r/JapanTravelTips

Hello everyone. I’m a 33-year-old Black man planning a trip to Tokyo in early 2027. My brother and two friends were originally considering joining me, but they are no longer able to go, so I am now deciding whether I feel ready to travel alone.
I have visited Japan before, although it was back in the summer of 2014. I participated in a short study-abroad program at Tohoku University in Sendai with friends from my college Japanese-language club. I loved my time there, but it was very different from traveling independently. We had a structured schedule, organized activities, and guidance throughout the program, so I never had to plan or navigate the trip entirely by myself.

Over the past several years, I have felt as though I have lost some of the motivation and excitement I had during college. I have dreamed of visiting Tokyo and Akihabara for a long time because I am a major fan of anime, retro games, and Japanese pop culture. I hope this trip could help me reconnect with those interests and regain some sense of direction.
However, I have never traveled outside the United States alone. I recently attended Anime Expo 2026 by myself, and by the third day I became depressed after constantly seeing groups of friends and couples together. That experience made me wonder how I would handle spending more than a week alone in a foreign country.

At the same time, I have been experiencing tension at home with my mother and stepfather. Part of me feels that traveling alone could be a valuable test of my independence and help me determine whether I am ready to begin living on my own.

For additional context, I have Asperger’s syndrome, OCD, and severe depression. I am also planning to return to college to study computer science and pursue my childhood goal of becoming a video game developer. I hope visiting Tokyo might help rekindle the passion I once had for anime, video games, and Japanese culture.

Before the trip, I would also like to find a Japanese language-exchange partner so I can practice Japanese and make a genuine friend over the next six months. If we became comfortable with each other, it might be nice to meet for coffee or another public activity while I am in Tokyo. I would be open to romance if it developed naturally, but I do not want to place that expectation on anyone or make it the purpose of the trip.

I have also heard more discussion recently about overtourism and “foreigner fatigue” in Japan, partly because of disrespectful tourists and influencers. As a respectful visitor, should I be seriously concerned about how foreigners are currently viewed?

I would appreciate advice on the following:

Is Tokyo a reasonable destination for a first solo international trip?

How can someone who struggles with loneliness and depression prepare emotionally for solo travel?

Are there good ways to build social interaction into the trip without depending on strangers?

Should current concerns about overtourism or anti-foreigner sentiment affect my decision?

7/13/26 Edit: Hey everybody thank you so much for all your feedback. I didn’t expect this large amount of replies so I’m sorry to say that I haven’t been able to respond to everybody yet because I’ve been busy with work. When I have time, I’ll try to respond to everyone who commented when I get a chance. In the meantime, I want to say that I’ve been starting to research plane ticket and hotel prices. I plan for the trip to be around January 28 through February 6, 2027 with a budget of $5,000 (Including the plane ticket and hotels to book before the trip). I’ve also been listening to the following podcast for the past few weeks while I’ve been at work. Does anybody have any feedback on what else would be good to listen to or research?

I got back from three weeks in Japan last week, and I've got some opinions. Some might be useful. Some are oddly specific and probably only apply to me. Take whatever works for you and ignore the rest. Travel is personal, and this is just the stuff that I personally wish I had known before I went.

On being fat in Japan

• If you’re fat, I have excellent news! I’m 5’5” and 240 pounds and I fit in the airplanes, the Shinkansen, restaurant booths, and Donki aisles just fine. The internet had me convinced that I’d be physically incompatible with the country. Turns out Japan has seen a tourist before. I was even able to buy a few cute shirts at Punyus!

• Google Maps accessibility mode is great if stairs are your nemesis. Just know that you’re going on a side quest through three train stations, a department store basement, and Gollum’s lair to get there.

• I spent way too much effort trying to pack “Japanese aesthetic” outfits. Ma’am. I am a fat, middle-aged Midwestern woman. I am not fooling anyone. Despite the impressive accommodations woven into the infrastructure, I feel that most Japanese are not, in fact, blind.

• If a fat lady with crunchy knees can hike from Kurama to Kibune, you probably can too. Take the cable car, borrow the walking stick, buy the Pocari Sweat at the strategically placed mountain vending machine, sit on every bench, let the tiny ancient Japanese couple climbing with zero visible effort pass you like you’re standing still and pretend that you’re pausing because you’re in awe of the scenery when you’re actually just stopping to catch your breath. You’ll get there eventually.

• Hotel pajamas are a suggestion, not a guarantee. You can try them on anyway and laugh about it later.

• Tiny hotel bathrooms are fine. A nightly soak is highly recommended. I got a lot more relief with a bath bomb and a hot soak every night than foot patches, cooling pads, or anything from the emotional support pharmacy I packed. You’re going to fit in those deep tubs, even if you can’t get in and out gracefully. Luckily, it’s not a judged event, there are no style points, and no one is watching the replay. If possible, pick a hotel with a larger tub because it makes a big difference at 9:30 pm when your legs start filing formal complaints to HR.

• This goes for everyone, but especially those who are bigger: don’t treat every day like a highlight reel. Stagger your heavy walking days with lighter ones. Japan will absolutely allow you to overachieve yourself into a full system shutdown. We used an overnight trip to Hakone as a vacation from our vacation, because after three weeks, I needed black eggs, a boat ride where I emotionally (delusionally) joined the Straw Hats, hot springs, and the radical idea of doing less on purpose.

On Laundry

• If you’re moving hotels at all, pack light and plan to do laundry. We did a carry-on and a backpack each with the plan to buy a suitcase at the end, which worked flawlessly. We also bought suitcase in the middle. Yes, the suitcases further reproduced. No, I will not explain further.

• Don’t assume your hotel will have a laundry room – most of mine didn’t. Pay attention to the word after “laundry” in the hotel amenities list, because “service” and “room” mean very different things. Coin laundromats are everywhere, but after walking all day, another half mile feels like a personal attack.

• I cannot stress this further without raising my voice: if you’re going to wash your undies in the hotel sink, pack fast-dry fabrics. I thought period underwear was genius until I realized I may have to apply for residency just to allow enough time for those things to fully air dry.

On the Shinkansen

• The Shinkansen was bumpier than I expected. I had grand plans of journaling while romantically gazing at Mt. Fuji. Instead, I took a nap and drooled on myself. 10/10, would do again.

• Apparently seeing Doctor Yellow is lucky. We saw it twice, so I'm assuming this means I am contractually obligated return to Japan at some point in the future. I don’t make the rules.

• If you’re going to be at Himeji Station anyway, get there a little early and watch the trains. Shinkansen that aren't stopping absolutely YEET themselves through the middle tracks and it's both terrifying and deeply entertaining.

• Buying Shinkansen tickets last minute is a little chaotic. We traveled from late May to early June and often couldn’t get two seats together in regular cars for the next train out. Green car usually had availability, so we upgraded instead of dealing with logistics, but the trains come often enough that if you want to wait an hour or two, you should be able to save some money.

• The “sit on the right side” Mt. Fuji advice for Tokyo to Kyoto or Osaka is overrated unless the weather is actively cooperating, which it often is not. Fuji-san does not participate in scheduled appearances.

USJ

• Even if you've been to the one in Orlando, Universal Japan is worth it. Their Minions area is objectively better, and I don't even like Minions. The chocolate banana churro may have permanently altered my brain chemistry, and I will be chasing that high the rest of my life.

• Buy the Express Passes, but you’ll want to get them as soon as they are available if you want to ride all the Nintendo rides. The Mario Kart queue is long, and you’ll be concerned about making it to the other rides, but trust the times on your pass. The Japanese have scheduled this experience with a level of precision that suggests they are better at planning your day than you are.

• Do the things even if you don’t understand what’s happening. I walked into Detective Conan with zero context and had a great time. I have watched JJK, so I had a baseline understanding for that attraction, but I can also confirm that understanding the plot is optional. This also applies outside of USJ – I did an AoT attraction at Joypolis in Odaiba and a walkthrough of Myouryuki (the ninja temple) in Kanazawa where everything was in Japanese and I didn’t know exactly what was going on but still enjoyed the experience.

• You might not fit on all the rides. It’s not a big deal. As it turns out, everyone else is just trying to ride the rides and no one else cares about what you did or did not do. Also, they might give you a pity fast pass, and you can ride Jaws while waiting like, 1 minute less in the queue than the non-fast pass plebs.

The Golden Route

• This is just my personal set of values and not really a tip, but I made it a point to stop at a shrine to say a small prayer for safe travel and to be a good guest in each area. It was a good reminder to myself and to my son that we are not the main characters here and that Japan is not a theme park built for our convenience.

• The Osaka Amazing pass was worth it, but you need to book early if you hope to do a Dotonbori River Cruise. Otherwise, you’ll be standing there on Ebisu Bridge watching other people live your itinerary. The good news: disrupted plans hurt less when your mouth is on fire from takoyaki.

• Let the Takoyaki cool down.

• Umeda sky was neat, but I actually liked the basement food alley more. It’s designed like a Taisho/Showa-era streetscape, which is genuinely cool. Also very effective at convincing you that you are hungry and definitely need to get dinner and snacks. It’s architecture as a trap. A highly detailed, delicious trap.

• The Figure Museum near Osaka Castle was surprisingly fun if you already have the Amazing Pass. I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way for it, but it lives in the basement of the building full of gift shops and restaurants, which is exactly where I found myself financially compromised by small plastic castles I did not need but accepted without resistance.

• Especially in Kyoto: Taxis >> standing in forever-long bus lines. If you’re solo and don’t mind being packed on a bus, sure, it’s cheaper.  But traveling with a partner or family? That taxi becomes less of a luxury and more of a strategic investment in your future sanity.

• Look, you’re a tourist. It’s okay to do touristy things. The Samurai experience in Kyoto, the Sumo show in Asakusa, and teamLabs Borderless were all genuine highlights for me. I booked them thinking my 16-year-old would enjoy them, which he did, but so did I, which is slightly inconvenient because it means I can’t pretend any of it was purely for parenting reasons.

• Things get canceled sometimes. We went to Arashiyama on what I thought was a perfect-weather day and still had the Hozugawa boat ride canceled due to wind conditions. It was disappointing, but it turned into a nice, slow, meandering day we didn’t know we needed. Not everything needs to be optimized. Also, I liked the little hair shrine, which is a sentence I did not expect to type.

• Nara deer are not all created equal. The ones near the entrance were aggressively unionized and immediately tried to body me for crackers. After Todai-ji, we walked over to Kasuga Taisha, and the deer along the way were much more chill. Some were just vibing next to me. One even licked me like I was a Disney princess with questionable boundaries. We eventually worked out a system of tactical deer diplomacy: crush a few deer crackers, throw them on the ground for the immediate swarm, and retreat to feed the calmer deer.

Getting off the Golden Route

• With an itinerary that prioritized Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo, my favorite places were Himeji, Fukui and Kanazawa. On my next trip, these are getting promoted from side quests to main story arcs.

• If you want to get off the Golden Route (highly recommended), you might need to rent a car. Toyota Rent-a-car was easy to use. Get insurance. It’s like 1000 yen and as someone who had an unfortunate (and literal) run-in with a house, I can assure you it’s worth it for the emotional support alone.

• Fukui to Katsuyama via car rental is the correct choice. It’s easy driving. Katsuyama is fairly rural, but there’s a huge temple, a castle that we could see from our hotel room, and apparently a moss-covered shrine in the woods that the internet assures me looks exactly like it’s out of a Studio Ghibli film. We got in too late to visit these, which I both regret and accept as part of the experience. If I could steal a day from Kyoto, I’d spend it here instead.

• The Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum is excellent. My kid speed-ran it, so I didn’t spend nearly as much time here as I would have liked, but it’s genuinely one of the best museums I’ve visited. Also, the bus stop gift shop and restaurant are less crowded, and the food is dinosaur-themed in a way that is both completely unnecessary and absolutely delightful. I got a tiny shovel to excavate pudding into my mouth, and I think that’s the kind of innovation we should be funding.  

• Kanazawa is, like, really pretty.

• Kanazawa has the best Pokémon Center.

• Hotel Kanazawa was ridiculously affordable, spacious, and right next to the station.

• The Kanazawa loop buses take you basically everywhere a tourist would want to go.

• Kanazawa has an entire geisha district and an entire samurai district.

• Kanazawa is kind of like Kyoto without the crowds.

• I don’t know how else to explain this to you. Go to Kanazawa.

On Umbrellas

• Apparently, they need their own section.

• You probably don’t need to buy a plastic konbini umbrella because your hotel almost certainly has a stockpile of abandoned ones from other tourists who also thought, “This will fit in my suitcase.”

• UV umbrellas are genius and America is embarrassingly behind on this technology.  I will die on this hill, in the shade and protected from the UV rays.

• If you want a daily carry umbrella, the travel umbrella from Mont-bell folds down to basically nothing.

• There’s a shop at Nishiki Market that sells beautiful umbrellas, and it will, simply by existing, convince you that you need another umbrella, despite the fact that you already bought one and definitely do not need another umbrella. I bought two.

• If your son begs you for a samurai sword umbrella, make sure it’s packed in the checked luggage and not the carryon backpack on the way home, because even though it is clearly, visibly, functionally an umbrella, it will be confiscated by airport security. You will also discover this exact umbrella apparently existed as a limited-time event and cannot be purchased anywhere on the internet at any price.

And another thing -

• Japanese hotel pillows are like someone took a normal pillow and filled half of it with beans. I hated them for three nights and then somehow Stockholm Syndromed myself into loving them. If negotiations break down, you can probably ask the front desk for a different pillow.

• Jet lag to Japan is barely a problem, probably because you wake up early, ready to seize the day, or at least the can of coffee from a konbini because that’s all that’s open at that time of morning. Coming home has been a different story. I think the most obvious solution is to go back to Japan.

• Japanese eggs are sweeter than American eggs. I'm not explaining this well, but I need someone to validate me.

• Apple juice in Japan is absurdly good. I don’t know what they’re doing with their juice extracting technology, but it tastes like someone liquified the Platonic ideal of an apple. I’ve thought about this juice nonstop since I’ve been back. I’m thinking about it now.

• McDonald’s melon soda floats absolutely slap and are an elite budget rest stop, especially if you need to sit down, cool off, and pretend you’re not about to walk another three miles.

• Disneyland/Disney stores had exactly zero Kingdom Hearts merch, so we made a pilgrimage to the Square Enix Garden Store. If you’re into Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, or DragonQuest, just accept that your bank account is about to take critical damage.  They had a Chrono Trigger shirt. Like – a Chrono Trigger shirt. Yes, I bought it.

• Some foods are there to be photographed. Some are there to be eaten. The ones that are both are very rare.

• The Onitsuka Tiger at PARCO in Ikebukuro was practically empty. No lines, no chaos, no fighting for shoe sizes. We both got a pair. They didn’t have the customization thingy though, so if that’s part of your dream, you’ll have to stand in line with the rest of the tourists.

• Nakano Broadway is incredible. Book Off is incredible. Apparently, I enjoy the feeling of rummaging through shelves like a raccoon that discovered it had disposable income.

• The only way to get “don don don donkiiiiii” out of your head is a partial lobotomy. Just accept the earworm as yet another souvenir.

If you just read the entire list, why?

Anyway, none of this is definitive travel advice. I'm sure that I've missed things. I probably got some things wrong. I'll almost certainly change my mind after the next trip.

I hope at least one of these helps someone else have a great time. Japan was incredible, and I can't wait to go back. It's been less than a week, and I've already checked for any cheap flights. There were not.

im going to japan in late august/early september (i know.. :') ) and i get hot REALLY easily. like 73 degrees F with slight humidity. i live in the dry part of southern california so im not used to the humidity. i’ve done some research but i always hear mixed reviews, so im in deperate need for your BEST portable fan recs because i dont think ill survive the trip without one!!