I'll be going to Tokyo with my girlfriend and a friend for the next week. This will be my first time outside of America, though my partner has significant travel experience. What advice would you have to make my experience the best one possible?
Also, if anyone in Japan wants to meet up, send me an email.
It's a really interesting cultural experience because it's such a big part of japan's history. It's also a bit unnerving because it's split between men and women because there are no clothes allowed and for me, I was alone with a very limited grasp of the language. People were really nice and mostly curious about me and how I knew about onsen's (seemed like a big secret to me at the time).
If/when I go back to Japan I would actually make it the entire reason for the trip; aka, travelling around from one onsen to the next.
as a visitor to japan, getting a temp. cell phone seemed ridiculously hard. there are no prepaid SIMs/phones; you can only do a rental. and no matter what plan you get, outgoing calls will be ~90yen/minute.
so: after two days in tokyo, i wound up renting an iphone (3GS), and it was immensely helpful. having maps + gps was really fantastic. i installed and used skype pretty often - it breaks up a lot over 3G, but again, it's far better than paying 90yen/minute. i highly recommend this company: http://jcrcorp.com. i have no association with them, but they were a pleasure to work with. (also note: an android phone may work better, as iphones are on softbank which is a newer and less well established carrier).
i also found that free wi-fi seemed to be very, very rare. you can find some coffee shops with wi-fi, but you have to buy a ticket at a nearby FamilyMart for ~500yen/day.
do you know any of the language? if the answer is no, it's probably too late now; but i found that using the japanese keyboard on iphone (just kana) was very helpful to mapping stuff out.
it's worth spending a few minutes to understand the addressing system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system. there are no street names, and it's generally very different from the US.
finally, i assume you already know this, but tokyo is not cheap; be prepared to spend a lot of money, and enjoy yourself.
feel free to contact me off-list.
Tokyo is weird in that there aren't really a bunch of specific tourist destinations. It's more like a non-stop hallucinatory experience.
This is what I'm hoping for. Awesome.
http://kylelibra.com/category/japan-trip/
If you have any more specific questions, let me know. Tokyo is cool, but I wouldn't spend the entire trip there if you can avoid it.