Going to Japan is not straightforward for Malaysians. Unlike many other countries that we have visited before, to enter into Japan we need to have entry visa beforehand. However, this is not as easy as it might sound. To get a visa we need to have all the necessary documentations and bookings confirmation ready, i.e. flight tickets, hotel booking, itinerary plan, company letter, money (of course) before the Japan Embassy will even consider our applications.
I know what you might be thinking, what if we were refused the visa? Wouldn't that be a bit risky if we have already incurred cost for the hotels booking, flights etc? Well, then you better consider a refundable ticket, like we did with Malaysia Airlines (flying from Kuala Lumpur). My experience for hotels booking was that they did not require any advanced payments at all!! (but there was disadvantage for this too!). So you can cancel the booking anytime as long as you inform them within the reasonable timescales.
There was no fee for the application and it took us a week to get back our passports, and of course with the visa. To our surprise they granted us a year visa but then limited us to 90 days stay at any one time. Well that isn't bad, and we got the excuse to go back, don't we?
A brief of our itinerary plan:
Day 1 Arrive at Kansai Airport (Osaka). Stay at Kyoto for 3 nights. Visit Nara.
Day 2 Visit Kyoto.
Day 3 Visit Kyoto.
Day 4 Visit Osaka, then stay in Hiroshima for 2 nights.
Day 5 Visit Miyajima island
Day 6 Visit Hiroshima, then stay in Nagoya for 2 nights.
Day 7 Visit Takayama
Day 8 Visit Gotemba Premium Outlet, stay in Hakone for 1 night
Day 9 Visit Hakone, then stay in Tokyo for 5 nights
Day 10 Visit Kamukara, then to Yokohama
Day 11 Visit Tokyo
Day 12 Visit Tokyo
Day 13 Visit Sanrio Puroland
Day 14 Fly back to Kualal Lumpur from Tokyo
At the time when we first looked at the exchange rate and did our budget, it was 1 Pound for 200 Yen. However Japanese Yen later became stronger and stronger and we had no choice but to buy 139 Yen for every 1 Pound. That's to say everything in Japan was going to be expensive!! This included the hotel payments, if we had paid first at the time of booking then I won't have spent so much!
One of the must-buy essentials when visiting Japan is the Japan Rail (JR) pass. It offers the most convenient and economical way of moving from one city to another in Japan, unless you only want to stay in one city for your entire trip. However this JR pass is only valid for trains that operated on JR lines including all shinkansen (bullet trains) except the fastest one - Nozomi. It comes in 7 days, 14 days or 21 days with option for green car (1st class) or ordinary car. To make it privilege to tourists, it can be purchased anywhere else except in Japan!
After much careful thought and detailed calculation, we decided to purchase the 7 days only instead of 14 days for the two week trip.
With the visa and JR pass in hands, we were ready to explore Japan....
Kansai Airport is a man-made island near Osaka. It can be seen clearly from the sky.
In order to use the JR pass, it needs to be exchanged and validated for a 'usable' one at JR ticketing office.
This was the train we boarded to reach our first destination - Kyoto.
Notice any changes?
If you look carefully, you will notice that some of the seats had changed position!! They can make all the seats facing the same directions, that is to say you will never worry about sitting on a train facing backward! This is something interesting and new to us, as our trains in UK can never do that!!
Wow... Japan really is advanced!
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