| Slimebeast said: Rubang, interesting story, "bought really expensive gifts", "masturbation hotel" lol. So u went on the trip all alone? How old were u at the time? |
Yeah I was all alone and I was 24.
| tastyshovelware said: @Rubang Do you speak any Japanese or did you get by with english? If so, was it tough or did enough people have at least a basic understanding of the language? |
I'd taken 4 semesters of Japanese at a community college, and then I hadn't spoken a word of Japanese in 2 years. I practiced for a couple weeks before my trip with some podcasts and my old tetbooks, but it didn't help. My Japanese was really bad when I got there, but it got better real fast. By the end of my trip I was completely fluent in the areas of asking for directions and ordering food.
In the big cities the train stations will spell out the names of the train stops, but when you get to the more rural areas they'll only be in kanji. Luckily I got a map in Tokyo that had the names of the stops in English next to the kanji, so that helped me navigate the outskirts of Tokyo. You can get around downtown Tokyo and other major cities with just English. The major downtown train stations have tourist information centers, and somebody will speak English there. They can provide you with a map and help you find a hotel, but they usually have a deal with an expensive nearby hotel.
One day I was just staring at a map with a confused look on my face, and a woman walking her baby in a stroller asked if I was lost. I told her the address of the hostel I wanted to scope out, and she said she didn't know where that was, but walked me down the street to a police officer with a map who helped me find it. (These police huts are everywhere and can be really helpful, but they usually don't speak a lick of English, so you have to be able to know what to ask them in Japanese.) Then she walked me to the train station and taught me how to buy a ticket with the right amount of money on it, and told me which train to get on and how many stops to count before I got off. This was my 2nd day there when I was really clueless. I'd slept about 3 hours and was carrying everything on my back and ready to collapse staring at that map. She might have saved my whole trip just then.
There were some small areas where I could barely communicate with people, but as long as I could find a hotel, hostel, ryokan, or internet cafe, I was fine. The language barrier was one of the most fun parts of my trip. I got to the point where I stopped using tourist information centers and just wandered the streets until I found a place to sleep.
And I highly recommend the web site WikiTravel. It's written by tourists as they travel to places. It details transit, food, hotels, prices for everything, and fun stuff to do. You can also look up where you live and see what visiting tourists have written about it, and maybe help them out if they're dead wrong about something.
