We’re about a 19 hours away from boarding our flight to Tokyo (with a quick stop in Toronto first) and we’re all pretty much excited. This is a unique, one-of-a-kind experience that not a lot of people get to enjoy. Visiting the other side of the world and seeing a totally different culture at play is, for us, the greatest adventure ever.
In case everyone is wondering what the plan is or the itinerary we’ll be following while we’re there, we’ve got a surprise for you: we’re basically winging this trip from A to Z. From the looks of it, whether we rent a car or not, we’re going to visit several cities in 11 days to get a feel for Japan. Once we arrive in Tokyo, we’re going to spend the night at a hotel nearby the airport. The following morning, we’re going to fly to Nagasaki and then drive (or train) our way back to Tokyo to spend 3-4 nights until we come back to Montreal. We plan on visiting Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka and other cities I can’t think of right now. If we end up driving, we’ll be going through quite a few cities including the country side. Also, we plan on stopping by a city or two beside the ocean for some killer views.
Tonight, we plan on packing our bags and having dinner at La Verita to celebrate a mutual friends’ birthday.
Hinjew sent me a link forecasting the weather for Tokyo this week, and it’s looking somewhat decent. The temperature is averaging in the high 20s with some cloudy times. Currently, at the time of writing this post, it is raining. Hopefully we won’t have too much of that during our stay in Japan.
According to the LUXE Tokyo Guide, there are four distinct seasons: June to September is hot and wet, Autumn is clement and spring is blossom-ravishing. The fourth season? I have no idea, that’s what the guide said.
I previously mentioned that we had bought the CTR500 mobile broadband router by CradlePoint. We have decided to purchase a different mobile router as the CTR500 was lacking one key feature: a battery. The new model we recommend is the PHS300 where the PHS stands for “Personal Hot Spot” and it goes for 150$ USD. The only difference between the CTR500 and the PHS300 is a battery, an ExpressCard slot and a LAN port. I had the opportunity to play with both devices (minus a USB data card) and I have to admit, they are comparable and very easy to use. The administration panel of the routers are similar to D-Link’s models, so finding my way around the admin panels was quick. I have no idea what the battery life is like on the PHS300, but reading some forums on the web tell me it’s not that bad. Once we manage to test the router out, we’ll post our results and experiences on the site.
One thing I highly recommend for everyone who purchases these mobile routers is to update the firmware on them before they leave on their trip.
On a popular forum for webmasters, we posted a thread asking what to do in Japan and questions on mobile phones and data plans. Immediately, before they answered our questions or shed some tips, everyone warned us about being ready to experience racism outside of Tokyo. It seems that the Japanese, according to some people who have frequented the country often, do not like foreigners that much outside of Tokyo.
Since 2/3 of the Japanigans team could easily trip facial recognition systems into believe they’re terrorists, we’re a bit worried. Not about the racism mind you, but about getting a mobile data plan so we can have “teh internets” while on the road. Supposedly, getting a mobile phone, let alone a data plan, is somewhat of a challenge for foreigners. Since none of us speak Japanese, we’re most likely going to have some communication problems with the locals.
A solution for all of the above is to get a personal tour guide that can translate and take us around Japan (although that will be quite costly). Thundergod, the adventurous one of the group, tells me (Fallout) that I worry too much. This is true, as I tend to over-think matters quite a bit. In any case, perhaps getting lost in a foreign country might for a couple of days might actually be a thrilling vacation after all.
After Google-ing for telecommunication companies in Japan (top 3 are Softbank, NTT Docomo and eMobile) we have decided what to do for our mobile data-craving needs. We’re going to purchase a Softbank C01LC USB stick and plug it into a CradlePoint CTR500 (199$ USD) mobile wireless broadband router. The router allows us to split the mobile data connection among our wifi devices (laptops, phones, cameras, etc). Softbank has a booth at Narita airport, so we can pick the stick up while we leave the airport after landing.
The data plan itself is going to cost us roughly 50 to 75$ CDN. Financially, it makes sense to go with a prepaid unlimited data plan, even though we’re going to be in Japan for only 11 days. Paying for wifi access in hotel rooms is most likely going to cost us 20$ per day. Having a mobile data connection will also allow us to make cheap phone calls back home using Skype. People can also contact us easily since we’re going to be forwarding our 514 number to our Skype number.
The hooligans that run this site, known as the Japanigans team, can now survive 11 days of being away from their 100 mbit fiber optic connections and satisfy their internet needs (and help us update this site) while we’re on the road.
Our plan right now is to fly to Nagasaki Monday morning and rent a car to drive back to Tokyo. A problem we thought we might come across is whether we can rent a car in Nagasaki and drop it off in Tokyo. After doing some research, this is not a problem after all. Some of the car rental companies that are in Japan are Budget, Hertz and Avis, and they all are able to handle a different drop point (rather, they all have offices in all major airports across Japan). There’s also Toyota Car Rental services, but they’re way too expensive.
Hinjew sent me a links to two restaurants we should dine at: Ninja Akasaka and Nihonryori-Ryugin. I’ve never heard of either one, but Hinjew tells me the latter restaurants is upwards of 250.00$ CDN per person. You’re covering the meal, right Hinjew?
One place we’re looking forward to visiting while overseas is the Maple Leaf bar in Tokyo. While there is a very small chance we’re going to see the Canadians play past game four (as I write this, they are losing 6-0 to the Philadelphia Flyers) we’re hoping they somehow last a few games so we can enjoy a beer at 8 AM in the morning over some breakfast.
While we’re not exactly troublemakers, there’s a good chance we may end up running for our lives, either from ninjas or domokuns. In any case, we’re leaving these two addresses here on the website in case we’re fugitives and still have access to a mobile phone with a data plan.
Canadian Embassy Tokyo 7-3-38 Akasaka, Minato-ku
Tokyo 107-8503, Japan Tel: (011-81-3) 5412-6200
British Embassy Tokyo No 1 Ichiban-cho
Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 102-8381 Tel: (011-81-3) 5211-1100
The team at Japanigans love their gadgets, from cameras to computers to phones. It’s very important for us to charge our equipment as we’ll be taking quite a few pictures throughout the day. Also, we’ll be using our laptops constantly to upload the photographs while on the road via a tethered mobile phone. All these gadgets need power, and we need to be able to charge the batteries often while we sleep at night in our hotel rooms. Taking a quick glance at Wikipedia, it’s good to know that Japan uses the same wall outlets as Canadians and Americans when it comes to the plug. The only difference, however, is the outlets run at 100 volts and switches 50/60hz as opposed to 120 volts and a constant 60 hz in USA and Canada. Most of the equipment we have can auto-switch to the appropriate voltage and frequency. If we come across equipment that does not support the different voltages, a simple power travel kit can take care of the job. I think with the amount of equipment that we’ll be bringing with us, we’re going to need a separate power grid just for our hotel rooms.
Since we’re all a bunch of tech geeks, we thought we’d share some of the equipment that we’ll be bringing on our trip to Japan. Most people throw in a cheap point-and-shoot camera and be done with it. This is not the case for us, as we all enjoy photography and technology in general with a passion.
Hinjew will be bringing a Sony Cybershot DSCHX5VB camera (10.2 MP and 10x optical zoom) with a built-in GPS tracker for geotagging. The camera can also do 1080p video easily.
Thundergod, the somewhat professional photographer of the group, is bringing his spankin’ Nikon D90 camera (12.1 MP) with a 18-105mm VR lens for video and secondary photo-taking. He’s also bringing an Olympus E3 with a 14-35mm f/2 and 7-14mm f/4 Zuiko lenses for photo, along with a Zuiko 8mm fish-eye lens. On top of all this, an Olympus FL-50 flash unit, 4 CF memory cards and 1 SDHC card. Oh, he’s also bringing a Gary Fong Diffuser.
Fallout has a Canon Rebel XS (10.1 MP) with a 18-55mm and 72-160mm lenses with a separate GPS logger to geotag his pictures. He hasn’t chosen his geotagging unit yet, as he hasn’t come across a good model. Alongside his camera, he will be bringing an Apple Macbook Pro 13″ unibody laptop to document the journey across Japan.
