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Preparing your trip to Japan

This entry is designed for those who have in mind to travel to Japan as the most important tell of planning we did for this trip. By this I add my support to those who are like me a couple of months consulting information to make good planning.
first to recommend travel to Japan for free rather than a package tour agency. We will much cheaper and also move by Japan on your own is pretty easy, yes perhaps must meet three requirements: to know a little English (not much), being somewhat familiar to move around a big city (that is, not be afraid to move to Madrid by metro and suburban, for example), and have some time and inclination to prepare the trip.
Basically our trip preparation consisted of the following steps:

• budget. Traveling to Japan is not as expensive as initially thought. The most expensive part is the plane ticket, so it is what we should be more attentive. The hotels are similarly priced Spain and Europe. As for the food is cheaper here, you can eat well for under 1000 yen (less than 10 euros). To this we must add the transport, if it is a bit more expensive than in Spain, a metro ticket can cost 160 yen and tickets to the sites (a normal entry to a temple for example can cost about 500 yen).
• Decision of departure and arrival dates and purchase tickets. This is the biggest expense of the trip, and that what he is doing with the longest time. Purchase can be done perfectly by the Internet, we did it with eDreams and fly with Emirates, a company highly recommended. There are no direct flights so necessarily there to stop over either in Rome, Paris or Dubai as we did. In this step we made a decision, and was purchasing a trip cancellation insurance. The ruling was in the contract then travel insurance / health, very little could include cancellation, so we had to pay a little more to hire the two insurance rather than one that includes everything.
• Planning where you are going to be every day, this is important and then decide where you are going to book the hotels. In our case we were ten days with the following planning: Day

1.2 and 3 .- Tokyo Nikko

Day 4 Day 5 .-
Kyoto Day .- 6 .- 7 .- Day
Nara and Hiroshima Mijayima

Kyoto Day 8 Day 9 .- to 10 .-

• Tokyo hotels booking. In Japan as well as Western-style hotels are the Japanese style or ryokanes (where you sleep on the floor on a futon). The hotel reservation can be made perfectly by the Internet, we did with Expedia , after I had to compare was the best prices, but also has good deals Agoda. In Tokyo we were in the hotel Villa Fontaine Ueno (the photo at right) and Nihombashi Villa, both highly recommended, good value money, well situated, clean and modern but rooms a bit small (although this in Tokyo I think it's normal). In Kyoto I tried to sleep on the floor and we were at the ryokan Kyoraku (the one pictured below), an option that we also recommend, as the rooms are clean, neat and big (considering it's Japan ) and the service is very friendly. The downside of the latter, perhaps the walls are paper, they listened to everything that happened in the other rooms.
• The last steps we were buying the Japan Rail Pass, a bonus of train that lets you use almost the entire railway network of the company JR, indispensable if you want to change cities, hiking, or even to move between different sites in Tokyo. We also hire a health insurance and buy advance tickets to Ghibli Museum. All this was bought from the online agency Portal Japan. Change
• money. Here we caught a little bull, and when we were asking at bank branches and there was no time to ask for change. So we think the Bank Santander is offering better terms, as long as you own client. Anyway, the move did not we went wrong, we changed upon arrival at the airport in Narita, and change we got was pretty good.
• finally say something about the travel guide, buy the Blue Guide, which disappointed me. While the basics are there (major sites, how to reach them, ...), not add much more, does not speak of the sites to be visited, no descriptions or stories about them ,.... For the next trip to the Lonely Planet is that everyone speaks well.
  

All this in the planning of travel, and I will tell you later how we was in the country Japan and what were our impressions.