Gaz & George’s guide to Japan: where to eat, shop, stay and explore
We’ve been lucky enough to visit Japan a few times now - mainly through our work with the amazing knife makers we stock at Community Cutlery - and every time we go, we fall for the place a little bit more.
Japan can feel slightly daunting to plan for the first time. The cities are enormous, the train stations can be bewildering and there’s so much to see, eat and do, we never feel we have enough time to do it all justice!
So, this isn’t a definitive guide to Japan, it’s more the things we’ve learned, places we’ve loved and bits of advice we wish we’d known before our first trip.
PREP
Get an eSIM
This would probably be our number one practical tip. If you’re spending time in Japanese cities, you’re going to use Google Maps a lot, as well as Google Translate.
Buy something like this (with unlimited data) before you travel and you won’t have to think about it again.
Get a digital Suica card
A Suica card is essentially a prepaid travel/payment card that you load with money and top up as you go.
You can use it to tap in and out of stations and on other public transport, as well as in lots of shops. We use the digital version on our phones.
TRAVEL
Check whether the JR Pass is worth it
You’ll hear a lot about the Japan Rail Pass (JR Pass) but it’s considerably more expensive than it used to be so do the maths before automatically buying one.
For us, we tend to do around four or five long-distance journeys and we’ve found that buying individual tickets for these journeys has worked out cheaper.
Book the Shinkansen in advance
Japan’s iconic bullet trains are brilliant but popular routes can get mega busy, so we’d recommend booking tickets in advance and also reserving your seats.
You can book from the UK before you go but we’ve found the Japanese websites can be a bit tricky to use. Alternatively, you can just book at a station ticket machine once you arrive. We’ve found doing this the day before travelling pretty straightforward.
Give yourself plenty of time at big stations
Particularly Tokyo Station! The first time you arrive it can be chaotic and confusing so give yourself plenty of time to figure out where you need to be - I’m talking like an hour or more if it’s your first journey.
Google Maps is your friend (yep, even within the stations!) and can guide you right towards your platform. If you have an early train, it can even be worth having a recce of the station the day before so things feel more familiar.
EAT
Our biggest tip is to research food and restaurants before you go. We save restaurants, cafés and bakeries onto a Google Map so wherever we find ourselves, we can see what we’ve earmarked nearby.
If you eat everything, Japan is basically your playground. Get stuck in, try the tiny places and follow your nose.
If, like us, you’re vegetarian or vegan, you’ll need to plan a little more. A few places we love include:
OKO, Osaka – a fully vegan restaurant and always a fun place to eat.
Umenohana Honmachi, Osaka – a beautiful traditional Japanese restaurant with a full tofu tasting menu and private dining rooms.
Tokyo Vegan Bakes, Shimokitazawa – exquisite vegan baked goods.
Ming-Teng HAO HAO, Shimokitazawa, Tokyo – an excellent Hong Kong-style restaurant.
There’s also a curry chain – CoCo ICHIBANYA - found across Japan that has saved us more than once when we’ve struggled to find veggie food.
And never underestimate the power of a Japanese 7-Eleven. There’s plenty of decent food to be found if you’re hungry and stuck for options. Just don’t wander down the street eating it – eating while walking is generally considered bad manners in Japan. Just find somewhere to sit or lean against a wall.
SHOP
Whether you’re into knives, kitchenware, stationery, denim or vintage clothes, Japan is very good at shops that make you want to empty your bank account immediately!
Itoya, Tokyo - an enormous multi-storey stationery shop and one of our favourites. If you like beautiful pens, paper and notebooks, you could lose hours in here.
Nishiki Market, Kyoto– this place is mega. Loads of covered rows of shops at the end on Shinkyogoku street have some great clothing shops, vintage and new stuff.
Kappabashi, Tokyo – often known as Kitchen Town, this whole area is devoted to cookware, ceramics, knives and restaurant supplies. As you can probably imagine, we bloody love it.
Tower Knives, Osaka – a great knife shop and well worth a visit if Japanese knives are one of the reasons you’ve found yourself reading the Community Cutlery guide to Japan in the first place!
Fash Disc Ranch, Tokyo - One of our favourite record shops anywhere, no bells and whistles, just loads of funk & soul, jazz, country, rock, folk and whatever else you might be into. But don’t forget to buy something by a Japanese artist that you haven’t heard of, it’s so much fun bringing those home!
DO
This is a difficult one because Japan has something for pretty much everyone.
You might be into anime, coffee, art, history, architecture, ceramics, clothes, records, or, like us, knives. Whatever your thing is, do some digging before you travel and save anything interesting onto a Google Map.
And then: walk.
Walk as much as you can. Some of our favourite bits of Japan have come from simply wandering around, looking down side streets and seeing what we stumble across.
Get yourself in an onsen.
We’d definitely recommend experiencing an onsen – a traditional Japanese hot-spring bath – at least once.
Public onsen have their own etiquette and, yes, you generally go in naked. If you’re not keen on all that – or you have tattoos, which can still be restricted at some baths – look for somewhere with a private onsen.
Hakone is a great place to try one, with plenty of ryokan and onsen offering private bathing.
STAY
Tokyo
Mustard Hotel, Shimokitazawa
We’ve stayed here a few times and really like it. The rooms are small but Shimokitazawa is a brilliant neighbourhood packed with independent shops, vintage clothing, cafés, bars and restaurants.
Osaka
A skyscraper hotel with absolutely breathtaking views across Osaka. The city stretching out beneath you is pretty spectacular.
Kyoto
We stayed in this Airbnb which was fine (if not a little overly electronic!) but it was in a really convenient location and made a good base for exploring.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that Japan rewards a bit of preparation.
Sort your data, save places on Google Maps, research where you want to eat and work out your trains. But don’t plan every single minute.
Leave yourself time to walk, wander down side streets and go into places simply because they look interesting. Some of the best bits of our trips haven't been the things we travelled halfway around the world to see, they've been the things we stumbled across on the way.