Japan Trip 1&2: Being a Foreigner & Choosing a Tour Group

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Alright, so I’m writing some chapters, but with the jetlag it’s slow-going (putting myself into a character’s mindset is surprisingly tough when you feel like you should be asleep right now), so I’m getting back into typing by writing this lil’ report on my trip. :D

Ah, I’m also giving up on obscuring my gender since there are some gender-specific parts of the trip (onsen). Anyway, I only did that at the beginning because both female-written gendbend and male-written gendbend stories  have strong stigmas attached to them; I really felt that blurring which one I am would help people approach wfb’s story without too many preconceptions.
At this point, if you’re still along for the ride for wfb, I feel like it doesn’t matter anymore~.
I also don’t care if people continue to mistake my gender, so don’t bother with correcting people if they get it wrong. I was proud to be mistaken as both genders in my youth. Puberty was such a disappointing time for me lololol.
I am ♀️

1: PSYCHING UP for the TRIP

I want to go on a trip to Japan, but OMG, I don’t know JAPANESE, or I hate just looking like an obvious TOURIST…

Right, uh… get over it?

The mindset for tourists are a lot different in Japan.
In the West, I feel like we get frustrated at having people who don’t understand how things work bogging down the system, but in Japan, it’s quite a bit different.
Rather than getting frustrated that you’re taking their time, they’re more worried about whether you’re getting the help you need.
It’s the difference in the cultural view of work, I think. In the West, you work for quantity. Get as many people through as fast as possible. In Japan, they definitely focus on quality.
So unless you’re bogging down the sidewalk, I didn’t see much frustration with working with foreigners – unless you’re completely being an ass and ignoring their attempts to help you because you don’t speak their language.

You might hear it said that Japanese people like it when foreigners attempt to speak Japanese, and it’s true that there were a few people who were like, hey, cool, a foreigner who can speak a little Japanese, but what I experienced was that many people were appreciative if you attempted to use keywords to help clarify your situation.
In other words, they’re doing their best playing ‘English buzzwords’ to help you understand them, and they are appreciative if you do your best playing ‘Japanese buzzwords’ to try and meet them in the middle and help them help you.

Also, the Japanese are excellent at body language, so use your context clues.
I almost had a heart attack when members of my tour group stared blankly at the Japanese policeman trying to tell them something before they just turned around and ignored him.
After I wrangled my group to stand along the rail and out of the way while we were waiting for our guide to buy tickets, they told me, ‘Thank goodness you know Japanese, we didn’t have any idea what he meant.’
… Yeah, ignoring the fact that my Japanese is on the much lower end of ‘middling-to-poor,’ there were buses and people talking all over the place, and the officer wasn’t being very loud, and my hearing is poor on a good day. I would have had trouble understanding ENGLISH in that situation. The officer was waving us over, pointing to the rail, then staring pointedly at the ticket booth, rinse and repeat. This was also a very busy tourist attraction, with school field trips along with all the foreign tourists having a hard time navigating the narrow sidewalks and trying to buy tickets. It wasn’t that hard to figure out he wanted us out of the way.
Please don’t ignore the police officers…

The worst thing that happens to my husband (clearly a brit-scandinavian mix foreigner) instead of me (an asian-american who strangely doesn’t look so obviously chinese despite both my parents being from taiwan – I only have 1/32 japanese in me, but I guess it’s enough) is that he gets picked out by Japanese locals to try out their English skills. Just… play along, I guess…
It was apparently a little awkward with the old guy in the onsen though, lol.

If you’re worried about being asian in appearance but not knowing Japanese – keep in mind, the majority of the tourists in Japan are from China, so they’re quick to figure it out. In the really touristy spots, all the young women in kimonos were mostly Chinese.
(Out on the regular streets, especially if it’s an older woman, it’s usually a Japanese person going to a wedding)
I almost died laughing at the first 100 Yen store where the employees were yelling “Hua’in guanglin,” (truncated version of ‘welcome’ in Chinese) instead of “Irrashaimase,” to try to pull customers in, but after it happened a few times, I got used to it.

1.5: Okay, so what Japanese should you know?

Reading:
It’s not necessary, but I suggest learning katakana. Hiragana is great, but katakana… is basically foreign words sounded out phonetically. It’s very useful, especially with food and flavors. レモン(remon) is lemon. グレープフルーツ(gre-pufuru-tsu) is grapefruit.  Like that you won’t starve, at least.
As for the kanji I found helpful:
流す – Flush
止 – stop the damn bidet (actually, it’s just stop, but if you accidentally start the bidet or butt wash, find this kanji)
自動 – automatic (door)

Yeah, that’s about it. Seriously.
I was surprised at how many English characters were… everywhere.

If you’re in a touristy area, or at least in metropolitan Tokyo, chances are they will have an English menu anyway.
It’s always worth asking, “Eigo (eh-go) menyu ga arimasu-ka?” to see if they have an English menu even if they don’t take it out right away. The worst they can say is “Sorry,” “No,” “Sumimasen, nai desu.” or “Arimasen,” or some variant of “we don’t.”
A suggestion from our tour guide is that, if you’re having a hard time being understood, trying writing it out in English, in clear handwriting. English class in Japan is more focused on written English than spoken, so it could be helpful. I haven’t found it necessary, but I knew most of the Japanese ‘buzzwords’ that I needed, so maybe the occasion just didn’t pop up for me.

Speaking:

The number one word to learn is: Sumimasen (excuse me)
Get the waiter’s attention? Sumimasen!
Call for the store clerk? Sumimasen!
Bump into someone? Sumimasen!
Do something stupid like going to the driver’s side of a taxi because you’re used to the driver’s side on the left? Sumimasen, sumimasen… moshiwakearimasen… (I was so embarrassed)
Chances are, this will be the word you use the most.

Next would probably be: Daijobu desu (die-joe-buu dehs) (I’m fine)
Use it when you don’t want a refill or seconds, or if you trip/fall/etc and people ask, “Daijobu desu ka?”
Alternatively, if someone else trips or something, you could ask, “Daijobu desu ka?” (are you fine?)

You can get by relatively well just knowing those two, but some more useful things are:

General:
Hai (Hi meaning ‘yes’) and iie (eeyeh meaning ‘no’)
arigatou gozaimasu or just arigatou (arigahtoh go-zie-mahs) for thank you.
Ohayou (o-hi-yo) is good morning,
konnichiwa is hello.
Toire wa doko desu ka? (toire – toylay) Where is the toilet?

NUMBERS:
If you want more than one of something, say, Kore [insert number] [counter] o kudasai.
Ooooor you can use the right-most column without a counter, because fuck counters lol.
For example, Kore mittsu o kudasai.
Don’t use the right-most column with people, though. When asked how many people are in your party at a restaurant or for tickets (Nannin desu ka? or Nannin-sama? or something like that), use the ‘ichi, ni, san’ column with ‘nin’ as the counter.
Example: Yon-nin desu (We are 4 people)

#
1	一 (ichi)	一つ (hitotsu)
2	二 (ni)	二つ (futatsu)
3	三 (san)	三つ (mittsu)
4	四 (shi/yon)	四つ (yottsu)
5	五 (go)	五つ (itsutsu)
6	六 (roku)	六つ (muttsu)
7	七 (shichi/nana)	七つ (nanatsu)
8	八 (hachi)	八つ (yattsu)
9	九 (kyū/ku)	九つ (kokonotsu)
10	十 (jū)	十 (tō)

Most numbers are written with arabic numerals, so don’t worry about memorizing the kanji for numbers.
I did notice the wait staff would get a little nervous if you answer in English and hold up your fingers to indicate the number, and they would carefully count your fingers JUST IN CASE, so I found it worthwhile to answer in Japanese, although I would then get into a little trouble because a few people assumed I just spoke Japanese fluently. Luckily my husband is very, very white, so I had my, “I am gaijin desu’ card at hand lol.

For Shopping:
Shiharai wa doko desu ka? Where is the cashier?
Kore o kudasai. (koray o kuuda sigh) Give me this please.
Kore to kore o kudasai. Give me this and this please. Chain ‘kore’ with ‘to’ for more items (kore to kore to kore to kore o kudasai). For three of one item, two of another, it’s Kore mittsu to kore futatsu o kudasai, while pointing at things 
Nan size ga aimasu ka?  Which size would fit me?
Kore wa M size ga arimasu ka? Do you have this in ‘M’ size? ‘S’ and ‘L’ will also be understood, but … is extra large ‘LL’? or “two L”? Or “Ni L?” I dunno
Kore wa motto ookii size ga arimasu ka? Do you have this in a bigger size? Replace ‘ookii’ with ‘chiisai’ (chee sigh) for smaller.

For Eating:
Okanjou kudasai. Check please
Kaikei wa kochira desu ka? Do I pay here?
[insert need] kudasai.  Fork/knife/spoon/ atarashi hashi (new chopsticks)/mizu (water) please
Kore wa tsuika de …  I didn’t actually know how to ask “This was a set menu, but we added this, so what do we do about payment?” but with enough gesturing and “Watashitachi wa ticket ga arimasu, demo cohee(coffee) wa tsuika de…” the waiter figured out we had a meal coupon and could only order the set menus, but added on a coffee, and he told us “daijobu desu,” which meant we didn’t have to pay extra. If you have breakfast coupons at your hotel and have to get a set menu for breakfast, this might be useful. “Kore wa tsuika de” means ‘this was additional, so…” with an implied, “what the heck do I do now?”
gochisousama deshita: If you were especially pleased with the food, compliment the chef or staff by saying, gochisousama deshita meaning “I ate well.”

Anyway, these are all useful things, but again… you DON’T need to know much Japanese at all. Sumimasen, daijobu desu, and arigatou gozaimasu are probably all you REALLY need. Most Japanese people who work in touristy areas will know enough key English words to help you out – or at least enough to understand they need to bring over the guy who knows English really well – and holding up fingers is enough for small numbers.
Smiling and nodding also gets you out of speaking too much.

IF YOU HAVE FOOD ALLERGIES, take the guesswork out of everyone’s day, because that would just suck ass.
“Watashi wa (insert food here) ga taberaremasen.” (I can’t eat (insert food here)
Alternatively, if you do what I did for the people with food allergies in my party, have a card printed out to ease the guesswork:
私は [whatever you’re allergic to] が食べられません
If you want to write it out, although it’s a bit shaky because I’m using a touch stylus, here’s the general shape of how the handwritten words look:

Look up what the food you can’t eat is in Japanese. Some common ones are:

crab	カニ (kah-ni)
fish	魚 (sakana)
shellfish	貝 (kai)
shrimp	エビ (ehbi)
beef	牛肉 (gyuu neekuu)
pork	豚肉 (buuta neekuu)
chicken	チキン (chicken)
cow milk	牛乳 (gyuu nyuu)
eggs	卵 (tama-go)
gluten	グルテン (gluten)
wheat	小麦 (koe-muughi)
soy	大豆 (die-zuu)
peanuts	ピーナッツ (peanuts)
nuts	ナッツ (nuts)

If you’re celiac, I saw at least a few blogposts on that, so, really, if you have any food allergies at all, do some research to protect yourself on when you might have to be careful or what foods to avoid.
The staff might ask you, like they did my party member, “kani(crab) no, ebi(shrimp) okay?” So yeah, just reply, ‘ebi okay’ or ‘ebi no’ depending on the necessary answer. They DON’T want to send you to the hospital, so they will properly work with you.
Basically, the number 1 food to beware of is ramen, because you have NO idea what’s in the broth. I’m sure it’s all edible and good quality, but even if it’s a beef ramen, who knows. There might be seafood in it.

2: PLANNING the TRIP

This was the first time to Japan for everyone in my party (if you’re wondering, I was probably the paladin. my husband was definitely the scout). Planning a trip over multiple cities in a foreign country was overwhelming, so I invested in a tour group instead. That said, a friend of ours who studied abroad in Japan said it wasn’t too bad as long as you can navigate the trains … but I still have my doubts. HE didn’t have to figure out hotels and which sites to see within a very limited amount of time, and as someone who’d just be happy as long as we were in Japan, I had NO idea about what to prioritize seeing and what I could pass on for this time.
Also, although we saved up enough in money and vacation days for this trip, it’s not like we’ll be able to do this again any time soon. It will be a looooooong time before we can do anything even remotely close to this scale again. I wanted to make it worth it.

So, tours yay!
BUT not all tours are equal~
I spent many weeks pouring over tours, and after going through with THIS tour I was very, very pleased with my luck in avoiding a lot of the red flags in other tours.

Some things to consider:

• Choose at MAXIMUM 3 things you won’t compromise on that your tour has to have
  For example, ample free time, definitely goes to both Tokyo and Kyoto… that kind of thing. Any more than 3 is an exercise in frustration.
  For me, it was ‘stay at least 1 night in a traditional room’ and ‘take the shinkansen’
• If you’re going between Tokyo and Kyoto at all and they don’t utilize the shinkansen (bullet train), be aware that you will be taking 1-2 days of traveling between the two cities.
  No matter how they try to disguise it as a ‘tour of local villages’ or ‘experience dining with the locals’, basically it means they cheaped out on the $130(ish)USD bullet train ticket.
  It’s fine If you are honestly interested in spending a little more time outside of the cities (because we didn’t get to see much of the rural/suburb areas at all), but if you wanted to spend more time sightseeing the main sights in Tokyo/Kyoto, it’s a bum deal. Just beware of it, because honestly, having the shinkansen didn’t make the tour we took any more expensive than other comparable tours, so yeah. Caution.
• WATCH OUT FOR THE MICROTRANSACTIONS.
  MAJOR point here that I’d like to warn you about. There were many, MANY tours that offered so much… but you had to pay for all the entry fees yourself, or you had to pay for more than half of your meals yourself, or… you get the idea.
  I STILL don’t get how these ‘microtransaction’ tours were as expensive, or more expensive, than the tour we took, and yet, all we had to pay for out of pocket was 2 dinners during ‘free times,’ shopping, snacks, and whatever you decided to go see in your free time.
  There were seriously other tours that expected you to pay for over half of the items on their itinerary even after paying for the cost of the tour. If you decided not to pay or go see them, okay, you can stay at the hotel or wander around for free time. This would be fine if they were cheaper, but there were some that were nearly $1,000USD more than the tour we went with.
  I fully realized exactly how lucky we were when our tour guide actually REFUNDED our money for a meal that was initially supposed to be pre-arranged, but the itinerary had changed to give us more free time to do our shopping, meaning we were responsible for our own dinner.
  During the course of the tour, it was very easy to see where all that money we paid for for the tour was going.

Okay, so what tour group did I end up going with?
Super Value Tours
I know, I know, other people in my party also balked at the name since it sounds like a discount store brand, but the name is actually taken from the kanji, meaning “above and beyond the value” (that you pay for).

So, okay then. What are the cons of this particular tour?

• Not a ton of free time.
  Everything except the bars and izakayas in Japan closes around 8 pm. 9pm at the latest. With a super-packed itinerary, getting free time at 5:30pm, 6:00pm doesn’t give you a lot of time.
• Fancy-pants accommodations and fancy-pants pre-arranged meals.
  Like… really, REALLY fancy hotels and food. We were so tired out of fancy food at the end… like, just give me a curry katsu, not a 5-course banquet, please… It was great at the beginning, but when every meal has at least 3 courses, when are you going to get a chance to sneak out for some parfait or something? You’re too full!
  I think this was mostly a problem because, like I said, a lot of other comparable tours were more expensive than this one, so we weren’t expecting what we got – at all.
  Checking into the Imperial Hotel Tokyo made us wonder if we were allowed to be there. (We’re not fancy people.) For crying out loud, it’s the hotel they room foreign dignitaries in! We saw at least one US senator at breakfast, not even kidding.
• This is definitely not geared for anyone who has PLANS to see anything.
  With limited free time, if you’re someone who wants to see something off the itinerary, good luck. You better hustle. If you’re going to hit up the otaku spots on an anime/manga tour … yeah. That will be tough with this tour group.
  We had one family go off to Akihabara during their free time in Tokyo, and the guide was super helpful in ensuring they got the right taxis and/or trains to make it there and back safely, but… how much of Akihabara can you see in 1, maybe 2 hours? Not enough time for a maid/cat/owl/hedgehog/baby pig/shiba cafe and still see the sights, that’s for sure.
  That said, you can consider going a day early or leaving a day late to catch any specifics that the tour doesn’t cover. We did have some people did do that, mostly families who wanted to go to Hiroshima but didn’t want to add another full week with the other, extended tour that includes it in the itinerary.
• SUPER packed itinerary
  It was gogogogogo all the way until the airport back. Which is great because you saw a lot, but … they say the tour is for anyone age 2 to 90, but I beg to differ. Please be in reasonable shape for walking, and be aware that you’re on the move a lot if you have small children. Although we had bathroom breaks, there WERE 1-2 hour bus rides. Although… I was the only one who almost had an accident fml.

Okay, so I want to write more on the trip, and the next will be some things I observed about Tokyo’s culture, but… daijobu desu. I will properly write the story chapters first :D
I just really needed a break and some time to “free type” (without having to “put on a character’s mask”), but right now, at the end of this post, I feel like I’m getting back into the swing of things, so… next up will be rotation 1, yay.

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