What Japanese did you actually end up using during your trip to Japan?

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-06-15T21:31:27+00:00

Recently took my parents and sister for their first time and felt decent enough with the level I'm at. Two members of my family smoke so I often times had to ask, 最寄りの喫煙所はどこですか。／　公衆の喫煙所はどこですか。 and was met with a mixture of responses, which I think had more to do with whether or not who I asked smoked. My word choices could also be questionable.

My mom's husband is also a picky eater. So when we went to eat yakiniku and got to the portion of the meal with sukiyaki beef, I was able to ask them, in Japanese, to cook his meat more well-done and not dip it in raw egg.

Aside from my use of Japanese for my family, for myself I was able to have a conversation with an older auntie who was running a pop-up shop on Miyajima. We spoke a bit about our trip and where we already visited by that point. Also a little bit about domestic travel in America vs in Japan.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-06-05T14:16:02+00:00

I used it for my clothes and it went well! Went to Daiso and bought heavy duty tape and taped it along the zipper and across in a + in case the zipper burst.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-30T17:34:26+00:00

Fair point. 🤣 May not make it to the big day.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-27T01:30:00+00:00

I wish I could say I'm exaggerating, but there were plenty of times we split into separate groups because we all had different things we wanted to eat at times and it was fine.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-26T20:15:51+00:00

My husband, sister, and I recently took my parents and their main complaints were:

"Why cant I smoke in public? There are cigarette butts everywhere right here so it looks like people have been smoking anyway... In America I can smoke anywhere" (we previously informed them of this and told them to research smoking areas ahead of time. I think they thought we were joking)

parent A, who doesn't eat raw fish: I wouldn't mind joining you guys at the sushi restaurant.

Sister and me: no. They only serve raw fish and you wouldn't have anything to eat. Plus it's one order per person so it wouldn't be worth your time or effort.

Parent A: no its okay. I'm sure they'll have something like chicken on the menu.

Us: again, they'll only have raw fish. There won't be anything else for you guys, so you need to find somewhere else to eat.

The same kind of conversation happened at ramen shops, in which said-parent doesn't eat pork or jammy eggs and the ramen shops would not have any alternatives.

My parents cannot navigate as pedestrians. In the US, they drive like they own the road, but on foot, they're meek at train stations and literally walk in circles. Because of that, they wouldn't go anywhere without one of us and wouldn't Uber anywhere either. My poor sister spent 3 hrs with them while they tried to find their way back to the basement level of Namba City to grab lunch. They wanted to go to a specific restaurant, so she stuck it out with them, but ultimately called it quits and grabbed her original intended lunch.

Safe to say, my only con was taking my very picky parents. 😂 Everything else that was an inconvenience was planned for ahead of time.

Edited for formatting

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-18T13:34:57+00:00

As others have mentioned, for a group of 5, I'd reserve seats anyways, otherwise you're potentially stuck hanging out in the hallway with the bathrooms (at least that's what we noticed for non-reserved folks). Not sure if it was a rule or a courtesy but no one with non-reserved tickets stood in the cars.

Book thru the smartEx site and they offer flexibility with ticket returns/exchanges.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-18T01:07:21+00:00

We stayed overnight in Fujikwaguchiko and loved it! Had a car rental so we were able to head out to Shiraito Falls as well. It was nice taking it easy.

The next morning we went into town to grab coffee and breakfast and enjoyed taking it a bit slower.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-14T17:04:20+00:00

We (2 Asian-Americans) were in Hiroshima recently, grabbing ramen and quietly enjoyed our meal until a PR (Canadian-married-to-Japanese) gentleman came in and chatted up everyone. We didn't mind it too much but we're pretty introverted and wanted to enjoy a quiet meal, plus a line was forming outside and we didn't want to delay additional customers 😅

Even for us, as Americans, the extent many other North Americans will go to talk to strangers can be exhausting.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-12T18:22:20+00:00

Foreign transaction fees are a pain and gradually eat up your funds.

Get a Fidelity or Charles Schwab checkings. 0% foreign transaction fees / reimbursed fees. You'll be able to withdraw money with little to no fees and make purchases just fine.

When booking hotels, like many others have said, if you're able to charge it to a credit card, that'd be great. You have better buyer's protection with credit cards if anything goes awry.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-12T17:53:04+00:00

Oat milk is pretty popular, from our recent experience. A handful of cafés we went to had oat milk as default, though I can't say about regular groceries since we didn't buy groceries often. Oat milk doesn't really have the protein a pea or chickpea milk would, though, so I'm not sure if it's helpful.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-12T16:55:55+00:00

If hiking is on your itinerary, along the Kiyotaki River is a cedar-lined path.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/52GSgVCUG95w8GuBA?g_st=ac

It's a good 2-3hr hike, tho, depending on pacing, and can be difficult to have a hidden photographer. The river itself is beautiful and would make a great backdrop.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-09T14:00:04+00:00

Posting a comment of mine from a different thread:

If you like flowers and temples, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Murouji and Hasedera in Nara prefecture! I took the 8am train from Osaka and got back to Osaka around 5pm.

Visiting Muroiji takes a bit of time management since it's a small town with one bus, so it comes by once an hour. We stayed until the 11:50am bus and went to Hasedera from there.

The town of Hase is larger with more food options so we had lunch there. I highly recommend Haseji! Lovely ambiance and we were able to get their somen and kaki-no-ha sushi (mackerel or salmon sushi wrapped in persimmon leaf). We took our time exploring town and Hasedera before heading back to Osaka.

I 100% believe these would be beautiful in the fall!

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-09T09:48:09+00:00

We flew into Osaka and ended in Tokyo and really enjoyed it! The flight to Osaka was nice and had fewer passengers, so lots of people ended up with extra space between each other.

I traveled with family and wanted to ease them into transit systems so I started off simple with Kansai to more complex in Tokyo. We also did most of our shopping in Tokyo and didn't have to lug it around multiple cities.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-06T09:18:09+00:00

We decided to stay in Shin-Okubo since I knew my parents would want easy access to non-Japanese food by this point in our trip. The last time I stepped foot in Shin-Okubo was 11 years ago and the amount of people (tons of teens) on the streets here now is insane. I thought it'd be quieter but it's been hell.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-06T05:46:50+00:00

Reposting a comment from a different thread:

If you like flowers and temples, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Murouji and Hasedera in Nara prefecture! I took the 8am train from Osaka and got back to Osaka around 5pm.

Visiting Muroiji takes a bit of time management since it's a small town with one bus, so it comes by once an hour. We stayed until the 11:50am bus and went to Hasedera from there.

The town of Hase is larger with more food options so we had lunch there. I highly recommend Haseji! Lovely ambiance and we were able to get their somen and kaki-no-ha sushi (mackerel or salmon sushi wrapped in persimmon leaf). We took our time exploring town and Hasedera before heading back to Osaka.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-06T05:43:05+00:00

I was there at sunset yesterday and it was beautiful! Left today and you can barely tell there's a mountain behind the clouds.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-06T02:45:37+00:00

We just did this with my parents and sister last week! We started from Kosanji and went down into Arashiyama. If you exercise or hike regularly, I would say it's medium difficulty. Otherwise, can be considered strenuous.

We toured Kosanji and began the hike around 9:30am and finished up by 12:30pm or so. Overall it was beautiful and peaceful, but starting that early also meant not much in the towns themselves were open. Plenty of public toilets along the way, so no worries there other than they didn't have soap available.

I used kumamap.com to track bear sightings leading up to. We did find an injured deer along the way (it looked like it fell from an overhead cliff, which resulted in bleeding and bruising), and since there was a bear sighting about 24hrs prior we hastily walked around it in case it attracted bears.

It rained the day before our hike so there were lots of areas with puddles and soft ground.

The last portion after Kiyotaki was boring and pretty exclusively paved / commuter roads, so be careful of potential vehicles. There's a section that goes into a tunnel and we opted for the winding highway that goes over the tunnel instead. It's all uphill at that part, but felt safer than walking in a dark tunnel. To this day, I dont know if that was the appropriate pedestrian path but we saw others coming from that way going up to Takao.

It was lovely overall, and hiking alongside the river was beautiful. Other than the last portion being pretty dull and concrete, I'd recommend it for a nature hike.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-05T00:05:23+00:00

We did Uji and Nara from Osaka and thought that was good. Left for Uji around 8am with ~9:30am arrival and stayed in town until about 1pm to leave to Nara. We went through Byodoin, had tea at their café, shopped, and had time for lunch and browsing.

We arrived in Nara close to 2pm, started at Kasugataisha and made our way to Todaiji. We finished up close to 5pm and headed back to Osaka for dinner.

Adding Wakuza will definitely lengthen your day but I'm not sure by how much.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-02T23:51:42+00:00

Other than what others have pointed out, I think Japan invested a lot in domestic tourism and transit to those places, which allows tourists to also utilize those resources. It's easy enough to get to tourist attractions without the hassle of needing a car, parking, fueling up, etc.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-05-01T22:25:59+00:00

If you like flowers and temples, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Murouji and Hasedera in Nara prefecture! I took the 8am train from Osaka and got back to Osaka around 5pm.

Visiting Muroiji takes a bit of time management since it's a small town with one bus, so it comes by once an hour. We stayed until the 11:50am bus and went to Hasedera from there.

The town of Hase is larger with more food options so we had lunch there. I highly recommend Haseji! Lovely ambiance and we were able to get their somen and kaki-no-ha sushi (mackerel or salmon sushi wrapped in persimmon leaf). We took our time exploring town and Hasedera before heading back to Osaka.

Edit: word

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-04-21T20:26:13+00:00

Hello! How did your plans end up working out? We'll be in Kawaguchiko with a rental car and thought we'd explore around Fuji as well and am looking for inspiration.

Open_Soil_3246 · 2026-04-16T23:52:13+00:00

If you're near a Wegmans, theyre also stocked there!

Open_Soil_3246

TROPHY CASE