| Slimebeast said: Rubang How much did u spend on the travel? did u sleep in hotels? |
I think I spent a little over $4,000 on the whole trip, but it could be done way cheaper. You could save a lot of money on plane tickets, food, and gifts. I ate fancy sushi and fugu and toro everywhere, and tried to eat everything I found at least once. I spent about $1,000 on the flights there and back, and that was a horrible price. It was kind of a last minute thing, like "fuck this I'm going to Japan and blowing all my money before I finish school." I spent a couple hundred on a rail pass that gave me 2 weeks of train rides anywhere in the country. That was an amazing deal which must've saved me several hundred dollars. You have to buy those outside of Japan, before you get there. They're only for visiting tourists and you can't find them anywhere in the country. You activate them when you get there. So I spent my first few days and last few days in Tokyo, and rode trains everywhere I wanted for the 2 weeks in the middle of my trip. Most of the money was spent on hotel rooms, food, and gifts. I ate really expensive stuff everywhere and bought really expensive gifts everywhere (I bought a bunch of shirts in Harajuku, and nerd stuff in Akihabara and Osaka, and I bought SD cards everywhere I went so I could keep taking photos). I blew $600 on a great LEICA camera right before the trip. I was really spending like crazy. I could plan another trip in advance for maybe half the price now, especially with today's flight prices.
It was kinda scary, because before I left America I only booked my first night (in a capsule!). Then for the next 21 days I woke up not knowing where I was going to sleep. I would ride a train to a new city, desperately scramble to find a place to sleep, drop off my stuff, and start exploring. I slept in hotels, hostels, internet cafes*, a ryokan, a friendly stranger's living room*, the airport, a capsule hotel, and some weird masturbation hotel*.
*The internet cafes have hourly rates, but many also have discounted nightly rates for 7+ hour stays, and the chairs fold all the way back horizontally so you can sleep in them in your little internet booth. They are a great life-saving last resort for the nights when I couldn't find a hostel or hotel with any vacancies.
*I met some awesome new friends in Kyoto that let me stay at their house for a few days.
*I found this crazy masturbation hotel on one of my last nights in Shinjuku (the big Las Vegas downtown part of Tokyo). All the internet cafes were completely booked at 2 am, and then I finally found another one. At least, I thought it was an internet cafe, but oooh man, wow. You pay a pretty cheap nightly rate, and it comes with 2 or 3 porn rentals. All the Japanese men were trying to hide in the aisles when I got there. You get a tiny closet of a room, with a computer with internet, a DVD player, a remote control, headphones, giant super-comfortable recliner chair, tons of dry tissues, tons of moist tissues, and a trash can. And you get one condom (I still have mine somewhere, it's so cute!). And in the bathroom, there was a vending machine for all kinds of sex toys and creams and condoms and stuff.
