Travels to Japan

I thought it would be good to capture my travels in a blog and to put knowledge down in written form to share with others. Shouldn't take long. Hey! Who said that? At any rate, I should emphasize that these observations are based on my experiences and the opinions expressed here only reflect my own. Others may disagree with my observations and anyway, as one knows, it is difficult to make generalizations which are true in all cases. Your personal mileage may vary. The following is subject to change while I verify some observations with Kyoko.

Essentials for taking to Japan:

• Handkerchief
• Pocket tissues
• Business cards
• Cash
  

If I think of others, I will add them to the list.

Handkerchiefs:

In Japan, traditionally, bathrooms do not have hand towels or electric hand dryers. It is expected that Japanese people carry their own handkerchiefs for drying their hands. This is slowly changing, and more and more places are providing the means for drying your hands. Some places have high powered electric hand dryers. Unlike the ones you may see around the states where anyway you have to wipe your hands on your pants, the dryers really work. These could blow your socks off, if you're the type to put socks on your hands, that is. Anyway, even at the office at work, you have to have your own handkerchief. If you carry around a briefcase or computer bag, it might not be a bad idea to carry a spare handkerchief in it in case you forget to transfer your handkerchief to your new pants the next day.

You may also want to keep in mind that after one full's day of use, your handkerchief will have been used quite a few times. And although it should remain relatively clean, it will definitely look used after being stuffed back into your pocket many times. Therefore, you may want to have a number of clean handkerchiefs available on hand. Of course, hotels' laundry service will clean your handkerchiefs for your, but assuming you want to keep your travel expenses down, it would be cheaper to bring spares.

Pocket tissues:

Since you use your handkerchief to dry your hands, it would be super gross if you blew your nose in your handkerchief and then later dried your hands with said handkerchief. Eeeeeewwww! Anyway, so you should use pocket tissues for nasty personal hygiene types of activities. In fact, in some public restrooms, you may find toilets do not come with tissue paper... Intentionally. They have vending machines at the toilet entrance for purchasing the toilet paper. So if you have your own pocket tissues, you can save from having to purchase toilet paper... But you should make sure you have enough of a supply of pocket tissues before you opt not to buy any at the toilet entrance.

Business cards:

And as many of you already know, exchanging business cards is an important tradition within Japan. Of course, things may be slowly changing, but exchanging business cards allow you to keep track of everyone at a meeting since there may be many new faces.

Cash:

Japan tends to be a cash-oriented society. Of course, credit cards are widely used. However, you may find places which do not accept credit cards or only accept Japan-issued credit cards. It can also be quite difficult to get cash from your credit cards. Many ATMs will only work with Japan-issued credit cards.

Fortunately, I did find that the postal ATMs which are found in many subway and train stations do accept foreign credit cards. (Actually, there was a postal ATM at the office which did not work, but the one I tried in the subway station did work.)

And finally, if you have traveler's checks, you will find that often you can get a slightly better rate to exchange traveler's checks than cash.