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Good Listener posted:I'm not actually hitting up Kyoto at this time, we're mainly sticking to the Tokyo area. I have been to Kyomizudera and Ryoanji before when I visited back in college though Ubigi is the cheapest rate for non Asian tourists and see if you can activate an eSIM for Japan, so that you get data the minute you land. Arlo have it send physical card to your home before you fly, swap your sim in the airplane Haneda vending machines are fine, you can get 3000/4000/5000 etc yen worth of sim card right after you exit customs. But you have to swap SIM cards in the airport like some smuggler and you pay a little more for the data.
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Apr 15, 2024 16:51
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+1 on having SIM card ready before you go. I got mine super cheap on Taobao. My iPhone 12 Pro also has 2 SIM slots so it's easy to put in a foreign SIM card while keeping my China one in at all times. Just disable the original SIM via the Settings menu. Also, wrt that list earlier, 2 credit cards and 2 debit cards seems kind of excessive IMO. Definitely at least one of each plus cash, but what do I know. I don't have a credit card and that part is a pain for Japan specifically, but if you've ever lived abroad for long enough you learn to be resourceful. The only reason I have multiple bank debit cards is because China does this weird poo poo of having each employer determine which bank you need to use to receive your paycheck, so you end up with a bunch of random bank cards and debit cards over time. I'm planning on bringing 40k yen in cash and withdrawing another 40k in-person if I need it. But I'll also only be here like 4 or 5 days so.... v  v
Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 17:13
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Nothing but positive things to say about Ubigi. Topping up data was a breeze halfway through my trip, on top of providing a helpful reminder that I was getting low. Living in the web 3.0 fancy UI/UX world I will say that the e-commerce experience for a lot of eSIM providers feels sketchy but that says more about me than them IMO.
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Apr 15, 2024 17:38
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Being a tourist in Japan feels terrifying.
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Apr 15, 2024 17:54
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Maybe ya'll shouldn't come.
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Apr 15, 2024 17:55
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Nah it feels awesome, OP
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Apr 15, 2024 17:59
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Wonton posted:A data plan, don’t rely on WiFi like a teenager in 2024, 13 years after the death of Steve Jobs If you're travelling in a group, depending on your roaming/data charges, renting a mobile hotspot/pocket WiFi might be cheaper. anakha fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 18:21
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Gabriel Grub posted:Being a tourist in Japan feels terrifying. 
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Apr 15, 2024 19:07
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I will def check into those later tonight when I'm not at work haha. It's only two of us going so I dun think that sounds as much of a group. I did see though that my Discover card actually let me register my travel online already so I'm set there. Will probably still call when it gets closer though to double ensure they know.
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Apr 15, 2024 19:43
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Gabriel Grub posted:Being a tourist in Japan feels terrifying. It's fine, just don't forget your flashlight.
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Apr 15, 2024 21:16
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History Comes Inside! posted:I’m just taking half a million yen in cash to avoid the problem entirely until we somehow spend half a million yen in cash like 1 week in to a 3 week trip. That is… a lot of cash to carry around, and presumably you have paid for lodging in advance / by card. Some people are seriously overthinking the money thing, sweet Jesus. It’s not a 1850s trip from London to Cairo. Push comes to shove and your chip doesn’t work at the ATM, you can just walk into the bank like a caveman living back in 1995 would do, and talk to an actual teller and ask them to run your card. And if you lose all your cards and your phone and your IDs and your ability to speak, then you’ve probably also lost a fat stack of ¥10,000 notes.
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Apr 15, 2024 21:51
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Goon challenge: take a 3-day trip where you can only use hotel Wi-Fi.
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Apr 15, 2024 23:21
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Gabriel Grub posted:Unfortunately I have yet to see a Western tourist in begging need of funds in Tokyo, because that would be a lot of loving fun. Not a tourist but this did kinda happen to me. I was at a poolside party, got in the pool, and when I went back to where me and my friends were, all my stuff was gone. Like, ALL my stuff: friends, phone, wallet, house keys, my drat t-shirt. I thought they went back to the station and were waiting for me, so I went and waited until last train. They never showed. I started asking randos for change so I could make a phone call. Someone gave me 1000 yen and said good luck. I figured I'd wait it out until first train since we planned to be at the same party the next day anyway. While waiting, shirtless mind you, some woman came along and felt sorry for me and invited me to her place. I thought okay awesome but it turns out Japanese omotenashi only extends to your driveway when picking up homeless gaijin. I spent the night in her car, parked in her driveway. Got all my stuff back the next day... it turns out someone just turned it into lost & found. No idea what would have happened to me if some cops happened to come by instead of her. Moral of the story: don't forget your drat flashlight, and store it in your rectum.
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Apr 15, 2024 23:28
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I dropped my wallet while biking in Kyoto and it was interesting stretching out my pocket change for a day or two while sorting out what the hell to do (hooray for 500¥ coins). When I called my bank to ask for options about getting cash on hand, they immediately cancelled all my cards even though I just called to ask questions so even if it turned up all my cards would have been useless. Filing a report at a police box was pretty straightforward, and they ended up finding it a couple days later and mailed it to a friend in Tokyo so it was waiting for me there at the end of my trip. The couple hundred bucks I had in there was intact, although they did confiscate the Suica card I had in there because it had my friend's name and not mine. I managed to get a couple hundred bucks from a Western Union, and a poster from this thread was in town and hooked me up with a couple thousand bucks for the rest of my trip and we went out for kakigori. Seriously, the people in here are really really awesome. Coxswain Balls fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 00:50
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anakha posted:If you're travelling in a group, depending on your roaming/data charges, renting a mobile hotspot/pocket WiFi might be cheaper. Pocket WiFi is good for families and kids and multiple devices , but the minute someone goes to a bathroom break or split up, oh no no connection
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Apr 16, 2024 04:46
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Charles 2 of Spain posted:Goon challenge: take a 3-day trip where you can only use hotel Wi-Fi. That’s called 2003 and carrying a copy of lonely planet. I’m not going to pay for airfare and hotel just to live like a hobo in the cities. I’m going to go on a overpriced camping trip to see nature in the wilderness with no cell service
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Apr 16, 2024 04:54
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Hey, $2000 dollar vacation donation goon, PM me.
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Apr 16, 2024 05:12
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Charles 2 of Spain posted:Goon challenge: take a 3-day trip where you can only use hotel Wi-Fi. One of the people I was traveling with in 2020 just leeched wifi for a four day trip and did okay wandering around on his own, though he had the two of us with sims as backup.
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Apr 16, 2024 07:25
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Waltzing Along posted:Hey, $2000 dollar vacation donation goon, PM me. It was more that he had a bank account in my country for his business that I could do an EMT with, so he hooked me up with a stack of bills while we set up the transfer. I was super lucky that he was in town for the day and will be eternally grateful for it. I also broke my collarbone falling down a mountain on my last day and another person from here picked me up from the hospital and let me stay at their family's place for a couple days before my flight home. According to the LINE chat I somehow still wasn't the goon with the most disastrous trip where they just kept getting themselves into more trouble (I think it involved a hostess club, probably).
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Apr 16, 2024 07:57
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Coxswain Balls posted:According to the LINE chat I somehow still wasn't the goon with the most disastrous trip where they just kept getting themselves into more trouble (I think it involved a hostess club, probably). I don’t remember all the details offhand but yeah, I do recall a goon getting themselves into one of the more common/well known hostess club scams.
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Apr 16, 2024 11:38
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Half a million yen is way too much for a few weeks unless you literally haven't paid for anything (hotels trains, etc) and even then it's a lot.
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Apr 16, 2024 14:18
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154 yen to 1 usd 
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Apr 16, 2024 15:16
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peanut posted:154 yen to 1 usd  totalnewbie posted:Half a million yen is way too much for a few weeks unless you literally haven't paid for anything (hotels trains, etc) and even then it's a lot. unless you're like buying a camera, in which case 
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Apr 16, 2024 15:18
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The low yen has made loading up my Wise card very positive in my favor. Sorry Japan. I'll pay it back to you soon.
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Apr 16, 2024 19:20
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totalnewbie posted:Half a million yen is way too much for a few weeks unless you literally haven't paid for anything (hotels trains, etc) and even then it's a lot. After deducting what we’re gonna spend on Shinkansen tickets for some of the longer trips and the cost of a tattoo appointment we’ve got set up it’s like 8000jpy per person per day. If we were just talking paying for food and drink and spending on absolutely nothing else yeah it’s overkill, but we’ve also gotta pay for however many shorter trips to get out to other places or just trains or busses around the main cities where we’re staying out of that budget, and we’ll almost certainly do some shopping on top of that which will eat into the overall figure pretty decently. We spent ~200k in about a week the first time we went to Osaka and that’s just the cash we took, not including anything we spent on our cards where we wanted to conserve some of that cash for other things. The exchange rate was significantly worse then too (like 1gbp to 140jpy, vs 188 now), so we’re getting a lot more bang for our buck this year. It’s also my first vacation in almost 6 years due to the pandemic and life poo poo, I don’t really mind breaking the bank if that’s what people consider it 
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Apr 16, 2024 19:59
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For two people plus travel that's much more reasonable.
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Apr 16, 2024 20:01
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totalnewbie posted:Half a million yen is way too much for a few weeks unless you literally haven't paid for anything (hotels trains, etc) and even then it's a lot. Too much for what? It's only 3500 bucks
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Apr 16, 2024 20:47
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LOL Just LOL if you aren't staying at 1000 yen a night residential hotels, walking everywhere, and eating the cheapest day old crap you can find at grocery stores. And don't tell me you flew to Japan. Stowing away in cargo containers is where it's at.
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Apr 16, 2024 22:41
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Charles 2 of Spain posted:Goon challenge: take a 3-day trip where you can only use hotel Wi-Fi. I would probably be found feral in a ditch six weeks later because I live and die by Google Maps when I'm out of my familiar surroundings.
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Apr 16, 2024 22:57
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You can download maps beforehand so you don't need Wi-Fi.
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Apr 16, 2024 23:25
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Shammypants posted:Too much for what? It's only 3500 bucks Waltzing Along posted:LOL Just LOL if you aren't staying at 1000 yen a night residential hotels, walking everywhere, and eating the cheapest day old crap you can find at grocery stores. And don't tell me you flew to Japan. Stowing away in cargo containers is where it's at. You two have some terrible reading comprehension.
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Apr 17, 2024 04:10
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Charles 2 of Spain posted:Goon challenge: take a 3-day trip where you can only use hotel Wi-Fi. I somehow made it my first 3 years in China using only Wifi because my 32 GB iPhone 7 (the phone I was using at the time) didn't let me swap in a China SIM card because I originally bought it on contract in the US. It was hellish. Life became a million times better after finally upgrading to a 512 GB iPhone 12 Pro Max. Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Apr 17, 2024 |
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Apr 17, 2024 06:38
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totalnewbie posted:You two have some terrible reading comprehension. Yeah, the concern isn’t the budget but in handling it in cash.
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Apr 17, 2024 08:10
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Charles 2 of Spain posted:You can download maps beforehand so you don't need Wi-Fi. This is a killer reminder because I 100% forgot this exists. I actually might do a WiFi-less challenge for one day. Just walk. TBH I'm actually going to be staying really close to Tokyo Tower so honestly if I get lost I can pretty easily re-orient. Scaled down mini-joke-challenge accepted!
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Apr 17, 2024 12:31
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Charles 2 of Spain posted:You can download maps beforehand so you don't need Wi-Fi. Oh did they unblock this for Japan? I got around a few counties without a sim this way, but Google maps hadn't licensed Japan for offline use when I visited.
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Apr 17, 2024 12:51
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My parents did it when they came over last year, not 100% sure if it was Google Maps though.
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Apr 17, 2024 13:01
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some kinda jackal posted:This is a killer reminder because I 100% forgot this exists. I actually might do a WiFi-less challenge for one day. Just walk.
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Apr 17, 2024 13:04
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harperdc posted:Yeah, the concern isn’t the budget but in handling it in cash. I’m definitely concerned about the budget I don’t know who is spending hundreds of dollars per diem, that’s wild.
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Apr 17, 2024 13:07
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AHH F/UGH posted:I’m definitely concerned about the budget TIL ~$50 USD is actually “hundreds of dollars”
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Apr 17, 2024 13:15
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History Comes Inside! posted:TIL ~$50 USD is actually “hundreds of dollars” feels like it the way the yen has gone of late
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Apr 17, 2024 13:30
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