Kansai - planning to get around

H continuing the blog here...

One of the hardest things about travelling in a foreign country is figuring out what the best way to get around is.  When I looked initially at the transportation maps for Osaka and the surrounding Kansai region, my eyes just boggled.  It looked like a tangle mess of coloured lines running in every direction, with a minor exception of a nice big circular loop line in Osaka.  Needless to say, we needed planning.

One of the things about most transit systems in Asia is that you pay per ride and you pay by distance.  So finding the cheapest ride is not necessarily the fastest ride.  Ideally, we needed to have as little transfers as possible, so finding direct routes is best.  The other major wrinkle is that there are at least 7 different train companies running in the region in and around Osaka.  So once you change from one company to another, you have to pay again.

N did a lot of calculations and recalculations about what combinations would give us the best bang for our buck.  She really poured over the different websites and entered different permutations in a spreadsheet.  She even had to go into the Japanese side of many websites to access trip fare calculators to see what a trip would cost.  I'm very thankful that she has more of a mind for math than I do.

One thing that a lot of people buy before heading to Japan is a JR Rail Pass.  However, we weren't planning to travel outside of the Kansai area and we weren't going to be riding the Shinkansen.  So the JR Rail Pass looked like a waste of money for us.  Especially since there are 6 other rail companies that criss-cross the region.

One thing that we decided to get is the Kansai Thru Pass (or Surutto Pass).  What is wonderful about this pass is that it gives you unlimited travel on 6 of the 7 major train companies in the Osaka area for the duration of the pass.  The pass covers almost all rail except JR Lines.  We had the option of a 2-day or 3-day pass.  The 2-day pass costs ¥3,800 and the 3-day pass costs ¥5,000.  The pass must be purchased at select locations.  If you're flying into Kansai, then it's best to buy it right at the airport.  The Kansai Thru Pass also gives you coupons to use at select locations, like a tourist attraction.  Sometimes you get a small discount or you get a small complimentary gift. These coupons are only good on the days that you are using the pass.

We were planning to be in the Kansai for well over 3 days, so we needed to figure out what else to do about transport on the other days.  We knew we would be spending a lot of time in Osaka itself.  So we looked into getting the Osaka Unlimited Pass.  The Osaka Unlimited Pass has a 1-day version (¥2,000) and a 2-day version (¥2,700). Between the 1-day and 2-day passes, there is more than just the difference in time that you must consider.  The 1-day pass gives you unlimited access to 6 of the 7 major train companies within Osaka's city limits and access to the bus.  The 2-day pass only allows you unlimited access to the Osaka Municipal Subway lines, the New Tram, and the city buses.  So you have to be careful that you know which pass you have before just trying to enter a station.  Just like the Kansai Thru Pass, you can get discounts, or even free admission, to some attractions.  Again, you can only get your discounts on the day(s) that you are using the pass.  Also, the discounts are different depending on whether you have the 1-day or 2-day pass.  The Osaka Unlimited Pass can be purchased at Kansai International Airport or at one of four Osaka Visitors Information Centers.

Confused yet?  I hope not.  The two passes were life-savers.  There was one more pass that we bought when in Kansai and that's the Kyoto City Bus Daypass.  For ¥500, you get unlimited travel on almost all Kyoto City Buses.  After 3 rides on a bus, the day pass will pay for itself.  When N looked at the attractions we wanted to see in Kyoto, she noticed that many of them were not close to the train lines.  However, the buses could bring you really close to the sites.  So for the two days we planned for in Kyoto, N decided that the Kyoto City Bus Daypass was the way to go.  We just had to buy it twice.  The easiest location to get this pass would be at Kyoto Station.  At the station, either purchase the pass at the info centre or at the bus loop's info kiosk.

All right.  With transportation all planned, we ready to head off on our little adventure in Kansai.

Kansai - Preparing to go

Hi, H writing here.

Welcome to N and H's travel blog of our recent 12-day trip to the Kansai region of Japan.  If you have not heard about the Kansai region of Japan, then you're missing out. Kansai is an area in West Japan that is centred around the city of Osaka. It also includes the ancient Japanese capitals of Nara and Kyoto. So there is a lot of history in this area of Japan.  Osaka is also famous for its variety of different food.  So Kansai is a very exciting destination for history buffs and food buffs alike.

We had a lot of work to do before flying off on our vacation.  N did the majority of the research and bookings because we used mostly Chinese and Japanese resources to plan our trip.  So all the kudos have to go to her for the planning.

We love flying Japan Airlines when going to Japan and sought out a travel agency that works with JAL. We found a Vancouver-Osaka package at Silkway Travel for about C$989. After all the extra charges and tax, the final cost was roughly C$1,100 per person for round-trip airfare and 3 nights hotel in Osaka.

However, after our last trip in 2006 to Tokyo, we knew that 3 nights and 4 days would not be enough to experience Japan. So we decided to tack on a lot more days. That way, we would be able to enjoy Japan on our terms and at our pace.

We definitely avoided signing up for any tours. We don't like being herded around from site to site at the direction of a guide.  We purchased a few books to help us on our travels.  Three of the books were in Traditional Chinese.  There was one book that we relied on the most.  It's this pink one shown below.

Sky Publishing HK(Chang Kong Chu Ban) is a popular publisher of trip guides for those who read Traditional Chinese.  The back of the book comes with many testimonies of Hong Kong celebrities.  The one above is actually newer than the copy we had.  We had the 08-09 edition.  There is a newer one available from YesAsia.com that is the 09-10 edition, or you could buy it at the Kinokuniya Bookstore in Seattle like we did.  The Chinese language travel books tend to be more focused on playing, eating and shopping.  Major historic sites are always mentioned, but some of the lesser known sights and museums are often left out.  One great thing about the Chinese travel books, though, is that they have tons of pictures in tons of colour.  You just have to know how to read it.  N is fluent in Chinese and I can read all the location names quite easily.  What's harder for me is reading the descriptions.  I can slog through some of it, but I don't understand everything.

I don't read Chinese as well as English and I wanted to have more a list of historic sites and museums, so I bought a couple of books myself.

Lonely Planet publishes tons of travel guides and thankfully, they had a Kyoto City Guide.  Unfortunately, the only other Japanese City Guide from Lonely Planet is Tokyo.  The Kyoto City Guide is almost strictly focused on Kyoto and its neighbourhoods.  Osaka and some of the neighbouring cities are mentioned in a handful of pages and lacks detail about those places.  There are very few colour pictures, but has a more extensive listing of historic sites and museums that would interest travellers from Western countries more.  One huge limitation of the Lonely Planet guide, though, is that they did not print the Japanese names along with the English place names except on the map legends.  So I had to keep flipping through the pages to match up the Japanese and English names.

I also got another book from Sophia Books on West Hastings (Sophia Books specializes in foreign language books).  Kyoto: Introduced in English & Japanese is a bilingual book printed in Japan, so it was an expensive purchase.  As a travel book, it's not all that useful.  However, it was good for reading up more on the cultural aspects of Kyoto including the difference between the shrines and temples.  It was all in brilliant colour, but perhaps it would have been better if I could have borrowed it from the library instead.  Out of all the books we had, I must say like the maps in this one the best.  Probably because the maps were bilingual in English and Japanese.  Some times I find it easier to know the Kanji name of a place.  Places often only display their names in Japanese and not English. 

We also had to find extra accommodation above and beyond the 3 nights packaged with our airfare.  My wife discovered the Japanese version of hotels.com, Jalan.net, through Chinese travel blogs.  Jalan.net assumes you know a lot of Japanese.  My wife has been learning Japanese, so she ventured on the site and found rooms at a central hotel for 7,300 Yen a night.  That's about C$80 a night.  When I checked hotel.com and other travel sites, the same hotel room was going for over US$100 a night.  So Jalan.net was great, but only because N managed to understand most of the Japanese on the site.

Just before flying off, I also came across a English version of Jalan.net.  Japanican.com is all English and would have been easier for me to book a hotel room if needed.  But since everything was already set by the time I found the site, I did not find use for it.

So we had our air tickets and our rooms all set.  We just had to figure out how to get around.  That was easier said than done, but N did a great job figuring out how to maximize the special tourist passes in Kansai.

to be continued...