What You Should Know About Traveling Around in Tokyo, Japan

What to Expect When You Go to Tokyo (FOR FOREIGNERS)

So before I left for Japan some people who had been to Japan told me it was super easy to get around Tokyo even if you didn't know Japanese. Well I have been studying Japanese for a while now and boy where they wrong.

1) The Trains:
The most difficult part was the trains. They were confusing as hell! Now once you were inside the train station it was all good, there was English everywhere. However, before getting inside the train station you had to pick a place to go in order to select your train ticket. Now this is the hard part, everything is in Kanji. There was no English anywhere on that map which made it insanely difficult to figure out which ticket to purchase. So be sure to map out where you are going and figure out the corresponding Kanji so you can save yourself the hassle.

2) Katakana:
Now another thing that may not be so easy, but is sure helpful, is to know a little Japanese. A good portion of menu items, name of places/people and other random things are written in katakana. Now hiragana and katakana is much much much easier to learn since you have less than 100 symbols for each particular syllabary. Whereas learning Kanji will take years and years of practice since there are thousands of them and many different readings for each one.  Ughhh, 漢字はめんどうくさいな！(For those of you who don't know Japanese, that says "Kanji is a pain in the ass!")

3) Credit Cards:
Make sure to inform your credit card companies that you are traveling outside the U.S. to Japan so you don't get stuck over there with no money, because we all know that would be unfortunate haha. Anyways, also know this... Japan is a cash society. Most transactions are done in cash. So if at all possible just make it to the nearest ATM and pull out a lot of cash right when you get to Japan because you don't want a ton of withdrawal fees or just credit card fees for constantly using your card.

4) Lack of Internet:
Now another pretty vital thing to know is that you most likely won't be able to find wifi anywhere. I mean yes you can find it, but it is a serious pain in the ass to get. Also once you find a place that has wifi, most likely it isn't free. So be prepared if you are trying to meet people to try and make plans to meet them at the airport right when you get there or make up a place ahead of time.  Also give yourself ample time to figure out where you are going and what not if you set up a time to meet.

Lastly, here are some pictures I took of a few random things when I was in Tokyo.

And with that, I'm out.

--Butterzz--