I would like to share about a bit useful information for traveling in Japan.

I hope this article help your travel… Please forgive me for my poor English… 🙁

Convenience Store ( 24h )

Very Convenient. But Expensive… Cause it is often said that Convenience Store sells 20% and earn 80% of all money with those stuffs.

You can buy anything , you can get money from ATM, you can send or receive something, and  you can get ticket that you reserved …. many many many things you can.

We can’t imagine life without Convenience Store anymore.

AND an important point is that most of Convenience Store provide public washroom and those are very clean.

There are 3 Popular Convenience Store, 7-Eleven, Low-son, Family-Mart, but there is not so much difference, so you can use the nearest one. there so many so I think you can get there within 5 minutes anytime anyplace.

 

Japanese Washroom

In Japanese Washroom, there is sometimes Japanese Toilet.

It is hard to use …. You should change to other place If you can.

If the building is new, you rarely meet with such toilet. but like countryside or old building has old Japanese Toilet. you should google how to use before go to japan…

Many young Japanese neither know how to use it LoL. ( me too…)

As I said above, you can find many washroom in Japan like Convenient Store.

If you ask at station, they will allow you to get inside to use washroom freely.  And like big shopping store, Hotel , there is a washroom. so you don’t need to care about washroom anytime.

and of course it is FREE.

Eating Style

We mainly use chopsticks. But I think most of store has spoon or fork,  so you should try to ask. We don’t eat food with hand so much except for hamburger and snacks. (Sometimes eat sushi with hand)

There is a lot of food. Sweet one , salty one, fatty one, and weird one. So you can enjoy to eat many types of foods, but I can’t make sure that those are delicious or not.

Sipping noise might be disgusting for foreigners. For Japanese, it is not disgusting sound.

So please be careful to go to noodle store if you care about it.

 

You can order another noodle to add (depending on ramen types).

We call it Kaedama.

 

Be careful about Soba. Some people have Soba Allergy and it may cause terrible status.

 

About Drink at Restaurant

There is not so much refuel free Drink. Only if there is a letter “ドリンクバー( Drink Bar)”, it is refuel free. Even in McDonalds and other burger shop.

And in Japan, There is no Sparkling water, only tap water. If you order tap water, they will provide you. Someplace you might need to take by yourself. There are might be the letter “セルフサービス(Selfu savisu)” = Self Service = Do it by yourself.

Language

Most people only speak Japanese. Most of Japanese can’t use English.

I think this is one of the most weird thing , that most Japanese people learn English for 6 years or so from junior high school. But after 6 years, most of them  can’t talk , listen and even Read or Write.

They only know Japanglish words from songs or movie(Like Star Wars, Mission Impossible ….). So you can’t expect that they can speak English. Even if they try to speak English, their pronunciation is terrible…..

You need Google Translator to travel around especially if you go countryside in Japan.

Disaster

One of drawbacks to live in Japan is Disaster.

We have below disaster often….

• EarthQuake
• Tsunami
• Typhoon
• Flood

You shouldn’t underestimate the power of those disaster.

Many people die with those disaster… This year 2018, so many people die just because of lot rain. It cause flood and take all thing away …

EarthQuake happens so many times. Japanese people are used to earthquake and some people just said “Hmm, I guess that earthquake intensity was 3 ? . (soon  google intensity ) Hey I was correct!”. So first take it easy. Don’t Panic. Most thing will not stop just earthquake, but train will stop. Soon it will recover but the schedule will be late or change, so you need to check the electronic bulletin board or listen to the announce.

Check about earthquake https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/eew.html

Wifi

There are free-Wifis around station or some city.

I think there is wifi only for foreigners too.

You need to register but most case I think those wifis are often weak….

You should go to Starbucks or some caffe to catch wifi. ( still need to register)

Most of restaurant doesn’t provide wifi, so please be careful, you should check b4 get in.