Laundry

Just a quick point if you're packing light or need to do laundry in Japan.

Some hotels will have coin operated laundry but some (including our current Tokyo hotel) do not.

You need to look for (or ask your hotel front desk) where the nearest 'coin laundry'.  Not laundromat or anything else.  Coin laundry.

Some require you to add detergent, some don't - we packed a few travel detergents with us to cover all bases.  Also the dryer probably will not completely dry your clothes- be prepared to hang some things in the bathroom to dry.

Timeline: From Airplane to Hotel

It's hard to estimate how long things like getting off the airplane, through immigration, etc will take - and I always wish I'd paid attention later when I want to estimate for the next time we travel. There are so many variables, but at least an IDEA of how long it MIGHT take is nice. Luckily, my iPhone now makes it really easy for me to make a timeline! Here it is:

• Landed around 3:20-30 PM
• Off the plane by 3:36 PM

• Got to Immigration line at 3:40 PM

• Done with Immigration and waiting for luggage at 3:57 PM (the sign totally lied to us)

• Got luggage, went through Customs, stopped at post office to pick up our mobile hot spot, and were at the JR Office to redeem our JR Rail Passes at 4:20 PM
• Got to the head of the queue for JR passes at 5:05 PM
• Got to the train platform for our express train to Yokohama at 5:15 PM

• Train departed 544 (as scheduled) - scheduled to arrive in Yokohama at 7:18 PM
• Checked into hotel at 8:00 PM

Mapping our Adventures

We ♥ Google Maps!  It is an incredibly useful planning tool and especially indispensable for traveling in Japan.  We add all the sites we want to see and use different icons to create loose categories (parks, shrines/temples, shopping, food, etc.) This helps us to understand the proximity of the various sites we want to see and allows us to group things together to form our itinerary.  We use the step-by-step walking directions to determine if things are really as close to each other as they appear to be.  It probably sounds mundane, but it's actually pretty cool. 

Unless you like being the people with the guidebook...

We find it awkward to walk around obviously consulting a guidebook.  It's not that we worry about looking like tourists (we're white Americans in Japan...and John is huge...I think they know we're not locals), but it just feels weird.  We also don't like to spend our vacations staring at our phones (I have more than enough trouble managing to avoid getting run over by bikes as it is.)  Moreover, we don't like being lost and confused so we DO want to have important information, like train numbers, hotel names, and addresses, documented in a convenient place that we can consult quickly and discreetly.