Arriving in Tokyo (hotel, transport and prices)

Our arrival

Upon our arrival in Tokyo, we collected our suitcases and took the metro heading towards the centre, where we had reserved a hotel. Some say that the hotels in Japan are expensive but I disagree.

Tokyo city centre

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As far as prices are concerned, it is necessary (or was two years ago when I went there), to expect to pay between twenty-five and thirty euros for a bed in a youth hostel (this applies to single or double rooms, not dormitories). These are the same prices as in Belgium! And the food costs less. The only thing that is expensive is public transport.

Public transport

This is the most expensive thing. If you do want to travel around, I recommend buying a rail pass. This is a seven day ticket for tourists which costs, at the absolute minimum, 200 euros! But nonetheless, it's less expensive than buying individual tickets for every return journey you make. Plan your trip well so you can work out which days you want the rail pass for. For example, in my case, I stayed in Tokyo for eleven days, so I was without the rail pass for three days (I paid for my metro tickets with a three-day pass), which went by the name of Japan Rail Pass. We traveled with this during the seven days and then we went back to Tokyo and we did the same thing as we had done at the beginning of the trip. You can also get a rail pass for fourteen days or more.

The rail pass

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The first thing that shocked me on the metro were the colored signs everywhere. And everything is depicted through drawings, from telling you to watch animal's paws by the metro doors, to reminding you to give up your seat to older people... It's funny. There are also many colourful advertisements. And then there's the super serious, half asleep Japanese people...

Some photos I took of the metro

Something that was also funny, was that there were queues for women...it's worth knowing that the Japanese are really well-educated. There are white lines drawn on the ground in front of the subway gates, and people line up quietly without overflowing or overtaking. Women's behinds only get touched during peak times, which explains the special 'women's' queue!

It's very easy to get to grips with the metro as everything is written in English, and the map showing the lines are similar to what you'd find in Europe, except they're much larger and more crowded.

Accommodation

As for housing, I repeat that essentially, it is not much more expensive than Belgium if you're not seeking out the most luxurious hotels. The average place charges 30 euros a night. To find hostels and hotels, I used the Backpacker's Guide. It's important to have a guide! Petit Futé, Backpacker, Lonely Planet, whatever you want. Personally, I find that the best is the Backpacker's Guide. What people consider to be an 'average price', Lonely Planet considers to be 'cheap'. So the two guides don't have the same price ranges, nor the same places.

We have stayed in all sorts of accommodation. Backpacker's Hostel in Tokyo, highly recommended, individual bathrooms, clean single and double rooms with a TV for around twenty euros; a not-so-nice hostel which cost the same and was situated in the centre, where the room was minuscule, the Koyo Hostel; a traditional house in Kamakura with a dormitory for thirty euros; a smelly, labyrinthian house in Kyoto. And all these were always twenty-five/thirty euros!

So, I recommend the Backpacker's Hostel. Basically, for the same price as the Koyo Hostel in Ueno, we had: a double bed with a private bathroom, a large, bright room, activities organised for the guests (mainly for young people and backpackers, so, for me, the people there were generally interesting and friendly).

On the other hand, the Koyo Hostel was bad. The room was tiny (similar to a prison cell), and there wasn't even space to put our things. Essentially, the bed took up the whole room. Opposite the bed there was a mini shelf with two ledges, where we managed to store our bags. There were shared Turkish-style toilets as well as a shared shower cubicle. The word 'cubicle' is accurate here as it was just two metres squared in size, including the shower. In short, it was pretty bad, plus it was cold and humid. There was a mini cooking area but this is the case for all hostels.

Backpacker's Hostel

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