Planning the Best Japan Trip Ever with Brandon Presser

00:00:00.000 | Yeah. I think a lot of people, like you mentioned, are prone to doing a really expensive

00:00:05.520 | sushi experience. Usually that will be omakase. I think a lot of us have heard the word omakase.

00:00:12.320 | Really what that means is whatever you want. It's actually what you say to the chef.

00:00:18.560 | Omakase, at your pleasure. What I would recommend doing before indulging in that is

00:00:29.840 | going to a kaiten sushi, going to a really inexpensive rotating sushi restaurant where

00:00:36.800 | they'll have a little conveyor belt and different things are going to come in front of you. It's

00:00:42.320 | going to be very inexpensive. Take the opportunity to try a few things before you go to the higher

00:00:50.720 | end restaurant because as things go higher end, it verges into delicacy territory where you are

00:00:57.760 | going to get a lot of fish sperm or raw octopus, things that have textures that aren't familiar to

00:01:09.920 | the Western palate. I would exercise your palate before you go because you don't want to not eat

00:01:16.320 | something in front of the chef that is cooking right in front of you at his "pleasure".

00:01:21.280 | Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life,

00:01:26.160 | money, and travel. If you're new here, I'm your host, Chris Hutchins. One of the areas I love

00:01:31.040 | optimizing the most is travel. I've been to 60 plus countries and on every trip, I love meeting

00:01:35.920 | locals, trying to understand their culture, having authentic experiences, and most of all, I love

00:01:40.880 | finding a way to eat all the best foods a place has to offer. Hands down, one of my favorite travel

00:01:46.320 | destinations in the world is Japan. I wanted to do another travel episode on just traveling there.

00:01:51.680 | While I've been there four times, there is no one better to join me than my previous guest,

00:01:56.000 | Brandon Presser, who's been there every year for the past 20 years except 2021,

00:02:01.040 | including spending a month there last November. He's also lived there twice and he's written

00:02:05.600 | three books on the country. He is a true expert on Japan, but he's also been to over 100 countries

00:02:11.760 | and written well over 50 guidebooks, so he is actually an all-around travel pro as well.

00:02:16.880 | We're going to talk about why we both love the country so much, what makes it worth a visit,

00:02:21.040 | where you should go, what you should see and do, and my favorite, all the incredible foods you

00:02:25.600 | should be trying and our favorite spots to eat them. I hope that by the time you finish this

00:02:30.000 | episode, whether you've never been to Japan, have a trip on the horizon, or have been before,

00:02:34.720 | you're going to be inspired to go there soon and have a ton of amazing new things

00:02:38.320 | to check out when you get there. So let's get into it right after this.

00:02:41.840 | Brandon, thank you so much for being here a second time.

00:02:50.640 | Thank you so much for having me.

00:02:52.480 | You've traveled to so many countries. What is it about Japan that keeps bringing you back?

00:02:57.600 | So the thing about Japan for me is that the more time you spend there,

00:03:02.160 | the more you realize you don't know the destination that well. And every time I go

00:03:08.240 | back, there's always a new thing to explore. There's always a theme that needs unpacking.

00:03:14.240 | And it's one of those places that it's not like New York where you get to live there for 10 years

00:03:20.560 | and then you get to say you're a New Yorker. The more time you spend, the more you're like, "Wow,

00:03:26.400 | I'm not from here." If that makes any sense.

00:03:29.840 | This is crazy. This is coming from someone who's lived there twice and been there

00:03:33.040 | well over a dozen times. So that's wild. What do you think? What is so different about Japan?

00:03:39.040 | I've heard a lot of people call Japan a Galapagos economy. And what that essentially means is that

00:03:49.440 | it's a country that has modernized and evolved away from the rest of the world. A lot of the

00:03:57.040 | systems that are in place, a lot of the ways that we perceive the modern world are just slightly

00:04:04.000 | alternate universes. I think that's what makes Japan so interesting and special.

00:04:08.160 | Can you give some examples?

00:04:09.840 | Absolutely. I think one of the most important things to note about Japan and Japanese culture

00:04:16.960 | is that they have this proclivity for taking something from another country and then improving

00:04:23.760 | upon it. Ramen is the best example of that. It's a Chinese dish, became really popular after World

00:04:30.800 | War II, was called Chinese noodles. Then the recipe started to change and started to evolve.

00:04:35.840 | Then it became ramen, which we all conceive of as distinctly Japanese. The other example is

00:04:43.760 | toilets brought by the West. And as many of us know, they now can sing you happy birthday while

00:04:51.680 | you're using them and have all sorts of water features. I have a Japanese. We've talked about

00:04:58.880 | how to get a deal on a Japanese toilet on this show before. So and I totally agree. It's funny.

00:05:05.040 | I've been to Japan a few times and people are like, oh, you got to check out this place for

00:05:08.960 | pizza. And I'm like, why would I get pizza in Japan? You're all the way. It seems crazy. It's

00:05:13.680 | like, no, no, no, because Japan takes everything and tries to make the best possible version you

00:05:18.800 | can of it. So there is a pizza place in Pizzeria Napoletana Daiyuki in, I think, Kyoto. And the

00:05:27.600 | person who started it went to Italy, trained, brought back everything and has tried to master

00:05:34.480 | the pizza in every way possible. And the same is true about coffee. And like the list goes on

00:05:39.440 | forever. Whenever my wife and I come back, we're like, I feel like we just came back from the

00:05:44.880 | future, like in this world where everything was improved and thought of in a rational and logical

00:05:50.560 | way. So I am so excited to dig in here. I'm so excited to go back to Japan. You know, you are

00:05:56.640 | one of the people I know who's been since it reopened. What was it like in a kind of post

00:06:02.320 | pandemic world? Well, much in the way that Japan always feels like this wonderful trip to the

00:06:07.920 | future. And I often, when I return from Japan, have sort of reverse culture shock. When I get

00:06:13.360 | back to the U.S., I'm like, oh, this country is so disappointing relative to Japan. What was

00:06:19.040 | interesting about my trip to Japan this time was it felt a little bit like a visit to the recent

00:06:27.120 | past. Their relationship with COVID has been very different than in the U.S. Everyone is still

00:06:35.760 | masking, even outdoors, even on a hike. I would pass people who are still wearing their masks

00:06:41.680 | outside. And we can kind of dig into why that is and how certain cultural things kind of inform

00:06:49.360 | that. But there is a lot of COVID fear. When I was there, a lot of people asked me,

00:06:53.920 | is this your first trip out of America since the pandemic? And, you know, I think Japan was

00:07:00.800 | maybe my 15th country since we've, you know, torn away the veil of the pandemic.

00:07:09.040 | So, in that sense, it was this odd revisiting of the trauma of the pandemic and the fear.

00:07:20.160 | But what's also really interesting about Japan is we're now post-Olympics. That is something to

00:07:28.160 | really consider, as well, because it was sort of the Olympics that never happened. There were high

00:07:35.360 | hopes for the Games the last time that Japan had the Olympics was in 1964. That was really fascinating

00:07:44.080 | because it was the first Olympic Games that were televised around the world. It was to signal that

00:07:48.960 | Japan was this fresh, newly modern country, post-World War II, a lot of really interesting

00:07:56.800 | modern architecture happening as the backdrop. So, they were kind of hoping to replicate that magic,

00:08:02.160 | and of course, that never happened. But how the Olympics actually are informing

00:08:07.360 | Japan is we're seeing a lot of little Western tweaks. English is a lot better than it was a

00:08:15.280 | few years ago, and we're also seeing much more credit card use than we did before. Little things

00:08:21.520 | like that. Things are open. You are able to go see stuff, do stuff, eat stuff, drink stuff. So,

00:08:26.880 | just because, you know, there might be a feel like you're back in the past, I would say was still,

00:08:33.600 | you know, you could go to Japan right now and have an amazing experience and do all the things

00:08:37.360 | you'd done before. Absolutely. I highly recommend it. If you're okay still wearing a mask, out of

00:08:42.400 | courtesy, I would get on the plane tomorrow. You're going to have an absolutely incredible

00:08:48.240 | experience. Everyone's excited for people to be coming back. Restaurants are fully operational.

00:08:54.880 | If you saw in the news a lot of travel articles that were like, "Go before the crowds! Get back

00:09:00.160 | to Japan before the crowds!" That's fake news. The crowds are back in full force. Chinese

00:09:07.600 | tourism are going to start heading back now as well. Even without the Chinese tourists who make

00:09:14.560 | up about 40% to 50% of the tourism in Japan, everything was rammed. You know, all the favorite

00:09:20.400 | temples in Kyoto were packed with people. You absolutely needed reservations at popular

00:09:26.880 | restaurants. So, everything's back in full swing. Well, let's talk about that trip. When I did my

00:09:32.000 | first episode to London, I just picked a city. I was like, "Oh, that's pretty easy. I'm getting a

00:09:37.200 | little ambitious here. We're going to talk about an entire country." So, instead of trying to go

00:09:41.760 | through every destination in the country, that would be impossible. We would have to record for

00:09:45.440 | the next week, or based on your experience, maybe for the next 20 years. Let's say someone's

00:09:51.120 | thinking about how to take that first trip for one or two weeks. What would you give them the

00:09:57.200 | advice of how to go, where to go, all that? I would think about trip planning to Japan

00:10:02.400 | the way that I think about trip planning to every destination. Think of your trip as a meal. Think

00:10:07.920 | about you have your appetizer, your main course, and your dessert. The appetizer is like you're

00:10:13.520 | getting into the vibe of the destination. You're doing a little sampling, maybe tasting a few

00:10:18.400 | things. Really, you're getting over the jet lag. By the time you transition to the main course,

00:10:24.800 | that's the real showstopper. That's the meat. The dessert is going to be the thing where you

00:10:34.320 | really treat yourself. Save that really fun, cool thing until the end. I'm not someone who

00:10:43.840 | suffers from FOMO, but I am crippled by the optimizer's dilemma. I want to make sure that

00:10:52.080 | I've had the best trip possible for me. Japan is one of those places where there's just so many

00:10:58.400 | different variations on the theme. I think the two places that you absolutely have to hit

00:11:05.280 | are Tokyo and Kyoto. Then, you can mix and match a variety of secondary destinations based on your

00:11:14.240 | personal interest. I wouldn't be a slave to, "Well, everyone else is going here," or "Everyone

00:11:20.640 | else is going there." Think critically about what is interesting to you about Japan.

00:11:27.760 | We're going to go through some of those different destinations and themes and pick a mix from there,

00:11:34.240 | and then end with your splurge, where you're really soaking in maybe a traditional inn, a ryokan,

00:11:42.560 | and having that quintessential Japanese hospitality experience where you're not

00:11:49.360 | leaving the hotel, but just basking in that incredible design, food, everything that we

00:11:56.480 | know from the country. Hospitality.

00:11:57.920 | That omotenashi. Yeah.

00:12:00.000 | Just high level, what are a few of those places? We'll talk details about them, but just to give

00:12:07.680 | people an idea of where we might go in this conversation outside of Tokyo and Kyoto that

00:12:11.920 | you'd put on the list. Maybe even say, "Oh, if you're this kind of person, it might be this,"

00:12:16.160 | or, "If you're looking for this."

00:12:18.000 | Yeah. I would think that you would want to get four elements on your trip.

00:12:21.440 | You want to do new, old, mountain, sea. Those are the four things that I think that you should

00:12:29.680 | check off your list for every trip to Japan, whether it's your first or whether it's your

00:12:36.080 | fourth. Old and new can be in different cities. They are always looking ahead into the future,

00:12:46.560 | while also cherishing their cultural and historical relics. Then you need to remember

00:12:53.600 | that Japan is on the Pacific Ring of Fire. There are still active volcanoes. The country is

00:13:01.120 | incredibly hilly, mountainous, and then you have these beautiful sea moments, bays, lakes.

00:13:10.880 | Putting that all together is just perfect.

00:13:15.040 | Are there specific places you're like, "We'll get to them, but here's a cool place,

00:13:19.120 | there's a cool place," to just get people excited?

00:13:22.240 | Well, think of Japan as having four major islands. Tokyo and Kyoto are on the main island,

00:13:31.280 | Honshu. I would absolutely add one of the other islands to your itinerary. Kyushu in the south,

00:13:39.280 | you're getting active volcanoes. You're getting onsen culture, this hot spring culture.

00:13:44.800 | This is a really hot emerging destination that I absolutely recommend. I can give you some

00:13:49.920 | specifics a little later on. Shikoku is the quietest of the four. These are small villages,

00:13:58.000 | a lot of farming. That's where you're going to really have that rural experience where you can

00:14:04.720 | go stay with a family and really embed in the culture in a very different, humble way.

00:14:10.800 | And then you have Hokkaido in the north. If you think of Japan as a lowercase J,

00:14:15.360 | Hokkaido is the dot at the top. That is really famous internationally as a skiing destination.

00:14:23.440 | I would challenge you to consider it as just a beautiful, natural destination and a place that's

00:14:29.200 | really worth going even in the summer for those mountains on steroids, these huge expanses of

00:14:35.920 | wilderness, but still with that Japanese sensibility. I love it. Okay, we're going

00:14:41.360 | to get to a lot of this. I'm very sad that I don't have a Japan trip on the horizon.

00:14:45.600 | Best times, is there a time you think people should be planning their trip to Japan?

00:14:51.440 | Yeah, that's a great question. I like to avoid the summer. That is not necessarily because that's

00:15:00.000 | when you have the most crowds, but surely a lot of people on their summer holidays are going to

00:15:04.160 | end up in Japan. But it is desperately humid. When I used to live in Japan and I worked,

00:15:10.480 | my boss used to make me keep clothes at work so that after I would take the metro to the office,

00:15:19.440 | I would have fresh clothes to change into because I would inevitably be sweaty.

00:15:23.920 | July and August are upsettingly hot and humid. And so much of Japan, even though you're thinking

00:15:32.400 | about taking trains and all of this, so much is exploring by walking. So, you want to be

00:15:37.760 | comfortable. Obviously, there's cherry blossom season that's world famous, and you're going to

00:15:42.000 | get all of the crowds. Is it worth the hype? Absolutely. It is totally stunning. There are

00:15:48.560 | cherry blossoms all over the country. You don't necessarily need to be in Tokyo or Kyoto to see

00:15:52.720 | them. My favorite time to go is in the fall. Because in the way that cherry blossom season

00:15:58.240 | is revered, so is the fall. And Koyo, as it's called, leaf peeping. So, you get these beautiful

00:16:04.800 | red Japanese maples. I think November for me is my favorite time to visit.

00:16:10.640 | Yeah. We went in December with my family right before the 2019, right before COVID came. And

00:16:17.440 | it was awesome because it wasn't that crowded, but it's not that cold. We didn't go to Hokkaido,

00:16:23.760 | it would have been cold. But in most of the rest of the country, it's not unbearably cold. So,

00:16:29.520 | it was a little cheaper because people aren't traveling in cold cities as much. But that was

00:16:35.120 | another... I had a great time. It was a little easier to get into things. It wasn't that crowded.

00:16:39.600 | Any other high-level logistics? Do you think people need a guide?

00:16:44.560 | Someone wrote to me and I'll ask you and share my opinion. But they're like,

00:16:49.120 | "Should they be nervous if they only speak English?" Anything like that?

00:16:53.920 | I think that the English has massively improved over the last 10 years, especially with the

00:17:01.120 | anticipated nudge of the Olympics. There were a lot of people that were taking English classes,

00:17:05.200 | and that has really changed. Does it compare to other countries? No. I think that there's still

00:17:12.960 | a lack of English compared to a place like Thailand, say. But I think you are going to

00:17:20.240 | be fine going around on your own. I think experiencing at least parts of your trip

00:17:26.800 | on your own is hugely rewarding, much more rewarding than in a lot of other destinations,

00:17:33.040 | simply because the quality of everything is so high that it's a destination that really lends

00:17:38.640 | itself to discovery. Walking into a random restaurant, it'll probably be pretty darn good.

00:17:46.640 | We've done Japan four times. I speak three words of Japanese. We had no guides ever any of those

00:17:54.880 | times. I typically tell people, "Look, you might need to speak a little slower. You might need to

00:17:59.840 | point. You might need to just accept that you'd just be surprised." But I don't think there's

00:18:04.800 | a country in the world that I've found that you can't go to because you don't speak the language.

00:18:09.520 | So I don't think that should be a barrier for anyone. But I've gotten a bunch of emails asking

00:18:13.680 | if it is, so I wanted to make sure we cover it. And last, any tips you have since you've

00:18:19.040 | been there so many times to save money on setting everything up in advance?

00:18:22.800 | Well, there's two things that I always think about when I'm planning a trip

00:18:27.520 | to Japan. I think we all want to do a bit of pre-arrival research for some of our specifics.

00:18:36.080 | It's a country that is very crowded. It's a country that's getting a lot of tourists,

00:18:40.800 | so you do want to plan a little bit in advance as far as what you're going to eat,

00:18:44.720 | where you're going to stay. One of the things that's very culturally different than Japan and

00:18:50.640 | the West is rating things. Giving stars on Google or on Yelp or things like that. In our culture,

00:19:03.040 | we're very hyperbolic. We have a nice experience, we give it a five. We have a bad experience,

00:19:07.920 | we give it a one. Everything always ends up netting out to be like a 4.2 or something like

00:19:15.040 | that at a place. In Japan, you have a nice experience, you give it a three. What can be

00:19:22.080 | really confusing at the onset is someone could tell you, "Oh my god, I love this restaurant.

00:19:26.160 | It's so great and cool." And you go on to Google to see the review that has been given and its

00:19:31.840 | average is like a 3.6. And you're like, "What? I would never eat at a place that's a 3.6."

00:19:37.440 | Well, in Japan, 3.6 is excellent. And in the food category, I want to send you right away

00:19:48.720 | to Tabalog. It's a website that is their Yelp, but it's taken very seriously. People use it

00:19:57.360 | prolifically. And with your translator button on, you can navigate it without any problems.

00:20:03.040 | And you can search by type of food, and you can search by destination, and really make some

00:20:09.120 | informed decisions bearing in mind that really stellar restaurants are going to have like a 3.8

00:20:16.080 | or a 3.7. And then, you can also use the rating to gauge where Japanese people are going and where

00:20:24.160 | tourists are going. And this goes for other things like hotels and sites and bars. If it has a low

00:20:30.560 | score, you know Japanese people are going there. If it has an inflated score, you know that it's

00:20:35.520 | more frequented by foreigners. You find a place on Google Maps,

00:20:39.120 | it's like 4.9. You're like, "Steer clear. There's no way I got here."

00:20:42.720 | Exactly. Don't go here. Only Americans are going there.

00:20:47.280 | Yeah. Oh, that's so funny.

00:20:48.880 | What about other things about the culture that people might want to know about going there? How

00:20:53.120 | would you describe Japanese people and the culture and things people should be aware of?

00:20:57.360 | I want to take a beat to talk about how we would relate to Japanese culture. A lot of people talk

00:21:03.520 | about how the Japanese hospitality is like no other, and there's this notion of emotinashi,

00:21:10.560 | which is service from the heart. I hear that buzzword a lot in luxury travel when I work with

00:21:17.600 | different hotels all over the world. They want to telegraph that they have this elevated sense

00:21:22.240 | of hospitality. What you need to understand about Japanese culture is when you engage

00:21:28.720 | with a product, a hospitality product, there's an unspoken social contract where you are also

00:21:37.200 | the deferential guest. The idea of the customer is always right doesn't really exist in Japanese

00:21:46.400 | culture. You are expected to be as well-behaved and as nice as the restaurant staff will be to you.

00:21:58.160 | That is kind of a product of Japan being a culture of shame rather than a culture of guilt.

00:22:10.000 | In the West, we think about Catholic guilt or Jewish guilt. I think we all have a pretty good

00:22:16.880 | sense of what that means if we have all experienced it. In Japan, it's more how

00:22:21.600 | everyone else is perceiving you. You are kind of internalizing your own actions and making choices

00:22:28.080 | about your behavior based on how everyone else perceives you rather than that moral compass

00:22:33.200 | inside telling you what's right or wrong. I know it's a bit lofty, but you are working as a guest

00:22:42.240 | in the way that staff are working to serve you. We were at a nice steakhouse in Tokyo once. I

00:22:50.000 | remember, I think my wife, but I could be wrong, one of us spilled our glass of wine on the table.

00:22:55.200 | We'd been in Japan for a week and we had internalized this feeling you're describing.

00:23:00.640 | It was like, "Oh my gosh, should we just leave the restaurant? Can we even stay here?" We felt

00:23:05.840 | so horrible. Everyone was looking at us like, "How could you do that?" I feel like I know what

00:23:11.920 | you mean. Fortunately, we recovered. We apologized profusely and it was okay, but I have experienced

00:23:18.400 | that feeling and it's very different. Yeah. You don't want to be late. You don't

00:23:23.680 | want to be late to your reservation. You don't want to be late to meet your guide.

00:23:29.120 | That's part of the social contract as well. Also, you might find funny quirks where if you're

00:23:36.480 | staying at a luxury hotel and the staff wants to know what time you're going to have breakfast in

00:23:41.360 | the morning, you could say, "Oh, I don't know, 9am." But they might come back to you and say,

00:23:47.200 | "8.30 is better." Don't be surprised if they are going to really hold you to that social contract

00:23:56.080 | and tweak your experience, but it's all so that they can serve you better.

00:24:01.680 | They're suggesting 8.30 because at nine, it's crowded and you might not get the best table or

00:24:05.920 | your food might be slow or something like that. On the sense of punctuality, definitely don't

00:24:10.960 | be late to trains either. I can't remember the story, but it was like there was one train

00:24:16.240 | that left seconds late and they issued a national apology. I'm sure you know this story better than

00:24:23.840 | me, but things are not late. Yeah. When I lived in Japan, I was

00:24:28.720 | working there and going to the office on days when a train would be late, by more than 10 seconds,

00:24:38.640 | they would issue you a little white slip of paper, if you needed it, that you could bring to your boss

00:24:46.160 | saying, "This is the reason that I'm late. It is not my fault that I am late to work."

00:24:50.800 | Everything is extremely on time to the point where I've had tourists reach out to me,

00:24:57.760 | friends reach out to me at Tokyo Station wanting to get on the bullet train.

00:25:01.200 | They had bought tickets for their 9.30 bullet train to go to Kyoto, let's say.

00:25:07.520 | They're like, "I'll get to the train station 20 minutes before," but of course, Tokyo Station is

00:25:12.080 | one of the biggest stations in the world. It takes about 20 minutes to get to your train

00:25:16.720 | and they missed it. Last thing on the cultures,

00:25:20.640 | is it easy to meet people? I think one of my favorite things traveling is meeting locals.

00:25:25.920 | I find in Japan, either I'm doing it wrong or it's harder to do.

00:25:30.080 | It's extremely difficult. It's extremely difficult, again, because I don't want to

00:25:37.440 | oversimplify the nuance of cultures of shame versus cultures of guilt. There's certainly

00:25:42.560 | nothing that we need to unpack more than that when we're trying to cram in a whole

00:25:46.960 | travel guide in about an hour. But the idea is that because this social contract that you have

00:25:52.800 | with the people around you, it extends beyond hospitality. It's why everyone is so polite on

00:25:57.120 | the trains. It's why everyone walks on certain sides of the roads. It's why Tokyo is the biggest

00:26:02.880 | city in the world, but it feels more organized than any other city half its size. The social

00:26:11.280 | contract exists that you create this facade, this emote, where you have a side of yourself that you

00:26:19.200 | present to other people. Then you have a more personal side and a more personal aspect to your

00:26:25.920 | personality. Because there is this facade element, you are engaging with people in that manner.

00:26:33.280 | Is it a fake facade? No. Are they two-faced? No. This is a true aspect of your personality,

00:26:40.480 | but it's the presented aspect of your personality. It's hard to have that very American,

00:26:46.800 | "This is how I really feel about something. These are my real emotions." Americans like to tell you

00:26:54.400 | when they're mad, but they're screaming at you. It's like, "Yeah, I get it that you're mad because

00:27:00.000 | you're yelling." Whereas the Japanese generally are much more nuanced in that nature. It's an

00:27:08.000 | interesting moment where two cultures are touching that may feel limited or inauthentic, but it's

00:27:15.600 | just a different version of how we present ourselves. I imagine if you had a guide or you

00:27:21.840 | met someone that worked at your hotel and you're like, "Hey, do you want to grab a drink tonight

00:27:24.480 | after work?" Would that be very surprising or shocking and met with a no? How might you go

00:27:30.080 | about introducing yourself to a local so you could get to know them and spend time in a casual

00:27:35.760 | setting? One of the things that I've discovered is there's actually a lot of opportunities to

00:27:41.760 | engage with people in structured ways that could end up leading to a friendship. A lot of towns

00:27:48.320 | all over Japan, including Tokyo, have free tours that you can sign up for. Those tours are with

00:27:57.200 | young Japanese individuals who are motivated to take you around their neighborhood as an

00:28:03.520 | opportunity to practice their English or an opportunity to meet foreigners. There are a

00:28:09.520 | lot of different websites that offer this, and it's a great way to strike up a conversation

00:28:15.360 | with someone and use that tour opportunity to ask big questions because they are people that

00:28:23.200 | want to engage with you. You can use it less as, "Oh, I want to discover Shibuya in Tokyo and see

00:28:31.440 | cool things," but more as an opportunity to have that budding friendship opportunity. I would

00:28:38.160 | definitely try to do one of those. I love free walking tours. I think they're a great way to

00:28:44.000 | get your bearings, but especially in a culture where it's harder to meet someone just at a bar

00:28:47.840 | and strike up a conversation, I think it's a great recommendation. You mentioned a few things in

00:28:52.560 | Tokyo. I want to make sure we get to what to do. I think let's start here because I assume almost

00:28:57.760 | anyone going to Japan, especially on their first trip, will end up here. It's one of the most

00:29:02.720 | amazing cities in the world. How do you think about even trying to bring it all together and

00:29:09.040 | suggest people experience it? One of the funny things that I've noticed about Tokyo is when you

00:29:14.960 | ask people where they're going on holiday, when they're referring to a European destination,

00:29:19.520 | they usually refer to it by place, by city. "Oh, I'm going to Paris on holiday. I'm going to

00:29:26.480 | London." When people talk about going to this country, they say "Japan." They don't say "Tokyo"

00:29:33.280 | for some strange reason. I'm always trying to figure out why. I think it's because it's so far

00:29:39.360 | and it's a lot of people's first time they're going to do things beyond Tokyo, which makes

00:29:45.920 | perfect sense. But I really want you to spend more time in Tokyo than you think you need.

00:29:52.800 | A trip that's three nights in Tokyo and three nights in Kyoto doesn't make sense to me. It's

00:29:58.320 | a city that has 40 more times the population than Kyoto. It's a city that's four times

00:30:04.400 | physically bigger than Kyoto. Even just on pure numbers, you shouldn't weight Tokyo equal to

00:30:12.320 | anything else in the country. It's a place that has a Brooklyn. Sure, do I need to go check out

00:30:19.120 | the Brooklyn? Sure. But there's like 12 Brooklyns. It's just this infinitely large destination in all

00:30:29.840 | the best ways. It can be really tough to dig in. My first thing that I always tell people when

00:30:37.440 | they're trying to figure out the city is to Google Yamanote Line Google Maps. Don't go into Google

00:30:45.680 | Maps and Google it because it won't work, but just go to your Google search bar and type Yamanote

00:30:53.200 | Line Google Maps. There's a bunch of people that have drawn the Yamanote Line within Tokyo. That is

00:30:59.840 | a Japan rail line that makes a circle around the central part of Tokyo. Tokyo has 23 wards,

00:31:12.880 | which are kind of like boroughs. This line is a really good way to conceive of the city

00:31:19.440 | geographically. Now, think of that as a clock. Everything that when you hear that's like cool

00:31:28.240 | new neighborhood, street fashion, even going back to the early 2000s, Harajuku girls and all of that,

00:31:36.800 | that happens at around 7 to 9 o'clock on the clock. Then all of the older things like Shitamachi,

00:31:46.960 | all of the Sensoji Temple, a lot of the older touchpoints happen around 1 and 2 o'clock

00:31:57.360 | on the clock. Then you have the big, big stations like Shinjuku is at 9 o'clock,

00:32:05.760 | Ginza, which has Tokyo Station just north of it, also a major hub. That's at like 3 o'clock.

00:32:13.440 | That's a good place to start thinking geographically about the city.

00:32:17.760 | Also, I will say, if you don't look at the Yamanote Line and you look at the entire subway

00:32:23.120 | map, it's just like a sensory overload. It's very hard to understand. There are multiple companies

00:32:29.840 | operating different rail lines in the city. In some cities, I'm like, "Oh, look at the

00:32:34.480 | subway map. It's a good way to orient yourself." In Japan, I love the recommendation of just

00:32:39.440 | starting with the Yamanote Line because otherwise it could be pretty overwhelming.

00:32:43.360 | Totally. It really looks like fallen confetti in a way. It's all different colors.

00:32:49.600 | What's curious about it is that unlike other cities, it is built from a few different companies.

00:32:56.400 | So you have some municipal lines, the Tokyo Metro line, then you have a second metro line,

00:33:03.200 | then you have suburban lines that were built from companies like a Sears or a Macy's.

00:33:10.000 | Strangely, they share names with a lot of the department stores in Tokyo. You're going to use

00:33:18.080 | one card to tap through many turnstiles if you're going to go on a long trip all the way through

00:33:25.600 | the city. 20 years ago, you used to have to get tickets for each one, which was an absolute

00:33:31.360 | nightmare. Yeah. So now, I believe it's still just the Suica card. You used to have to get

00:33:36.400 | a physical one. Since we won't go too much into travel logistics because it's pretty straightforward

00:33:40.880 | and the internet is full of information, I will just add that you can now get your Suica card on

00:33:45.280 | your iPhone or your phone in a digital wallet and you don't even need the physical card.

00:33:49.920 | And you can reload it right there. It's super easy. I will say if you're on a budget,

00:33:55.120 | it is worth paying attention because I think it still is true. Correct me if I'm wrong,

00:33:59.440 | that if you transfer from the Toyosu line to the JR line, you're going to pay multiple fares.

00:34:06.240 | So it is worth... When you do a Google Maps search from A to B, it'll tell you how to get

00:34:11.200 | there and show you the prices. And there might be a fast route, and there might be a cheap route,

00:34:15.680 | and they might be different because changing different lines may be on different companies

00:34:21.920 | and have multiple fares. That's a really good point. It's something that I think about when

00:34:26.480 | I'm there as well. Yeah, if you're really focused on your budget and you're traveling, say, from the

00:34:30.960 | central part of the city to Shimokitazawa, which is a really trendy sort of perennially cool

00:34:38.160 | neighborhood, if you get off one station before Shimokitazawa at Yoyogi-Oehara, you save about

00:34:47.760 | two-thirds of the fare. Yeah. And Google Maps is pretty good as a... I don't know if there's a

00:34:53.600 | better app, but to find... Train from point A to point B, I believe it also tells you the fares

00:34:59.120 | and everything. So that's what we use. So we're still in Tokyo. I don't even know how we possibly

00:35:05.840 | get through all this, but I would love to leave people with some suggestions in the buckets of

00:35:10.960 | things to see and do, things to eat, maybe some nightlife. Any thoughts on how we even start to

00:35:17.280 | make a dent here? Yeah. So when you look at the subway map, it's just an "Oh my god, I don't know

00:35:23.520 | how to deal with this. This city must be so massive." You can walk through a lot of the city

00:35:29.840 | and don't be allergic to walking. What I love to do on my first day back in Japan

00:35:35.440 | is a triangle from Omotesando to Harajuku, and then down to Shibuya and back again. You can do

00:35:45.280 | that triangle. And that's a really fun day. You can take it super slow. And what you're getting

00:35:52.560 | in that area is a lot of the key touch points of the city. You're getting a lot of the sort of

00:36:00.480 | rodeo drive shopping. Shopping in Japan, especially in Tokyo, is a social activity because there's

00:36:08.640 | such limited public space and people have such small apartments. Shopping is sort of a hanging

00:36:16.240 | out endeavor. This is a really major thoroughfare, Omotesando Dori, to do that. Off of that are

00:36:24.560 | little boutiques and barber shops and really cool things, those stores that we wish we all had in

00:36:31.840 | our hometowns. And then you go all the way to Harajuku, the kind of bombastic hip-hop meets

00:36:39.360 | little boat peep that still exists. And right beyond that is the Meiji Shrine, which is absolutely

00:36:47.600 | worth a visit. And then you kind of turn down and go to Shibuya. We've all seen on Lost in

00:36:53.280 | Translation or in other movies, the Shibuya Crossing, the busiest pedestrian crossing

00:36:59.280 | in the world. And then you can triangle your way back to Omotesando again.

00:37:06.160 | I love going to one specific restaurant. It is hugely popular with everyone. It is very well

00:37:14.960 | known. It is worth the hype. It's called Maisen. It's tonkotsu, so a breaded pork cutlet. It's

00:37:22.400 | 1,100 yen, which currently is about $7. For a full meal, you're going to have to wait in line.

00:37:30.160 | And it's in an old onsen, so an old bathhouse that's been refurbished. You could start with

00:37:41.360 | that. It's very close to Omotesando Station. And then spend the afternoon walking around or do the

00:37:46.720 | morning and end with lunch there. Bearing in mind that if you want to go into shops, they tend to

00:37:52.480 | open a little later than you would expect. So 11 o'clock, you'll have all the stores open.

00:37:58.640 | Yeah, I asked my wife. I was like, "What are some of your favorite tips?" And she's like,

00:38:01.680 | "Walk everywhere so that you burn enough calories that you can have four meals a day."

00:38:05.760 | Absolutely. And I think what's really fun is Tokyo is not an expensive city.

00:38:13.440 | Everyone talks about how it's so incredibly expensive. It's like New York or Paris.

00:38:18.640 | It is not expensive at all. The food is bizarrely inexpensive. Where you're going to get dinged is

00:38:24.240 | on accommodation. So if you want to avoid lines and you're really into the food, do a first lunch

00:38:34.480 | and a second lunch at weird times so that you don't have to wait in those lines. Do a 10.45

00:38:39.760 | first lunch and then a 2.45 second lunch. And that way, you'll keep things pretty efficient.

00:38:47.520 | I do that all the time. And I will say there are a lot of places,

00:38:51.280 | especially if you're going for ramen or something that's not a make a reservation kind of place,

00:38:56.480 | where you just wait in line. That's just the way it works.

00:38:58.880 | And the easier it is... You're not going to get tables, by the way, if you're going with a big

00:39:05.520 | group. A lot of these places, you're not going to sit down with six people at a lot of these

00:39:09.600 | small restaurants. And so you just line up. I remember it's like two people went in and

00:39:14.320 | ate together and then one person ate together. It might not be the most social meal when you're

00:39:18.960 | going to some of these small restaurants, but it will probably be one of the most delicious meals.

00:39:23.040 | And one of the other things to keep in mind, especially in Tokyo,

00:39:26.960 | is don't be allergic to a chain restaurant. If you Google a restaurant that had been recommended to

00:39:32.560 | you, like a ramen place or a gyoza place, and you see like, "Oh my God, they have six locations.

00:39:40.240 | I feel like I don't want to really do that." Don't be dissuaded by a chain. The chain is

00:39:46.480 | usually because hospitality spaces are so small. They can only serve eight people at a time,

00:39:55.440 | and having a second location just enables them to serve more people.

00:39:59.120 | Also, the city is so big that if people are traveling an hour to go to their favorite ramen,

00:40:04.800 | while suddenly they have a location for it closer to them, it's usually a sign that something's very

00:40:09.440 | good rather than it being very corporate. And while we're on food, I've got some of

00:40:14.960 | my favorites. We can get to a few of yours. What are a few things, dining etiquette,

00:40:19.600 | tipping, anything there that you want to give people some overview?

00:40:24.640 | Yeah. You absolutely don't want to be late to your reservation, as we kind of unpacked before.

00:40:29.680 | I would really scout Tabalog if you want some good food recommendations from Japanese people.

00:40:41.040 | There is absolutely no tipping. This isn't even a question of if someone's doing something nice

00:40:47.520 | and they're particularly good to leave them a few yen. No, it is a non-tipping culture to the point

00:40:55.680 | where oftentimes, at least in the past, it could be perceived as rude because you're sort of

00:41:02.480 | insinuating that this person needs more money. I think we may conceive of server jobs as being

00:41:09.120 | interstitial, like, "Well, I want to be a singer, but I'm a server right now."

00:41:13.360 | People bring a certain devotion to their jobs in Japan, whatever they are. And so,

00:41:20.640 | people are lifelong servers or restaurateurs. So, you absolutely don't want to tip.

00:41:28.320 | And what about meal times? I know that in some French culture, it's normal. Sit down for lunch,

00:41:35.040 | sit there for a few hours, relax, watch the people go by. I feel like in Japan,

00:41:40.160 | and you're the expert, but I've had meals... And you said it's not expensive.

00:41:44.400 | Just to be clear, there are also very expensive restaurants. You can go to Japan and have a very

00:41:49.440 | delicious meal every day for every meal for a month and not spend that much.

00:41:54.000 | You could also go to Japan and spend a ridiculous amount of money. But I've had the fortunate

00:42:01.120 | pleasure of going to a Michelin starred sushi place and had dinner in less than an hour.

00:42:05.760 | I would say Japan's not a place to linger after you've eaten a meal,

00:42:11.760 | in my experience. But I assume you would second that?

00:42:15.440 | Yeah. And I would say also, not to harp on this idea of this social contract,

00:42:22.960 | but if you're eating at an inexpensive restaurant, if you're going for ramen,

00:42:27.600 | or if you're going for a gyoza or one of those beef bowls, it's sort of like when you're done,

00:42:36.640 | you go. If you have an empty bowl in front of you, you're sort of no longer welcome.

00:42:42.400 | Some places will actually give you a time. I have definitely been to restaurants where they

00:42:47.680 | say, "You have one hour starting now to eat." And it's not meant to be rude. It is part of that,

00:42:56.240 | "Well, we want to provide you the best service, and the person before you took only their hour.

00:43:01.520 | So now you are also only going to take your hour." There are venues that are where you go and

00:43:07.840 | socialize, izakaya, so bars that have bar food. It's a lot less structured. You go, a lot of times

00:43:16.160 | you don't need to make a reservation. They have an empty table. You sit down, you drink, you eat a

00:43:20.240 | little, you drink, you eat a little, but everything is very segmented. I would think of dining in

00:43:25.280 | Tokyo and in Japan in that manner. I think in the United States, we have a lot of restaurants that

00:43:30.480 | are pan-Japanese. You can order sushi, you can order oyakodon, you can order udon, you can order

00:43:37.840 | all these, maybe even Thai food at the same restaurant. This is the opposite. Every restaurant

00:43:43.360 | in Japan usually has one thing that they do exceptionally well, and they do it maybe 10 ways.

00:43:49.440 | So you're going to a soba restaurant, you're going to a udon restaurant, a tofu restaurant.

00:43:58.000 | And so everything is much more specialized and specific.

00:44:04.800 | If we went through, we could probably go through a long list, but are there some

00:44:08.800 | maybe off the beaten path types of food specialties or culinary experiences where

00:44:12.800 | it's like, "Go seek out a place that has great X, Y, or Z"?

00:44:16.640 | Yeah. I think a lot of people, like you mentioned, are prone to doing a really

00:44:21.040 | expensive sushi experience. Usually, that will be omakase. I think a lot of us have

00:44:27.920 | heard the word omakase. Really, what that means is whatever you want. It's actually what you say

00:44:34.160 | to the chef. Omakase, at your pleasure. What I would recommend doing before indulging in that is

00:44:46.400 | going to a kaiten sushi, going to a really inexpensive rotating sushi restaurant where

00:44:53.440 | they'll have a little conveyor belt and different things are going to come in front of you. It's

00:44:58.880 | going to be very inexpensive. Take the opportunity to try a few things before you go to the higher

00:45:07.280 | end restaurant because as things go higher end, it verges into delicacy territory where you are

00:45:14.400 | going to get a lot of fish sperm or raw octopus, things that have textures that aren't familiar to

00:45:26.480 | the Western palate. I would exercise your palate before you go because you don't want to not eat

00:45:32.880 | something in front of the chef that is cooking right in front of you at his "pleasure".

00:45:39.440 | Yeah, that's a great recommendation. Okay, so maybe in the interest of time,

00:45:45.360 | are there a few favorite things, you'd say, favorite restaurants that you'd recommend

00:45:49.920 | people put on a list? I'm sure there's plenty. Gosh, yeah. So, ramen is a big question. I get a

00:45:56.640 | lot of people wondering, "I want to do a ramen meal while I'm there." Well, ramen is everywhere

00:46:03.840 | now and we have really good ramen in the United States. So, rather than going to the Ippudo

00:46:09.120 | Mothership, even though we have Ippudo here or the Afuri Mothership, I would recommend trying

00:46:14.960 | something a little more offbeat. I love Kagari ramen. It's in Ginza. They have two locations.

00:46:22.240 | It is a chicken ramen. It's a very creamy chicken broth. Describing it does not do it justice.

00:46:31.200 | It's so good. I've been there. It's so good. It's unreal how good it is. And why I like that

00:46:37.680 | is because you cannot get that anywhere else. It is a ramen experience in a ramen place,

00:46:43.120 | but it is something truly elevated that you will have a hard time finding when you return home.

00:46:52.000 | Yeah, the other place I'll throw out is Kikanbo, which is known for spice. It's a spicy ramen

00:46:58.480 | place. You actually pick your ramen on two tiers of spice, both chili hot spice and the

00:47:05.680 | sansho pepper spice, which is kind of like a Sichuan peppercorn with that numbing spice.

00:47:11.920 | It's my favorite restaurant in all of Japan. And I'm sure if you don't like spicy food,

00:47:18.560 | it would not be your favorite. There's also, and this is maybe overhyped, but

00:47:24.640 | Sukumen, like dipping ramen, which it's popping up at a few places in the States,

00:47:29.760 | but it's kind of a different style of eating ramen. And Rokurinisha in Tokyo Station

00:47:35.200 | always has a line, but is, I think, fantastic for trying that out, especially if you find

00:47:40.000 | yourself at Tokyo Station with some hours to kill. Yeah, and you know, again, in the idea where I

00:47:45.120 | said that kind of picking a chain is counterintuitive, eating at a train station seems

00:47:49.920 | counterintuitive as well. But you have to remember that there's a massive commuter culture in Tokyo,

00:47:57.760 | and a lot of these small businesses under Tokyo Station or in and around it are catering

00:48:05.200 | to commuter crowds or businessmen at lunch. So, some of the best quick eats, you could build it

00:48:13.200 | into your itinerary. If you're like, "I'm going to catch the bullet train to Kyoto at 1 o'clock,

00:48:18.400 | go to Tokyo Station at 11.30, go get gyoza at Min Min in the basement, and then try one of the

00:48:26.480 | ramen places. They even have incredible French pastries. Pick one of those and then get on your

00:48:32.400 | train." Great tip. The same, I think, is true about department stores. I feel like the food

00:48:38.000 | court in a big department store or shopping center is not, you know, in the U.S., it's like filled

00:48:43.520 | with the fast food, the Panda Express and the McDonald's. I've had some amazing meals at

00:48:48.240 | department food courts, department store food courts. Department stores is one of those things

00:48:53.840 | like a toilet that was brought from the West and then vastly improved when it touched down

00:48:59.600 | on Japanese soil. You're going to see in the basement of a lot of the department stores,

00:49:05.360 | they have these huge, huge food courts. It's not what you think of like a mall food court. It is

00:49:11.680 | all of these artisanal stalls peppered throughout with incredible fare. A lot of that food that

00:49:19.600 | you're going to find down there is both for an elevated lunchtime snack, but it also speaks to

00:49:26.160 | a culture of omiyage. Omiyage is gift giving, something that you're going to buy for your

00:49:34.720 | family when you get home, if you're on a holiday, or if you're going to meet someone at their house

00:49:41.360 | for dinner. We all bring a bottle of wine or something like that, but in the way that tipping

00:49:47.600 | is necessary in America, omiyage is necessary in Japan. You're going to go down there and find

00:49:55.520 | these beautifully wrapped cookies. It's omiyage to go. If you are going to engage with local

00:50:03.360 | individuals, let's say you're going to take this free tour, one of these free tours we've been

00:50:07.760 | talking about, bring them omiyage. Bring people you meet omiyage. Buy keychains from your hometown,

00:50:16.720 | or something like maple syrup if you're Canadian, or something that you can travel with,

00:50:22.800 | or go to a department store and buy these omiyage. You'll go much further than other

00:50:30.880 | tourists as far as accessing local culture. I love that. Any other food tips before we move on?

00:50:38.240 | I think in the way that... This is like the optimizer's dilemma. I love Japanese food,

00:50:44.640 | and it's such a broad category that all I want to do is eat Japanese food while I'm there.

00:50:50.560 | But man, oh man, the best pizza in the world is in Tokyo. I know that sounds blasphemous, but

00:50:56.640 | Savoy in Azabujuban is my favorite pizza place on the planet. It's Neapolitan pies.

00:51:06.960 | It is incredible. I highly recommend it. I would think about trying other types of food while

00:51:14.240 | you're there after you've had your Japanese fix because they just do it so dang well.

00:51:21.200 | One of my favorite restaurants, totally under the radar, please, let's all keep this between

00:51:27.280 | ourselves, is Tama. It's Okinawan food. You're still getting aspects of Japanese culture,

00:51:35.760 | but you're seeing how it blends with Taiwanese influence. If you look at a map, it's much,

00:51:40.560 | much closer. Okinawa is much, much closer to Taiwan than it is Japan. So you're going to see

00:51:48.240 | how both cultures inform the cuisine. Tama is very close to Shibuya. Very small restaurant,

00:51:53.280 | super friendly staff, big smiles. Just tell them, "Omakase." Just tell them, "Bring me some stuff."

00:52:00.160 | That's great. The two other ones I'll leave. There's a punk rock itsukaya called Tatamichiya.

00:52:06.640 | I'm going to butcher this name. Tatamichiya. I'll put it in the show notes. It's just such a cool

00:52:13.280 | spot. It's good food, good vibes. For me, just playing cool music. My wife and I almost go every

00:52:20.800 | time. And the other is going to be a crazy one. But you'll probably hear lots of people tell you,

00:52:26.640 | "Go to 7-Eleven and just try all these different crazy snacks." They have in these little plastic

00:52:32.320 | bags, pancakes. And their pancakes are somehow created. They have all kinds of flavors filled

00:52:37.920 | with red bean, filled with this. But they actually have a pancake that's very Americanized, which is

00:52:42.080 | filled with maple syrup and a little bit of butter. And you can put it in the microwave at 7-Eleven

00:52:46.240 | and heat it up. And I don't know how, but these plastic bag pancakes might be the most delicious

00:52:53.600 | pancakes on the planet at a 7-Eleven. So, one, just go to 7-Eleven. There's so many crazy things.

00:52:59.760 | I've heard the egg salad sandwiches are delicious, but not my thing.

00:53:02.960 | I could write love poetry to those egg salad sandwiches or tamago sando. And I was going to

00:53:11.440 | say the convenience store, the konbini culture is really fascinating. And to save time, we'll link

00:53:17.440 | to an article that I wrote about the 10 things you need to buy at a konbini at a convenience store.

00:53:22.400 | I fully recommend digging in.

00:53:24.480 | Awesome. That's so great. Okay. Everyone can go look at one of the many guidebooks you've

00:53:30.400 | probably written and say, "Oh, go to the Imperial Palace. Go to the Meiji Shrine." That kind of

00:53:35.360 | stuff. What are some of your favorites that maybe aren't on the top 10 list?

00:53:40.800 | Well, there are a lot of opportunities to climb a tower and see the cityscape from high above.

00:53:48.960 | Absolutely worth doing. Do not pay to do this. If there's an opportunity where you need to pay

00:53:54.000 | to get in an elevator, don't pay. The Tokyo Metropolitan office is in Shinjuku. You can

00:53:58.640 | go to the top for free. It's rammed with tourists. My recommendation would be to go to a high-end

00:54:04.640 | hotel. All of their lobbies are lofted over office buildings, and you can get a cocktail in a much

00:54:12.480 | more relaxed atmosphere and have that city view. The New Four Seasons in Otemachi, I think, has the

00:54:17.760 | best view of the Imperial Gardens. Right behind it, on a very clear day, usually in winter,

00:54:23.920 | you can see Mount Fuji. There is no better view amongst the luxury hotels right now.

00:54:29.840 | Now, as far as more off-the-beaten-path things, you're going to exit the Yamanote line. You're

00:54:37.280 | going to take one of the spokes off of the wheel that are on the suburban rail lines,

00:54:43.760 | and you're going to want to go to neighborhoods like Shimokitazawa. You're going to want to go to

00:54:49.520 | Kichijoji or Daikanyama. Another popular one is Nakameguro. I even like Geogauka,

00:55:01.120 | which is even further. These are more neighborhood-y, so a mix of small,

00:55:08.320 | traditional houses, and then some newer builds. Everything really crammed together. Little stores,

00:55:15.360 | boutiques, mom-and-pop shops next to more corporate things. I know that I just rambled

00:55:23.440 | off five different neighborhoods. Write them down. Give them a Google. You're going to find

00:55:28.560 | everything that you want in those. There's a really good donut shop just beyond Shimokitazawa

00:55:38.320 | called Haritsu that is in what seems like a little tea house, but they serve very modern donuts.

00:55:45.840 | Give that a whirl. I promise you won't be disappointed. I'll throw one out. I think

00:55:51.920 | they're always changing, but there's a company called TeamLab that does these really interesting,

00:55:57.680 | immersive experiences. We did Borderless and one other one. I can't remember. Maybe Planets.

00:56:03.280 | I don't know which ones are running now. It seems that there's always one in Tokyo.

00:56:07.680 | Highly recommended. Kind of wild, interesting, immersive art with lights and maybe sounds,

00:56:14.560 | maybe textures. They're always changing, but those were so awesome that we went to one,

00:56:20.240 | and the next day we were like, "We have to go to the other."

00:56:22.000 | Yeah. I'm a huge fan. I went to one right before the pandemic and did it twice in that day. I was

00:56:31.120 | like, "I need to have the whole adventure all over again." It's very sensory, a lot of textures,

00:56:37.040 | playing with light. There's water. You do want to dress appropriately for the one that you have

00:56:41.840 | to walk through water and with pants that you can easily pull up. Highly recommend that as well.

00:56:49.120 | That's out in Odaiba. Odaiba was created in Tokyo Bay using garbage to build man-made islands.

00:56:57.280 | Even though it's an indoor thing, you actually should plan that on a very nice day. Once you're

00:57:04.000 | out there, it's really nice to walk around and take in the city from out there. It's this

00:57:09.920 | pleasure island, Vegas-esque destination with a lot of really cool outdoor stuff.

00:57:16.720 | While we're in that direction, do you have a strong opinion on whether people should be going

00:57:20.400 | this ... I'm going to butcher it again, the fish market. Let's just leave it at it.

00:57:24.880 | Tsukiji. It's no longer in Tsukiji. The fish market-

00:57:28.480 | But it's still, if I remember right, it's still that direction, right?

00:57:31.360 | Yes, it is. It's further out. Tsukiji is the biggest fish market in the world.

00:57:40.160 | Then it moved to a bigger location in Toyosu. In the remains of Tsukiji are still a lot of little

00:57:50.240 | fresh fish, sashimi, sushi restaurants and bars. As far as wanting to do the fish auction and

00:58:00.640 | different things like that, that's something that you need to talk to a private guide about.

00:58:05.840 | They all have different kinds of access. They all have different opinions on it,

00:58:10.560 | how you want to leverage your jet lag to get up in the middle of the night to go see it.

00:58:14.480 | I think Tsukiji is really close to Ginza. It's walkable to Ginza if you want to go check it out

00:58:20.880 | and try that intro sushi that we were talking about before. There's a chain of sushi called

00:58:29.200 | Sushi Zamai. They're really famous in Japan because the owner is this Colonel Sanders character,

00:58:35.840 | come to life, who always famously makes the biggest bid at the fish auction. He always

00:58:41.680 | buys the most expensive fish of the year. There's a lot of locations all over Tokyo.

00:58:47.600 | That's a really good place to do your intro to more adventurous sushi and sashimi.

00:58:55.440 | A couple others for me, the Design Sites 2121 Museum, I thought was really cool. Obviously,

00:59:01.040 | it's a museum, so exhibits change. I'm dying to get your take on recommending Robot Restaurant.

00:59:07.920 | There's a lot of different themed restaurants all over Japan and Tokyo. Once as a wink,

00:59:15.920 | I went to the Ninja Restaurant for my birthday one year. It was super fun and cheesy.

00:59:23.280 | Of course, you know what you're signing up for. I shy away from the "Japan is weird" trip.

00:59:32.400 | I don't think that you're getting a lot of true insight. I think it would be akin to going to a

00:59:42.400 | baseball-themed restaurant in America or something that is taking a piece of Americana

00:59:50.960 | and hyperbolizing it. It's all just for show and for giggles. That's not really my vibe.

01:00:00.240 | You could design an entire itinerary of "Japan is weird." In the Akihabara neighborhood,

01:00:05.920 | there are these things called maid cafes, where all the cafes have a different theme. You go,

01:00:11.680 | and your server takes on a role. There's one where you get to play the older brother,

01:00:17.440 | and she plays the younger sister. There's one where you get to be the prince, and she's the

01:00:22.720 | princess. That is culturally curious. It might be a little bit hard to access if you don't have

01:00:31.600 | Japanese, but I don't love doing something for the sake of zoo-ifying culture.

01:00:40.640 | Almost every memorable experience I have skews on the authentic side of eating at a small place

01:00:48.240 | with amazing food or going to see something interesting. I don't disagree.

01:00:52.800 | That's my soapbox moment for the episode.

01:00:55.840 | If your stay in Tokyo aligns with one of the sumo times of year that sumo wrestling happens in Tokyo,

01:01:04.880 | I think that's an interesting experience. It's a very specific time. It's not like baseball,

01:01:10.080 | where there's a game every week. Absolutely. That is in the eastern part

01:01:16.240 | of the city, beyond the two o'clock, three o'clock, if we're talking about the clock map.

01:01:21.600 | Ryogoku is that area. Again, this is something that you want to enable with a private guide.

01:01:28.000 | I don't think you want to do the zoo aspect. I think that there are ways to engage in a more

01:01:33.360 | culturally curious manner. I would honestly avoid the Skytree, which is also out in that

01:01:41.280 | part of town. It was built to economically stimulate that area of town, which is a bit

01:01:48.080 | older and not as modernized. It's just a big tower in the sky with a bunch of shops around it.

01:01:54.880 | It's pretty far from where you're going to be staying, likely, because I would recommend

01:02:00.400 | trying to stay a little bit closer to the six to nine o'clock part of the clock.

01:02:07.520 | It's just not worth the schlep. Let's do some quick hits on drinks,

01:02:13.120 | whether it's nightlife or coffee. I'll do mine first to try to keep the speed going.

01:02:17.920 | There's a really cool coffee shop called Deus Ex Machina. I can't remember the neighborhoods,

01:02:24.000 | but you can Google it. I'll put it in the show notes, which is one of our favorite coffee shops

01:02:28.960 | in Tokyo. For drinks and stuff, my favorite bars, I'm just going to list them,

01:02:34.880 | are Bar Trench, Bar Tram, and Bar Benfidich. What anything in the coffee, tea,

01:02:44.240 | nightlife area, since we're way over time? I would go to Naka Meguro, which is a very

01:02:51.120 | cool neighborhood. That's where they have a massive multi-story Starbucks reserve that you

01:02:58.960 | walk by and ogle at the fact that there's a 90-minute wait to get in. Then, you go up the

01:03:09.200 | street to a place called Breakfast Club, which is this Japanese version of an American diner

01:03:16.080 | run by these two cool DJ guys who just have this really cool breakfast all day every day

01:03:27.600 | vibe with diner coffee. It's just so much fun. I love going there. Great music. Breakfast meets

01:03:40.000 | bar. I think as far as coffee goes, I made the mistake of putting it in The Lonely Planet about

01:03:51.920 | 12 years ago when I was working on the Japan Guide. But in Shimokitazawa, you want to go to

01:03:57.920 | Bear Pond, a little hole in the wall, massively popular. Do not try to take a photo. They will

01:04:06.560 | be mad at you. But excellent espresso. Any thoughts on nightlife? I feel like I'm

01:04:12.800 | past my nightlife prime, other than getting some good cocktails. Anything you want to add

01:04:17.920 | to that category? Back in the day when I was a student,

01:04:21.280 | the metro stops at around 1 and then starts back up at 5. At 12.50, you're like, "Okay, guys,

01:04:29.200 | are we going home or are we going out all night and getting on the 5 o'clock train?"

01:04:35.120 | It usually meant going out all night and getting on the 5 o'clock train. Back then, 20 years ago,

01:04:40.240 | it was Shibuya and Roppongi, where the big club place is. That's changed and evolved.

01:04:48.320 | Shibuya has had a love hotel seedy side to the back of Shibuya that is evolving right now. It's

01:04:56.240 | becoming a much more commercial and wholesome destination. There are a lot of new hotels that

01:05:01.600 | are going in, high-end hotels. If you want to give something an interesting try, I would try

01:05:09.200 | a multi-course cocktail, if you're really into cocktails. I'm very happy with a highball or

01:05:21.440 | like a whiskey on the rocks. If you're a cocktail person, there are a handful of different

01:05:27.200 | cocktail restaurants where you're doing four cocktails over a couple hours and each one is

01:05:32.960 | very different and they're paced as though you're having a meal. Just like we talked about pizza and

01:05:38.000 | coffee and everything, taking cocktails to the next level, there are some of the best cocktail bars

01:05:44.480 | and cocktails in the world in Japan. I feel like you could pick anything and just say that and it

01:05:50.800 | would probably be true, but I have a lot of personal experience on the cocktail front to

01:05:55.440 | say that it is true. There is this through theme also of intentionality. Every business owner

01:06:02.000 | brings this incredible intentionality to their products. Ben Fittich is incredible in that way

01:06:11.120 | where the bartender is making everything involved. I've been to restaurants where

01:06:19.440 | the chef is even making the silverware that you're using. This incredible intentionality

01:06:25.760 | just permeates food and beverage. If you are a cocktail nerd, a mixology nerd,

01:06:31.600 | you're really not going to find any other better cocktails on the planet.

01:06:35.120 | I completely agree. I have two questions. One, I don't know the answer to. I didn't have kids when

01:06:40.080 | I went. You've written guidebooks, so I'm sure you've had to think about this. What's the vibe

01:06:44.800 | like with bringing kids, bringing them to restaurants, that kind of stuff in Japan?

01:06:50.320 | It's a really good question, especially because it's a country that we always see in the news

01:06:55.200 | that is shrinking in population. There are not a lot of kids out and about. Also, how do you bring

01:07:04.240 | a kid who's very young and how do you control their behavior to abide by that social contract

01:07:13.200 | of being a good guest in different places? Well, not everyone is expecting your three-year-old

01:07:18.720 | child to be perfect. Do you take that person to a $300 omakase? No, because you're not bringing

01:07:25.680 | that person to that $300 omakase at home, either. I have seen, because of the pandemic,

01:07:32.880 | maybe a lot more green spaces opening up. There's a beautiful walk that you can do

01:07:38.640 | in Shimokitazawa now. They buried the track between three stations, and now that has been

01:07:46.240 | turned into really cool walking paths and gardens and shops. I would try to keep kids more in those

01:07:54.000 | areas. There's a lot of dining in that manner, where you can eat out on a patio,

01:08:04.640 | and then it's a little bit less intense to have your kids.

01:08:08.480 | I will say, from all of my experiences in Japan, it's lots of walking, moving around,

01:08:15.840 | eating four meals a day. It would have been hard to do the kind of experiences I've done with kids.

01:08:20.640 | I'm sure there's a different itinerary for a family-friendly trip, but I think for us,

01:08:26.000 | we're just like, "Hmm, maybe we're just going to wait a few years until the kids are a little older."

01:08:30.160 | Not saying it's impossible, but I know the kind of Japan trip we love having,

01:08:35.440 | and I feel like we might not get it if we go with infants and toddlers.

01:08:40.160 | I agree. I don't want to discourage families from booking a family trip to Japan, but I would say

01:08:45.200 | the trip that you think you want to have will be difficult to execute with a toddler.

01:08:50.960 | Yeah, especially if that is cocktails and lots of street food and that kind of thing.

01:08:57.760 | We're going to maybe get there with time to the other things you could do in Japan.

01:09:02.240 | And relaxing, you could certainly do a lot of that.

01:09:04.240 | So, we've got to move on. Is there any last thing in Tokyo that we didn't mention or you're like,

01:09:09.760 | "I've got to share this"? Even if it's such a secret that we keep it out of the show notes.

01:09:14.160 | Well, I do have one ultra-favorite restaurant. I've probably celebrated about 10 birthdays

01:09:23.840 | in Japan, maybe 15. And many of them have happened at that restaurant,

01:09:28.000 | but you're going to have to DM me on Instagram for the name of it. Sorry.

01:09:31.040 | Ooh, I like it. I like it.

01:09:33.040 | It's a yakitori restaurant. So, it's fish and vegetables, chicken and vegetables, rather,

01:09:40.480 | on skewers. Small place, great vibe, incredible drinks. But yeah.

01:09:48.080 | Got to keep it. I was going to say, I was going to call this your best guest secret,

01:09:51.120 | and you're literally going to keep it a little bit of a secret from the episode.

01:09:54.400 | We'll link to your Instagram in the show notes. I think it's just @brandimpressor.

01:09:58.160 | @brandpress. Yeah.

01:10:01.440 | We'll link to your Instagram in the show notes. It's just @brandpress. But I appreciate that.

01:10:06.960 | I'm going to send you a DM. Okay. There is an infinite amount of things that we could keep

01:10:12.400 | talking about in Tokyo. To go back to what you said earlier, I feel like every time we go to Japan,

01:10:17.520 | there are some countries where you'd come for your next trip and you'd skip

01:10:21.760 | the main city because you've been there before. Every time we're like, "Let's go back to Tokyo,

01:10:25.200 | there's so much more to uncover." But we've got to move on. You said there's two places that

01:10:30.320 | everyone should consider going. It's Tokyo and Kyoto. How do you think about Kyoto being organized

01:10:38.000 | and to the extent that's helpful? Okay. So, the first mistake that people make

01:10:42.080 | when they're doing a trip to Japan and they do Tokyo and Kyoto is they think Tokyo, new,

01:10:47.680 | Kyoto, old. Big mistake. You're missing so many cool things in Tokyo by only focusing on the new,

01:10:53.920 | and you're missing so much of the essence of Kyoto by only focusing on the old. That's places of

01:11:00.720 | worship and castles and stuff like that. The other mistake that people make with

01:11:06.880 | Kyoto is that because they have old in their brain, they want to stay at a traditional inn.

01:11:14.880 | Part of staying at a ryokan is that you're going to be served dinner and you're going to be served

01:11:22.080 | breakfast and it's all about fostering relaxation. It really seems antithetical to the time that

01:11:28.400 | you're going to spend in the city, which is going to be just as excited about getting around and

01:11:34.320 | seeing all the temples and seeing all the cafes and experiencing the culture. So, I would leave

01:11:40.160 | that traditional inn, that ryokan experience for the countryside and not marry it to your

01:11:47.520 | Kyoto experience. Now, happy to indulge in all the oldness that is Kyoto. It is the ancient capital.

01:11:56.160 | It is an incredible city with some of the oldest cultural relics that remain intact in the world.

01:12:01.440 | But at its core, it's also a place of learning. It's a college town. It's much, much, much smaller

01:12:10.080 | than Tokyo. There's a thriving student culture there that is well worth tapping into. That's

01:12:16.880 | tea shops. That's cafes. That's really cool clothing stores and boutiques. That's getting

01:12:24.880 | into handicrafts and these old family businesses. You should absolutely pick a handful of temples

01:12:33.440 | that you want to see and appreciate that culture. But a lot of people treat those temples the way

01:12:39.040 | that people in Europe treat a church. They go and they're just like, "Wow, opulence. The cathedral.

01:12:44.160 | Super cool." Without delving too much into the history aspect of it all. It's okay if you're

01:12:49.920 | allergic to, "Oh, this temple was made in 1636." That's fine. I'm kind of allergic to that as well.

01:12:56.880 | But just make sure to bear in mind to have a broader experience in Kyoto than you might expect.

01:13:07.120 | You're going to see a lot of people walking around in traditional attire.

01:13:10.880 | A lot of people come back from trips to Japan and they say, "Oh my god, I saw a geisha in Kyoto."

01:13:17.040 | You did not see a geisha. You saw a Taiwanese traveler who rented her kimono for the day and

01:13:25.360 | they dress you up. This is a really popular thing for Korean, Singaporean, Taiwanese

01:13:31.200 | travelers to do. The geisha culture that you hear about from members of a geisha in Gion,

01:13:37.040 | one of the geisha districts, is much more behind closed doors.

01:13:41.840 | And is that something that there's a way to learn, appreciate, and experience and understand it? Or

01:13:47.760 | is it kind of one of the few things that is hard for Westerners to be a part of?

01:13:52.400 | This is something that you're going to have to plan while in advance. This is something that a

01:13:55.680 | lot of people have gained access to over years of building relationships. There are pricey,

01:14:04.080 | personalized luxury experiences where you can go spend time with a maiko, like a geisha in training

01:14:10.320 | or a geisha, and have a really mind-expanding experience about what that culture looks like.

01:14:18.160 | I mean, it is on the decline. It's not what it was a long time ago. This is

01:14:23.120 | something a bit of former glory. But it is still there for you to consume. But the best way to do

01:14:29.360 | it would be to pick a luxury travel planner and book that experience through them as a one-on-one

01:14:35.840 | experience. Yeah. And this is something that we didn't mention earlier when we talked about

01:14:39.920 | restaurants. But I find that unlike many places in the world where it's just pop up, open table,

01:14:45.600 | make your reservation, search online for book a tour, there are still a ton of restaurants and

01:14:50.960 | experiences that if you don't have a travel planner or a higher-end hotel concierge, you just

01:14:57.840 | can't do. Is that the experience you've seen? Or is there another way to access some of these

01:15:02.400 | restaurants or experiences? No, that's pretty much right. And as someone who cut their teeth

01:15:08.880 | writing guidebooks for Lonely Planet, I am all about trying to enable as many opportunities

01:15:15.200 | for travelers and readers on their own that I can, but a lot of these things are guarded.

01:15:23.040 | So, you will need a luxury travel planner who has made 20 or 30 years of inroads in the destination,

01:15:30.400 | who forged that relationship with the Geisha house to make that happen. So, if that is something

01:15:39.440 | that's a priority to you and you want to have the real experience, you are going to pay for it.

01:15:44.400 | I'll caution people. One option is, if you do want to have one of those experiences and

01:15:50.320 | either book through a luxury travel provider or at a higher-end hotel, you don't have to do it

01:15:56.800 | the whole time. So, I tell people there are some restaurants that are very difficult to get a

01:16:00.160 | reservation at without a high-end travel organizer, concierge, or hotel, but you could book one or two

01:16:06.800 | nights at that hotel. We'll talk it... I was going to say at the end, we may be talking a bonus

01:16:10.960 | episode about how to do that with points, and then line up some of those things that you need

01:16:16.480 | support from, and then you could move to another hotel that's not as expensive if you don't.

01:16:21.760 | Keep all that in mind. There are an unlimited number of great restaurants experiences you can

01:16:26.720 | have without that, but for anyone listening who's trying to have one of those coveted or higher-end

01:16:32.160 | exclusive experiences or dining at a three Michelin star restaurant, it's not as simple

01:16:37.760 | as just going online and booking. Yeah. I should say on background, too,

01:16:41.440 | I was in Japan right as everything was shutting down in 2020. The reason that I was there

01:16:47.360 | is I was doing a very intense audit of all of the hotels in Tokyo for Conde Nast Traveler,

01:16:54.400 | all the ones that were opening up in anticipation of the Olympics. Of course, that was completely

01:17:01.120 | curtailed, and my editor was like, "Get home! Get home! They're closing the borders!"

01:17:06.640 | When it reopened, I went back to complete that audit. I stayed at dozens of hotels in Tokyo,

01:17:14.160 | and my editor, when I got home, she was like, "OK, Brandon, what did you see that was different

01:17:19.120 | than before the pandemic?" I said, "Well, you know what? It's that all of these hotels now want to be

01:17:24.800 | the purveyor of your experience." In all of this time, hotels were really hurt during the pandemic,

01:17:35.360 | so they're trying to find different ways to bring in more revenue. A lot of hotels are doing

01:17:40.480 | really compelling F&B, food and beverage, bringing in locals to eat at the restaurants in case the

01:17:47.520 | tourism dwindles again for some unknown reason. The other thing that's happening is hotels are

01:17:55.360 | offering tours. I'm not talking about the group tour thing where a bunch of you are going around

01:18:02.480 | with a flag. Hotels like Amman in Tokyo have a secret concierge service where they will take you

01:18:11.600 | to local artisans to have personalized experience where they will cut you kimono and yukata robes,

01:18:19.920 | or they will hand etch chopsticks for you, or you can do fan design. These are all exclusive

01:18:27.360 | opportunities that Amman offers. All of the hotels are getting into this. Even if you cringe

01:18:34.000 | at the idea of having a travel plan or one of those travel services, squeeze out a little bit

01:18:41.360 | more from your concierge at these high-end hotels because they want to give you more than just a

01:18:46.560 | room. Lewis: I would say Amman is probably at the top of the mark, but we've stayed at the Hilton,

01:18:53.600 | which is not near Amman prices. But at a lot of the very big established hotels at that level,

01:19:01.440 | there are still incredible concierges. The Hilton concierge was able to help with a number of

01:19:08.800 | reservations and activities that would have been much harder for me to do myself. Obviously,

01:19:14.800 | some of the more exclusive things might be catered or offered at the higher-end hotels

01:19:19.760 | like the Amman, but I had a ton of success at even just the Hilton Tokyo.

01:19:24.400 | Lewis: Totally. Back in Kyoto, one of the things I mentioned in Tokyo, my first day I like to do a

01:19:32.080 | triangle to connect three little areas. For Kyoto, my thing that I always do when I go is I rent a

01:19:38.720 | bicycle. I usually cheat and rent one of those electric ones that helps you along the way.

01:19:46.000 | Kyoto's very hilly. It's hemmed between two mountains, in a way. It's very different than

01:19:56.960 | Tokyo in that it's very low-lying. A lot of Japanese people say it's very European.

01:20:02.480 | There's a river that flows through it, but because traffic is much less and everything

01:20:09.840 | moves a little slower, it's really easy to get around on a bicycle. Just remember that you're

01:20:16.400 | on the left side of the road. It's a great way to explore. Because it's such a small city relative

01:20:24.320 | to Tokyo, it's really hard to get lost. You can go up and down different streets,

01:20:34.800 | you can pop in and out of different neighborhoods, and you're never going to be

01:20:38.720 | woefully far from your hotel.

01:20:42.240 | Lewis: That was the first when my wife and I went -- I don't even want to say this -- over 15 years

01:20:47.600 | ago to Japan for the first time. For her, the first thing we did was we rented a bike from the

01:20:52.800 | train station. We just set our bags. I don't even remember if it was a day trip. I don't remember a

01:20:58.480 | lot of how the logistics of that happened. But I do remember we rented the bike right at the train

01:21:03.120 | station and went and explored. I think we came back and got our luggage because we had a late

01:21:07.360 | check-in. I love that. I'm sure if in the Lonely Planet for Kyoto, there's top 21 experiences that

01:21:14.000 | you should have. Let's skip those and maybe share some of your favorite things that people should do

01:21:18.640 | or see or eat or anything.

01:21:20.480 | Lewis: Yeah. One of the things I guarantee is not in any of the guidebooks yet is the

01:21:28.560 | Park Hyatt Kyoto just opened. Park Hyatt Tokyo is the super famous Lawson Translation Hotel in

01:21:38.560 | Shinjuku. It has the New York bar always rammed with people. Park Hyatt Kyoto is very close to

01:21:47.520 | Kiyomizu-dera, which is one of the most famous places of worship. Absolutely a must, a worth the

01:21:54.800 | hype temple. But it's right in the heart of the action. It's accessible to everyone because they

01:22:04.560 | have a bar, totally different than the one in Tokyo, but this bar overlooks the city and the

01:22:11.360 | one very famous pagoda. I couldn't hold a conversation when I was there because I was

01:22:21.680 | so mesmerized by the view. It is just one of those... It costs $18, the price of a cocktail,

01:22:32.800 | to have this incredible view. Because it's so new, no one's talking about it yet.

01:22:40.960 | So, it's a very small bar with a very few amount of seats. But if you're going really soon,

01:22:46.800 | absolutely go and do this. The hotel is extremely expensive and is only for a certain

01:22:52.640 | type of traveler, but this is something that I feel is pretty accessible to everyone and absolutely

01:23:00.400 | worth doing at sunset. In the wintertime, that sunset is oddly early. So, if you're okay having

01:23:07.760 | a drink at 4.45pm, absolutely go for it. This is my one revelation of Kyoto on this particular trip

01:23:21.600 | a few weeks ago. We stayed at the Park Hyatt in Kyoto. You say it's very expensive, but I will say

01:23:27.760 | Chase transfers to Hyatt. Park Hyatt on points is maybe one of the best deals in the world. So,

01:23:34.160 | it is actually accessible if you can find the availability. The hotel was amazing. I will say

01:23:39.200 | we stayed there weeks after it opened, and it was very rough around the edges. I have no doubt that

01:23:46.560 | the Park Hyatt has cleaned up those rough edges. But we had some frustrating experiences for a

01:23:52.240 | hotel of that level. But wow, the bar was amazing. We couldn't even get into the restaurant at the

01:23:58.000 | hotel, which is next to the bar and had an awesome view. So, I can't speak to it because even though

01:24:02.640 | we stayed there four nights, they were like, "Oh, sorry. We don't have any tables." It was

01:24:07.280 | such a strange thing to not be able to eat at the hotel restaurant on a few days notice. But

01:24:11.360 | wholeheartedly recommend the hotel. It's so beautiful and very inaccessible with dollars,

01:24:19.840 | but accessible with points. Yeah. Hyatt's great for that. A lot of people level up to the Grand

01:24:27.040 | Hyatt in Tokyo, which is cheaper than the Park Hyatt brand. It's one level down. That hotel,

01:24:36.000 | decor-wise, it's long in the tooth. I'm not going to mince words. Oh, I'm mincing words,

01:24:42.960 | I guess. But the location is great. You're really right in the middle of town, and it's a little

01:24:50.160 | splurge if you're more of a budget traveler and you have those points. Go for the Grand.

01:24:56.240 | I'll share a couple things from Kyoto from our trip that are just quick hits that I really

01:25:02.000 | enjoyed. So, bar Rocking Chair, I went one night with my brother-in-law and we were like,

01:25:08.960 | "Do we even have to leave? Should we just stay here and keep coming back?" It's such a cool bar.

01:25:15.280 | It was also very funny because my brother-in-law is like 6'5" and almost every place to go in

01:25:22.720 | Japan... He barely fit in part of that restaurant or bar. There's a tea shop called Yugen, which

01:25:32.720 | serves matcha, and it was just wonderful. It was the most beautifully... I say this about so many

01:25:39.040 | parts of Japan, but a very beautifully designed matcha shop that I really loved. And then I

01:25:46.000 | already mentioned the pizza shop at the beginning. And Coco Raya was just an izakaya that we went to.

01:25:50.160 | We had a great time. I'm not going to say it's the best izakaya in the world, but

01:25:52.880 | if you're looking for one, we had a great time there.

01:25:56.640 | I'm going to add a tea destination as well. Ippudo. So, not Ippudo, like the ramen, but Ippudo.

01:26:04.400 | They're really close to the Ritz-Carlton and they do tea tasting. So, think of it exactly

01:26:16.080 | in a wine tasting kind of way. You can sign up to do a tea tasting. Their product is...

01:26:20.880 | The taste is incredible. The packaging is so beautiful. This is a good omiyage for someone

01:26:29.520 | that you really like back at home or someone that you're meeting in Japan. It has a very storied

01:26:35.120 | reputation in the country. One of the places that I want to recommend is Monk. It's a restaurant

01:26:43.600 | that my editor at Bloomberg, she was in Japan with her husband a few years ago, and she ate there.

01:26:51.040 | I was in Tokyo at the time and she called me and she was like, "Get your butt down to Kyoto. You

01:26:56.240 | need to go to this restaurant and you need to write about it." Basically, what it is, is it

01:27:00.480 | takes the multi-course kaiseki idea in Japanese cuisine, but it flips it Italian style.

01:27:10.160 | And instead of having a hearty rice dish, which usually punctuates the end of a kaiseki meal,

01:27:16.240 | it's a pizza. Let's not obsess about pizza in Japan. People are going to think we're weird.

01:27:20.960 | It's run by Chef Imai and he brings this monastic discipline to his food. I believe,

01:27:34.960 | after our story ran, it found its way to a Netflix Chef's Table episode. It's well worth

01:27:46.800 | checking out. Also, give yourself a little bit of time to walk around that part of town. It's a

01:27:51.680 | little more residential. It's a little more out of the way. You're not going to see other tourists

01:27:55.120 | over there. It's beautiful. There's a beautiful path that goes through the nature of that

01:28:02.400 | neighborhood, too. Bundle that experience together. Any specific types of food that,

01:28:09.680 | if you're in Kyoto, Kyoto is the place to try X or Y?

01:28:13.360 | That's a good question. I did want to give one suggestion that is along those lines,

01:28:21.600 | but a little unexpected. It's gin. There's a gin tasting room called Kinobi. Kinobi came out the

01:28:29.440 | gate about five or six years ago now. As someone who writes about a lot of different destinations

01:28:36.960 | all over the world, I'm constantly being pitched to local gin. Constantly. People are making gin

01:28:42.080 | out of sawdust at this point. I was fascinated by Kinobi. They're using a lot of the local

01:28:52.560 | botanicals. There's Kyoyasai, basically the local Kyoto harvest, which really informs this gin.

01:29:01.760 | I'm admittedly not a big gin person. I'm more of a brown spirits person. This is absolutely my

01:29:08.320 | favorite. In the quiet of the pandemic, they opened a tasting room. It is well worth going

01:29:14.000 | to try. Speaking of Kyoyasai and this local harvest, this is really what the area is all about.

01:29:22.160 | One of the best restaurants, it's not going to break the budget. It's called Yasai Hori. Hori

01:29:29.760 | is the name of the chef. There's a lot of indoor shopping arcades in Kyoto. It's off of one of

01:29:36.960 | those, really inconspicuous. It has one, two tables, and eight bar tops. The only staff member

01:29:46.720 | is chef. He's going to do really honest food. I think a lot of American food is overly sauced.

01:29:54.800 | This is the antidote. This is mushrooms on an open fire. This is avocado and red onion. This is

01:30:07.600 | very, very simple cuisine that the ingredients are just screaming flavor at you.

01:30:15.680 | This is not a good thing to be talking about right before lunch. I'm like, "Do I eat here or

01:30:20.720 | just go to SFO and take a sip of your can?" It seems like we bring up a lot of food and

01:30:26.160 | drinking, but are there other things to spend the time in between eating or drinking in Kyoto,

01:30:31.440 | other than a few of the shrines that you think are worth highlighting?

01:30:34.000 | I think that you're not going to find that Brooklyn-esque quality that you do in

01:30:44.480 | Tokyo with certain neighborhoods that are just so effortlessly cool. But it's well worth picking

01:30:51.600 | a couple of neighborhoods in Kyoto, as well, and doing the back alley walks. You're just going to

01:30:57.200 | see a lot of businesses that have been around for 300 or 400 years, places that sell very specific

01:31:04.320 | things like 11 types of scissors. There was a shop that I went to that sold needles for sewing

01:31:15.280 | that had little sculptures on the tip, on the eye, like a little frog that you had to look at

01:31:24.160 | through a magnifying glass. Little specific shops like this, that you're only going to find by doing

01:31:30.160 | a back alley walk in neighborhoods like Gion, in Sanjo, different places like that.

01:31:36.160 | And culturally, is it okay if you see a little shop, even if you're not going to buy a needle

01:31:40.720 | or a pair of scissors, to walk in and look around? Is that okay?

01:31:45.280 | Absolutely. You can go into any shop that's open, thank them for their time, express interest in

01:31:55.360 | what they're doing. A lot of people are really proud of the things that they're doing. I was in

01:32:01.520 | a small town on Lake Biwa on my last trip, about an hour outside of Kyoto, called Hikone,

01:32:09.120 | and went for udon. At the end of the meal, the man who ran the udon shop, his wife,

01:32:15.760 | was making origami. When the bill was paid, she handed me an origami crane. She was like, "Here,

01:32:21.760 | I made this." And she was just so proud of it. And I kept it. It's in my office now.

01:32:26.480 | And I think you just find great pride in what everyone's doing. So, engage with those people.

01:32:32.880 | It's not usually the people that are in the shop, it's their stuff.

01:32:37.360 | I will say, this translates to anytime you're getting anything. Even if it's the concierge

01:32:43.920 | giving you their business card. I think in American culture, it's like, "Thanks,

01:32:47.200 | throw it in your pocket." I find that anytime you're getting anything, just holding it and

01:32:52.720 | accepting it and appreciating it is a sign of respect that goes a long way and is much more

01:33:00.080 | the standard of receiving things in Japan. If you're expecting someone to be an engaged

01:33:05.520 | shop owner, be an engaged customer. This is, again, that give and take. You're part of the

01:33:12.560 | social dynamic. Not everything is just coming to you. We said we were going to not go as deep on

01:33:18.400 | other places as we did on Tokyo and Kyoto. But I do want to highlight some of them because I think

01:33:22.960 | people who have that extra few days where they want to go see something more than just Tokyo

01:33:28.240 | and Kyoto or people who are coming back and want to see something else, you did a high level of

01:33:33.200 | the four islands and a little bit of the vibe on each. But what are some emerging destinations or

01:33:39.600 | interesting places that you'd suggest people go to? I really only have one. So I'll go first,

01:33:46.320 | which is we found this hotel. And it was what you were describing where we were looking for

01:33:52.560 | that traditional eat breakfast and dinner in the hotel, not really go anywhere, relax experience.

01:33:59.600 | And so we just took a trip to a region called Niigata. And we stayed at this amazing design

01:34:04.960 | hotel called Satoyama Jujo, which I would say it's not quite a real con, but in that we weren't

01:34:11.120 | sleeping on tatami mats and it wasn't that traditional, but it was amazing. And that town

01:34:18.480 | was known for soba. So we kind of walked around town and walked by a school. And it was definitely

01:34:24.400 | not a popular destination out in the season we went. But that was just an awesome hotel and

01:34:31.680 | relaxing experience for a couple of days. And that's all I have. So I'm going to turn

01:34:35.840 | the entirety of of non Tokyo Kyoto, Japan over to you. So I'll circle back on that idea of what are

01:34:43.120 | the ingredients for a perfect first or fourth trip to Japan, which is old and new mountains and sea.

01:34:49.600 | And I think all of them are really easy to hit. You can hit them all very close to Tokyo,

01:34:56.960 | even if you only have a shorter trip. I spent quite a bit of time in Kyushu in the southern

01:35:05.360 | most main island this time around, because I am a major fan of onsen culture, hot spring culture.

01:35:15.600 | And because the islands are so active volcanically, there is just hot water gurgling up everywhere,

01:35:22.480 | to the point where there are hotels in Tokyo that pipe in hot water from miles and miles and

01:35:28.800 | miles away to have that mineral water bath within the property. Kyushu is sort of the

01:35:37.280 | motherland of onsen culture, more so than places like Hakone, which you might have heard of a lot,

01:35:44.880 | because it's very close to Tokyo. So a lot of people go there. Kyushu has an Oita prefecture,

01:35:51.680 | and I should say, as an aside, prefectures are like states, and they all have different

01:35:57.040 | reputations, and they all have different local foods and vibes, and they all kind of compete

01:36:03.920 | against each other. Oita prefecture on Kyushu has two major onsen towns. One's called Beppu,

01:36:13.200 | and one's called Yufuin. Both have a ton of places to stay. There's an international university in

01:36:23.600 | Beppu, and a lot of people that go there work in some of these hotels. So the level of English in

01:36:28.400 | Beppu is better than in Tokyo, which is very confusing. You can choose from a variety of

01:36:34.880 | types of properties. There's an intercontinental in Beppu. For example, if you want the comfort

01:36:42.160 | of something familiar, or you can go all the way down to a very traditional inn while you're

01:36:46.720 | sleeping on tatami. If you've ever looked at a photo of Beppu, it looks like it's exploding.

01:36:51.600 | There's just steam coming up from every vent as you walk down the street. It's really cool.

01:36:57.200 | Yufuin is in the mountains, and it's a little bit more rural. Major tourism destination as well,

01:37:05.360 | as far as onsen and hot springs culture goes. There is a very prescribed way that you soak in

01:37:13.520 | onsen. You must wash yourself before you go in, and you must be naked. If that's uncomfortable

01:37:21.840 | for you, IHG hotels have a variety of hot spring hybrid hotels all throughout the country.

01:37:31.360 | I would just look at their Japan offerings. They have a property in Hakone, for example,

01:37:36.480 | that you can go in your bathing suit. If you're traveling with someone of the opposite gender,

01:37:43.840 | you can also go and bathe together. I'm going to give the opposite advice,

01:37:48.000 | which is if you're uncomfortable with it, try to get comfortable.

01:37:51.600 | Oh, yeah. I am all about the real onsen experience. You're right. I shouldn't just

01:37:58.320 | give the caveat. Absolutely dive in headfirst, pun intended. This is absolutely something that

01:38:05.440 | you can try. In the way that you always see in the news every once in a while, "Oldest man in

01:38:12.880 | the world, what is his secret to living until 126?" So many of these people are from Kyushu,

01:38:20.160 | from Beppu, and they all talk about how hot spring culture is so important to them. It's so profound

01:38:27.200 | and widespread in Oita Prefecture that a lot of houses don't have running water because they have

01:38:32.560 | an onsen down the street. Every morning and every evening, they go and soak, and they talk with

01:38:37.120 | their friends. There's a major social component to this as well. Okay. That sounds like a place that

01:38:43.040 | I've never been and want to go. Actually, I left off Hakone because we did go there on an early

01:38:47.920 | trip. It's beautiful. Mount Fuji in the background. It was wonderful. Any other thoughts on whether

01:38:56.640 | it's a day trip or a side trip from Tokyo or Kyoto, or even a flight somewhere else or train?

01:39:03.680 | Yeah. I think you're on the right track with a trip out to Hakone. It's just this weird prescribed

01:39:13.200 | thing that a lot of operators have people do, and it's just become this sort of golden circle thing

01:39:19.680 | where you're like, "Okay, I'm going to Tokyo and Hakone and then Kyoto, and we're done." Outside

01:39:25.440 | of Hakone in the greater Fuji area, there are some incredible places to stay and some incredibly

01:39:33.280 | beautiful and natural environments. There's the five Fuji lakes. I would have a look into those.

01:39:41.520 | Those are nestled right under the mountain. All have incredible views. That is something

01:39:48.480 | that's specifically different than the Hakone experience. I really like Shuzenji as a little

01:39:59.040 | town. There's a really cool place to stay there. A couple of cool places,

01:40:05.040 | ranging from budget to high end. This is small town Japan, and it's really close to Tokyo.

01:40:11.040 | North of Tokyo is Nikko, a major UNESCO site. A lot of people, for some reason,

01:40:18.240 | do it as a day trip from Tokyo. Do not do it as a day trip. It is so far you will be tired,

01:40:25.600 | and you're missing the beauty of it, which is the evening after all the crowds are gone.

01:40:29.920 | You can go see the UNESCO protected sites, but for me, Shuzenji, Lake Shuzenji is stunning,

01:40:36.880 | and there are a few really cool places to stay on the lake there.

01:40:40.640 | Though a big question that I get is, "How do I do Kyoto without going to Kyoto?"

01:40:45.760 | There's already conversations about how to curb overcrowding in Kyoto. A lot of people are opting

01:40:54.080 | to go to Kanazawa instead of Kyoto. Kanazawa, back in feudal times, different feudal entities

01:41:03.520 | measured their wealth by rice, how much rice they were making. Rice was currency. After the strong

01:41:10.880 | hold in Kyoto, Kanazawa, the Maeda clan, were the second wealthiest. There's a lot of that old

01:41:19.440 | culture still intact. One of the most beautiful gardens in all of Japan, and the Japanese rank

01:41:25.200 | their gardens, and there are three that are considered the nicest, and one of them is in

01:41:28.800 | Kanazawa. This is that little Kyoto that you're going to get with far less people. It's much

01:41:35.040 | smaller, but if you're allergic to crowds, this is the place for you. Kaga Prefecture, the area

01:41:41.120 | around it, is also a teeming onsen destination. I have mixed feelings about Hokkaido. I grew up in

01:41:50.560 | Canada. I was born with skis on. Love a good ski trip. Hokkaido has japao, an incredible powder.

01:41:59.360 | I have really mixed feelings about going to Japan for the skiing. I think you can get

01:42:05.840 | great skiing in Canada. You can get great skiing in the US. I think it's a bit of a shame to devote

01:42:13.120 | your Japanese holiday to something that you can do really well in other places. I'm a bit allergic

01:42:20.480 | to recommending a ski trip with your Japan trip. Instead, I would pick places that you're really

01:42:28.560 | getting culturally fulfilled. We love to ski. We have not done skiing in Japan for that reason.

01:42:34.720 | I think a part of it's like, "Oh, it'd be so interesting to do that, but how could we prioritize

01:42:40.640 | that over all?" I've never been to all these amazing other prefectures and islands even.

01:42:46.720 | We've stayed so central. Gosh, I feel like there is an infinite more Japan for us to see.

01:42:52.480 | The fact that you feel the same way after 20 years makes me feel like it'll just be on the

01:42:58.400 | rotation constantly. It's probably the country we've been to the most, other than, of course,

01:43:03.920 | where we live. Any other final thoughts, tips, things that you have on your notes

01:43:10.720 | that maybe we should have said earlier but didn't, that are worth sharing?

01:43:15.920 | Um, I think we're pretty...

01:43:18.080 | I have a couple random ones.

01:43:20.560 | Okay, go. Yeah.

01:43:22.320 | One, shopping is fantastic, but if you are in any way very tall in the U.S.,

01:43:31.440 | it is a very interesting experience. I think I'm like a 2XL. I couldn't find any shoes,

01:43:38.160 | and pants fit me like capris, and I'm only six feet tall. I would say keep that in mind when

01:43:44.720 | shopping because it can be a difficult experience if you fall. My brother-in-law basically couldn't

01:43:51.280 | buy anything because he was so tall. So that was one on the general side.

01:43:56.800 | And then we didn't talk at all about Osaka. But I would say, as you mentioned before we

01:44:03.920 | started recording, it's known as the food city, but the entire country is a food country. So

01:44:08.960 | you don't necessarily need to go there and go out of your way. But if you are there,

01:44:13.600 | um, fantastic okonomiyaki. I believe Osaka is kind of known for it. That's a thing to hit up

01:44:21.520 | there. And there's a bar in Osaka called Bible Club, which was one of the coolest kind of like

01:44:26.400 | speakeasy-ish bars I've ever been to. And I'd put that on your list.

01:44:31.040 | I would also just add that this is maybe something that you don't want to hear.

01:44:38.000 | It is the best place to just indulge in the joy of exploration. And it can be really hard

01:44:46.240 | for FOMOists. But you're not going to go wrong. You can go to New York City and go wrong.

01:44:54.480 | You could end up at an olive garden by accident. You know what I mean?

01:44:58.080 | Japan is such a good place to, you know, I always want to tell readers of my guidebooks,

01:45:06.160 | you know, go to Ebisu Station in Tokyo and go to Ebisu Yokocho. You can Google it. You'll find

01:45:13.040 | where it is. It is like a little kind of street foodie indoor area. And just pick one of the

01:45:20.960 | stalls. You're going to see they all cook one thing. What's the thing that looks delicious to

01:45:25.440 | you? Rather than hyper-focusing on the one place that you have to go, there are tens of thousands

01:45:32.720 | of restaurants to choose from. So many of them are incredible. It's such a great destination

01:45:37.840 | to come home and say, "I found this place." You get to have a little bit of ownership over your

01:45:43.200 | own experience. Certainly talk to your friends about the things that they've done. Certainly

01:45:46.880 | go to the places that we're recommending here. But take the opportunity to add serendipity into

01:45:52.400 | your schedule. It's the best country to do it. I love that recommendation. Half of the

01:45:57.520 | recommendations I have are just places we randomly found. Certainly, the rest of them might be things

01:46:04.560 | that we found in books or on tabloid or anything. The one last thing I'm going to ask you is,

01:46:11.200 | because someone wrote in and asked about Naoshima Island, do you have any thoughts on

01:46:15.600 | visiting there? The Satoshi Inland Sea has a lot of different islands. If you dip into the history

01:46:25.360 | of how that all came about, it's really fascinating. It's a really compelling

01:46:30.080 | conservation project to redevelop a destination that was deemed undesirable.

01:46:35.920 | Rather than just having a pit stop, I would recommend going to a variety of the different

01:46:45.680 | islands in that area. It's a really upcoming destination, not just because of all the art

01:46:53.440 | that's there, but new and interesting hotels are being built. There's a big push to keep

01:47:00.160 | populations in smaller places and not have everyone move to Tokyo or Osaka. There's a

01:47:06.400 | lot of government money that's being spent, and that is one of the destinations that's continuing

01:47:11.280 | to grow. I would expand your holiday there rather than it just being a beat.

01:47:18.080 | I haven't been there, so that's yet one more thing to put on the list for the next trip,

01:47:23.840 | which, if we're going to try to do it without kids, is going to be shorter than we wanted

01:47:28.080 | or farther away in the future. This has been amazing. As I think to the future of episodes

01:47:35.920 | like this, I'm going to start to wonder whether it makes sense to try to do a country. It was

01:47:41.040 | always a gamble whether we do countries or cities. I appreciate you indulging in this crazy idea.

01:47:47.120 | Obviously, you've written blog posts, articles, stories, guidebooks all about Japan.

01:47:53.680 | Where can people stay on top of everything you're doing and everything you're up to?

01:47:59.280 | I write for a variety of different publications. I keep an archive of those articles at

01:48:04.880 | BrandonPresser.com. I'm active on my Instagram, shooting real-time photos of the destinations

01:48:11.440 | that I'm in. My handle is @BrandPress, the first five letters of my first name and last name.

01:48:16.720 | You can find all of my stories on Japan in every publication from Travel & Leisure, Bloomberg,

01:48:23.360 | Cognizant Traveler, The Daily Beast, and so forth. I'll send them your way so that you can have a look.

01:48:29.680 | That's awesome! We'll put some of those in the show notes. I asked Brandon what would

01:48:32.960 | make this a huge win for him for coming on for an hour. And on the recording mark,

01:48:37.600 | we're almost at two. And he said, "You know what? I post a lot of cool stuff on Instagram. I'd love

01:48:41.440 | more people to see that." So if you're listening, go check out his Instagram. If you like to be

01:48:46.320 | inspired by awesome photos of travels, give him a follow. And if you want to hear some crazy stories,

01:48:52.080 | when we had him on last time, we talked about his book, about the wild pirate craziness of

01:48:58.960 | the history of the Pitcairn Islands. Go back and listen to our episode. We not only talked about

01:49:03.840 | traveling like a local and not just a tourist and some crazy other things about travel,

01:49:08.400 | but we talked about some of the crazy stories from that. It's an awesome book.

01:49:11.680 | Definitely check that out too. Brandon, thank you for staying on for so long and being here today.

01:49:17.360 | It was my pleasure. There's so much fun.

Planning the Best Japan Trip Ever with Brandon Presser

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