhere in the Yanaka-Nezu-Sendagi area, which didn't get bombed during the war and so is really well preserved, plus stuffed with interesting galleries and etc, including the Asakura Choso which I'd visit for the architecture of the building as much as the sculpture in it.

The thing to do in Hiroshima other than see the Peace Park is EAT OKONOMIYAKI.

Oh yeah, the Kansai region is famous for okonomiyaki, try it in Osaka too and everywhere else if you get the chance.

Excellent. Any other top eating tips? We like Japanese food when we have it, but that is not often and so we haven't yet gone beyond novelty into having favourite dishes that we can depend on. What reliable staples should we look out for?

Okay, I'm off to Japan in the morning. Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.

We took up a number of your suggestions and they were all excellent. Yanaka in particular was exactly what I was looking for, and I found the backstreets of Kyoto quite similar. We took the Arikawa-Sen tram, went to loads of different parts of Tokyo including Akihabara and Harajuku. Spent an evening in a Mongolian joint in Golden Gai. Himeji missed out due to us having found Osaka castle the day before. Mount Fuji was a disappointment in that it was too hazy to actually see the mountain, but we still had a nice day up in the hills.

Eating in particular was a treat - great food, restaurants everywhere, rarely expensive. I do wish I'd learned a little japanese for that alone though. While it was relatively unusual to find places that made it easy if you spoke only English, you can usually get round that - the difficult part was sometimes actually recognising whether a place was a restaurant, a tea room, a shop or just someone's house. There were all manner of places in Kyoto that I didn't dare enter because I couldn't tell what it was.

Controversially, if I had another first trip to Japan I'm not sure I'd go to Tokyo at all - I'd fly to Osaka and spend all my time near there. We were in Kyoto/Osaka for a week and never got near Uji or Nara, and barely scratched the surface of Kyoto. But it's a great destination all round and we were delighted with it.

Oops! I actually revived this to say that I was in London at the weekend and chanced upon an okonomiyaki restaurant in front of the British Museum, which was as good as I remembered from the one we ate in in Osaka. It was on Museum Street and is the sister restaurant of the one in this review of the Abeno on Great Newport St just off Leicester Square.

there is a decent takoyaki yattai stand on Brick Lane adjacent to the Sunday Up Market, surprisingly.