Trip to Japan thread.

For anyone in the GTA looking to travel to Japan and HK, there's currently a deal for about $621 CAD roundtrip for September and October

http://yyzdeals.com/toronto-to-hong-kong-499-cad-roundtrip-including-taxes-add-japan-for-122

>>9606740
Go to tru nail, there are various salons around Tokyo. You can pretty much bring them any picture of a design you want and they'll do it for you - however they are really popular so you'll have to book your appointment either before you leave or right at the beginning of your trip.

>general tips?
- If you plan on making two or more trips by shinkansen, get the JR pass for a week and plan your long distance trips then (it pays itself off just going from tokyo to osaka return, also many lines within osaka and kyoto are JR lines)
- Try to find accomodation near a station on the JR yamanote line, makes life easy getting to all the hot spots such as ikebukuro, shinjuku, shibuya, harajuku and akiba are all on this line.
- Be anal about planning and research, honestly its a really big disappointment when you wanted to do something and then found out you didn't have enough time/got the opening wrong hours/cant get there. Map out your exact routes and where everything is for where you are going *before* you're there, even if you have wifi. Makes things go much much smoother.
- July is summer sale season. If you can plan your trip to be there in the last weekend of July for the la foret grand bazaar sale! It's absolute mayhem but there are so many good deals, and often brands will release lolita special sets in this time.

>where was your favorite spot to visit?
Disneyland and Disneysea were definitely the best, but some other highlights: deer park in Nara, dotonbori river in Osaka, La foret Harajuku, yokohama

>are the girls at the shops in shibuya109 really that big of bitches to baka gaijin?
They were quite cold compared to what I had become accustomed to in Japan, but that could be to do with the fact that I wasn't dressed up or looking particularly nice (too hot to bother) plus it was during the summer sales - they're very busy and probably deal with a lot of shit. Only remember one experience with a shop girl being more than unenthusiastic to serve me.

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Someone was talking about being vegan in the last thread, apparently Gaijinpot released a manual on that and it's pretty cheap, might be worth it.

>>9608303
Very helpful, thanks!

Does anyone have suggestions for or know a really good animal cafe in Tokyo? I keep looking into them but many seem like either they're just pay a lot of money to pet an animal with no food, or they do serve food but the animals look like they live rather miserable lives. Heck, even some of the just pet ones seem a bit hard to agree with. Like, me and my friends would absolutely love to visit an owl cafe, but all the ones I'm finding seem so...awful.

Cat cafes unfortunately are a no-go since I'm very allergic. We did find a hedgehog cafe that seems good and lets you at least bring food/drinks in. Rabbits or owls would be what we're most aiming for, but I realize that at least with the owl cafes that it'll be hard to find one that treats them semi-decently.

(Bunny Island is too far from our itinerary, sadly)

Have any of you been to chantegram? Is it hard getting an appointment and getting across what you want in English?

I don't remember if I asked this in any of the previous threads but I'll take the chance and ask again. Many of you said that you'll get treated better in stores if you wear j-fashion. But what if you wear (western/traditional) goth? Anybody has experience how you'll get treated in general and in stores that sell alt fashion?

>>9608403
Not that anon but that's really helpful. Have been put of going to Japan because it seems like such a pain to find vegetarian food.

>>9611134
I don't know but you should go to jgoth and jpunk shops because they are dying out

>>9606740
If you are into lolita it might be nice to go to the salon at Abilletage, they do hair too

>>9608887
>hedgehog cafe

Oh my god this makes me so happy.

>>9611134
You will be treated better if you don't blatantly look like a tourist. Any kind of alternative fashion is good to wear.

>>9608887
Japan doesn't really have a concept of animal welfare like the West does, unfortunately - all of the cafes don't really treat their animals well in the way we would expect. If you have time it's better to go to Nara (deer!), fox village, etc.

>>9611292
It's called HARRY in Roppongi, and with how good the site's english is and their hiring of english speakers it looks like the most westerner friendly cafe I've seen. Plus they make sure to break down how they take care of the hedgehogs which makes me confident that they're treated as well as cafe animals can be.

>>9611477
Yeah, it's really unfortunate, I hope the Olympics being so big will bring about some change. I adore the animal cafes but seeing a huge number of owls crammed in a small room tethered to a poll all day while tourists yell is just depressing. (But surely there's a bunny cafe that's good to them somewhere...)

We are visiting Nara for a part of a day, but squeezing Kyoto into 1.5 days with 0.5 spent in Nara we really don't have time to go to Bunny Island, sob, Fox Village even moreso sadly. Maybe next time.

>>9611577
The olympics usually doesn't have that effect