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That’s why I can’t be in japan over 2 weeks if I don’t have a kitchen. It’s actually hard to eat vegetable dishes as a tourist. Heck even the Japanese Chinese tan tan men places don’t serve veggies. You get trash tier like cabbage or whatever pickled stuff. I think the answer is to just eat non Japanese food, like Chinese food. Or stay in a serviced apartment. There are salad bar places but a little pricey (albeit good)
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Nov 9, 2023 06:15
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I'm vegetarian and I drastically underestimated how difficult it would be to eat at restaurants in Japan (We stayed in Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto for a total of 2 weeks) Some users here have posted impressive and thorough guides of vegetarian/vegan restaurants to check out but I assumed it would be like the States where most restaurants have some sort of vegetarian option and that was not the case. Kyoto was by far the most accommodating of the three but it was a lot of nights with convenience store egg sandwiches and wasabi/rice onigiri.
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Nov 9, 2023 07:18
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LemonLimeSoda posted:but I assumed it would be like the States where most restaurants have some sort of vegetarian option and that was not the case. I’m not picking on you but that is not a good assumption to make for Japan, even now.
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Nov 9, 2023 07:20
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Becoming a temporary pescatarian really opens things up. Fish are just swimming vegetables anyway.
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Nov 9, 2023 08:23
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I converted from vegetarian to 𝓿𝓮𝓰𝓮𝓽𝓪𝓫𝓵𝓮 𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓱𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓪𝓼𝓽
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Nov 9, 2023 09:46
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This is a silly question for Japan but you definitely still need to bring a handkerchief for drying your hands after washing right?
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Nov 9, 2023 18:25
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Good Listener posted:This is a silly question for Japan but you definitely still need to bring a handkerchief for drying your hands after washing right?
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Nov 9, 2023 18:43
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Just do as the natives and quickly wet your fingertips for one second, then leave the bathroom. That's definitely plenty of hand washing and you barely need to dry your hands after that.
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Nov 9, 2023 19:49
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Virtue posted:Planning a day trip to Kobe and naturally would like to eat some Kobe beef while I'm there. Any recommendations? Lunch or dinner is fine, but needs to be somewhere I can reserve beforehand as a gaijin. I have Wakkoqu penciled in for now. Wakkoqu was very expensive and very good. Edit - I think it was around $300 US for me and my wife. We got a bottle of wine though. Kaddish fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Nov 9, 2023 |
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Nov 9, 2023 20:50
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nielsm posted:Just do as the natives and quickly wet your fingertips for one second, then leave the bathroom. That's definitely plenty of hand washing and you barely need to dry your hands after that. But you baka, Japan is the cleanest nation on earth!! Yeah, we're bringing little travel paper soap and plenty of Wet Ones with us for hand washing/sanitizing to use while gorging on street food. Last time, paper towels were impossible to find, but a surprising number of rest rooms didn't even have soap.
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Nov 9, 2023 20:52
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No soap is still pretty normal. I bring a little empty squeeze bottle and fill it up with some hotel room soap, keep that with me. Just be sure the squeeze bottle is working properly before you accidentally blow it up all over yourself in a train station bathroom and have to rinse your clothes in the sink ten minutes before meeting Peanut for dinner. Don't bother packing wet wipes, every conbini has packs of regular and alcohol ones.
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Nov 9, 2023 21:05
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LemonLimeSoda posted:I'm vegetarian and I drastically underestimated how difficult it would be to eat at restaurants in Japan Even the Taco Bells in Japan aren't vegetarian/vegan friendly because they don't have beans on their menu iirc. Oh man less than a week until I travel for Japan. Need to start making sure I don't forget anything.
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Nov 9, 2023 21:36
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Grand Fromage posted:Just be sure the squeeze bottle is working properly before you accidentally blow it up all over yourself in a train station bathroom and have to rinse your clothes in the sink ten minutes before meeting Peanut for dinner. 
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Nov 9, 2023 23:27
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Question Mark Mound posted:Yup! A decent number of public bathrooms don’t have any hand drying facilities. A country living 20 years in the future
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Nov 9, 2023 23:38
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Grand Fromage posted:No soap Radio!
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Nov 10, 2023 00:11
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What natives actually do is use their wife/girlfriend's towel. If she doesn't have one she's a failure as a woman and you should end the relationship.
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Nov 10, 2023 00:40
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My favorites were the squat port o johns with no hand washing and the toilet paper was a full 180 from where you were facing.
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Nov 10, 2023 01:44
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It’s no longer the sweaty season so a smaller handkerchief is ok, those are also available at basically every convenience store as well.
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Nov 10, 2023 01:47
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cheese eats mouse posted:My favorites were the squat port o johns with no hand washing and the toilet paper was a full 180 from where you were facing. You sure you were facing the right way? Should be facing the OS bar and the flusher. Also, I dunno if you guys are making GBS threads in parks or whatever because the vast majority of places have western toilets, soap, and hand dryers. Just go to a toilet that's not maintained by some local government and you should be fine. zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Nov 10, 2023 |
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Nov 10, 2023 02:58
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No soap is pretty rare, maybe it's a Tokyo thing
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Nov 10, 2023 03:06
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With all of the street chu-hi I drink I have made use of every type of public bathroom and the soap presence has been maybe 1/5.
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Nov 10, 2023 06:00
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Are you sure you're using a bathroom
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Nov 10, 2023 07:46
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Charles 2 of Spain posted:Are you sure you're using a bathroom That’d be the 1
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Nov 10, 2023 09:08
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In practice it ends up functioning as a bathroom so let’s not argue semantics
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Nov 10, 2023 10:42
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Had a blast in Japan. Tokyo was fun after the tours and so was Osaka. Went to a nice Izakaya Teppanyaki place in Kyoto and had Okonomynaki and sake close to my hotel run by a nice family. Osaka went to Moonshine Karaoke bar and the lovely bartender spoke English so we talked for an hour and a half. Didn’t manage to make it to the Pink in Osaka to complete my objective of visiting a Dance club but for next visit. I plan to come back to Tokyo to experience V2, the Whiskey Library, Brauhaus and more. Gatts fucked around with this message at 12:03 on Nov 10, 2023 |
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Nov 10, 2023 12:00
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My soap free plan is just to keep a little bottle of sanitiser in my handbag and top it up as needed.. seems better than having to carry around a cold, damp cloth on my travels.
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Nov 10, 2023 12:06
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bee posted:My soap free plan is just to keep a little bottle of sanitiser in my handbag and top it up as needed.. seems better than having to carry around a cold, damp cloth on my travels. Fold up the cloth into a tight square and place it atop your head like the old guys in an onsen bing bong so simple
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Nov 10, 2023 13:13
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bee posted:My soap free plan is just to keep a little bottle of sanitiser in my handbag and top it up as needed.. seems better than having to carry around a cold, damp cloth on my travels.
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Nov 10, 2023 13:49
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I'll be taking a couple weeks in Japan next month, starting with staying with a buddy in Kyonan for a few days. One of the things he mentioned off-hand is that I should look into getting a driving permit if I wanted to take his car around while he was at work, and while the idea of accidentally driving on the wrong side of the road sorta terrifies me, I'm a little be interested. It's probably too late for me to apply now, but I guess general questions for next time - do people find it hard to adjust? Are there any particular road rules that might not be obvious to American drivers?
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Nov 10, 2023 17:52
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Vitamean posted:I'll be taking a couple weeks in Japan next month, starting with staying with a buddy in Kyonan for a few days. One of the things he mentioned off-hand is that I should look into getting a driving permit if I wanted to take his car around while he was at work, and while the idea of accidentally driving on the wrong side of the road sorta terrifies me, I'm a little be interested. It's probably too late for me to apply now, but I guess general questions for next time - do people find it hard to adjust? Are there any particular road rules that might not be obvious to American drivers? You can get an IDP in about 20 minutes at a AAA in the US, check their site for the forms and bring a couple of passport photos from the drugstore. Right on red is almost exclusively an American thing so don't do it. Similarly, the speed limits actually matter so follow them precisely. If you're not sure what to do at an intersection take it slow. I generally find when I'm in an RHD country I'm so attentive i don't have problems, when I come back home and a half-overwritten reflex takes over is when dumb stuff happens.
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Nov 10, 2023 18:48
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So, actually came in here to ask a car related question: Hoping to make a trip to Japan next summer, possibly for as long as 4-5 weeks. I've previously spent a few years living there and have gotten back into Japanese study in the last year (passed a mock N3 a few months back and hoping to take a swing at N2 in July while I'm there). When I lived there, I owned my own car and motorbike, but knew a number of ALTs who had arrangements with their mechanics where the mechanic was still the owner on paper, and the ALT effectively leased the car from them. I did something kind of similar when I went back for a summer in 2015; bought a kei car and registered it in a resident ALT's name (since I was a tourist and couldn't do this myself), drove it for 5 weeks, and sold it to him for a cheap price when I left. We made sure the insurance covered me. I love road trips and especially enjoyed it with Japan's great driving infrastructure. A big part of the trip would be doing large format landscape photography, so having my own wheels would make a lot of sense as I know from experience it's a PITA to schlep all the kit around on trains, not to mention get out to the good scenery. Is anyone aware of places that might offer this kind of service to a tourist? I'd most likely be after a cheap, no-frills kei van, MT is fine and probably preferable. (I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least toying with the idea of getting something 25+ years old and exporting it back to the US if I like it enough...) Midjack posted:You can get an IDP in about 20 minutes at a AAA in the US, check their site for the forms and bring a couple of passport photos from the drugstore. Make sure you keep the driver's side to the inside of the lane (not the kerb) and you'll be fine. The JR pass is absolutely the way to go for your first or second trip, but I always spruik car hire for getting out and seeing stuff off the beaten path. If you've got two or more people it can even work out cheaper than the trains. I respectfully disagree on your point about speed limits in the abstract (they are kinda low, and so is enforcement...), but for the purposes of being a tourist and new to RHD driving, yeah, drive conservatively. edit: I was back last summer and was having intermittent issues with both my credit cards. When I turned up at the car rental place neither was working and we were at a bit of an impasse, with me thinking my trip was potentially about to get a *lot* more inconvenient. Knowing Japan, on a lark I asked if cash was OK and he immediately brightened and was like "yeah totally, why didn't you say so?!", so I explained why car rental places in the gaikoku would never let you rent a car/hotel room without a CC on file. Riptor posted:Mugicha rules, don't hate A cold pitcher of mugicha in the fridge is my summer jam thanks to living in SW Japan. I love it; low effort, no caffeine (more than 1 cup of coffee and I have trouble sleeping), no calories. Ethics_Gradient fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Nov 10, 2023 |
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Nov 10, 2023 20:51
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Thanks for the insights on driving. Thinking I'll go scoop a permit next week if it's that simple, then. Might not even use it but it looks like it's cheap enough that I wouldn't miss not using it. Last time I visited we did a circuit through to the southern tip of Chiba and stopped around Nojima Cape Lighthouse. Most visceral thing I remember about the drive down there was seeing a ratty old Anpanman doll tied to a road sign, but I didn't have the presence of mind to take a pic. Wouldn't plan on going that far on my own, but it'd be nice to explore around the area while my friend's working. Of course last time I visited was in January and this time's gonna be in December, so not exactly perfect beach weather but I'm still pretty fond of the area from my last visit.
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Nov 10, 2023 21:23
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I do this loving crazy poo poo where I flick most of the water off my hands into the sink and then just give them 30 seconds to air dry while I'm walking to wherever it is I'm going. It's absolutely insane tech that goons don't know about.
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Nov 10, 2023 21:59
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Ethics_Gradient posted:epic road trip plan Glad to see this finally underway  Another possible place to ask would be with the Importing Cars from Japan thread in AI, since they might have the right contacts to pull the “get a car registered, pay to use it in Japan, and work out shipping it to the U.S.” thing.
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Nov 10, 2023 23:15
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zmcnulty posted:You sure you were facing the right way? Should be facing the OS bar and the flusher. It's a port-o-john; there's only one way you can face. In the inaka you still have options even in modern bathrooms. I'm talking about women's restrooms.
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Nov 10, 2023 23:30
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AHH F/UGH posted:I do this loving crazy poo poo where I flick most of the water off my hands into the sink and then just give them 30 seconds to air dry while I'm walking to wherever it is I'm going. It's absolutely insane tech that goons don't know about. I see your avatar doing this and it makes a lot of sense
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Nov 11, 2023 00:03
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Ethics_Gradient posted:Is anyone aware of places that might offer this kind of service to a tourist? I'd most likely be after a cheap, no-frills kei van, MT is fine and probably preferable. (I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least toying with the idea of getting something 25+ years old and exporting it back to the US if I like it enough...) I don't know for sure about renting as a tourist, but there are car places (usually "car/auto lease") that specialize in leases for business use, but also have rental options. The place I use is in Shikoku so I don't think it will be a helpful recommendation. For normal rental cars in Tokyo I usually rent from Nippon Rent-a-Car Tokyo Station Yaesu Exit because they have the best office hours and the online reservation portal isn't trash.
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Nov 11, 2023 00:15
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Vitamean posted:I'll be taking a couple weeks in Japan next month, starting with staying with a buddy in Kyonan for a few days. One of the things he mentioned off-hand is that I should look into getting a driving permit if I wanted to take his car around while he was at work, and while the idea of accidentally driving on the wrong side of the road sorta terrifies me, I'm a little be interested. It's probably too late for me to apply now, but I guess general questions for next time - do people find it hard to adjust? Are there any particular road rules that might not be obvious to American drivers? I was worried about this too when I went recently but it was a pretty easy adjustment. Like people in this thread said just follow the flow of traffic, keep speed around the limit, and no turning on reds. The only time I made a mistake was being on autopilot going into a store's parking lot that didn't have lines. My biggest adjustment was just recognizing where my car was in the lane since it was switched, my passenger side would ride the line a lot lol
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Nov 11, 2023 01:19
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Also wanna thanks the thread for good reading on what to do. Last time I went aside from a weekend in Kyonan with my friend I mostly stayed in Tokyo, and even then stuck to Akihabara and a couple big touristy spots, so I wanted to stretch out just a bit with a week in Osaka and the surrounding area. I'd started mostly gesturing vaguely on what to do but I've picked up some good ideas from the thread. So, thanks for that. I'd mostly wanted to take this trip because I've been stocked up on vacation hours from work since COVID (funny enough my last trip there was in January 2020), and figured this was as good a shot as any. Hoping whenever my next trip is I'll be confident enough in my language learning to go further out, but this is good for now!
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Nov 11, 2023 02:18
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If you can even come close to stringing together a sentence you can go anywhere. My Japanese is garbage and I never had any issues. Most people are patient when they can tell you're trying. And I have found inaka people to generally be so happy anyone came out there to visit that they're super nice. You really only get the snippy move along tourist treatment in Tokyo/Kyoto/sometimes Osaka for obvious reasons. And even then that's rare if you're being genuine and not just rolling in shouting slow English at people. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2023 02:23
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