Going to Japan had been one of my dreams since I was in high school and just recently, I was able to fulfill it :D. It all started when I had this little Yahoo! Messenger chat with Fanny, one of my friends who was taking her Master degree in Japan.  We had this joke that she goes there so that my choice of countries to go traveling to will expand, so after our totally unrelated chat, she told me again, “When will you visit me here in Japan?” I don’t know what had gotten into me then but I suddenly felt motivated to go. So I promised her, “I’ll look into getting Japan Visa and travel companion, if all goes well, I’d go visit you next month.”

That being said, I started to look at my options on flights to Japan since it would be, without a doubt, the biggest portion of my expense. After some browsing around the net, I found that the cheapest flight I could get was with Malaysia Airlines, that being 5-star airlines and all I was set on booking it but I had to wait until I got my visa.

So, the second hurdle was to get the visa. Contrary to my believe, getting Japan visa is not hard at all. You’ll just have to provide the embassy with all the documents stated here or here (in English). The only tricky part in my experience was to get the flight travel itinerary but it turned out to be very easy. You just have to go to your local travel agent and ask for flight booking (since it’s only a booking, you don’t have to pay for it if you don’t confirm it), you don’t even have to worry if finally you would use another airlines on a totally different date when going to Japan.

The process itself is very, very fast. I was amazed by how efficient the embassy worked. When I went to the Japanese Embassy (it’s located beside the EX building, FYI) to apply for my visa, I had help from the embassy staff to sort all the documents. After that I had to wait only for 10 minutes before my number showed up and submit my documents. Four working days later, I went to the embassy and collect my approved visa. The visa itself costs 320,000 IDR, but if you are still a student, you just have to submit your student card along with your other documents and hopefully it would be free of charge (it would be better if you have a letter from your school/university stating that you are still studying there).

My Japan Visa 😀

Okay, after visa, the next thing to do was to book my flight. As I said earlier, I opted to use Malaysia Airlines but because the schedule on the itinerary I got from the website wasn’t really good (I would had had 7 hr+ layover at KLIA at night!) so I tried going to Panorama Tours which located at Plaza Senayan. Thankfully, they were able to give me  a much better itinerary (around 2 hr+ layover plus I could be in the same flight with Ryan, my friend who was working at Singapore) with the same price so I booked and confirmed my ticket there.

Since I was going to Japan without following a tour, I had to devise my own itinerary and actually this was such a fun part! For those of you who want to go to Japan without following a tour, here I list some websites which hopefully would help you:

1. Hostelworld – this is the website you should go to if you want to get cheap accommodation in Japan or practically anywhere else in the world. I personally got around 3,000 yen per person per night   for a private room which I believe really cheap considering the high cost of living in Japan. Another websites you could go to is Agoda (though this one is on another level) or HostelBookers.

2. Japan Guide – this is a must-visit website if you want to devise your own itinerary. It has sightsee informations as well as how to get in and get out plus some cultural advises in Japan. For everything else not covered here, you could just google them out (though I guarantee it would not be much)

3. Hyperdia – a fantastic website to simulates your journey (with train, mainly) around Japan. You could just enter your starting point and destination and it would give you the proposed itinerary.

For everything else, google is really your friend :D.

So, after browsing around and devise my itinerary, I found out that it would be cheaper if I get a Japan Rail Pass (more info here) rather than buying tickets separately. The Japan Rail Pass costs 28,300 Yen for 7-day free ride around Japan and can only be bought outside Japan. At Jakarta, you can buy one of these at JALan Tour which located on Kyoei Prince Building at Jl.Jend.Sudirman. What you will get, though, is just an exchange order like this:

Exchange Order

Don’t worry, once in Japan, you can exchange it for the real Japan Rail Pass which looks like this:

Cover

The Inside

And you could specify the first day it would be used (not necessarily the day you exchange it, which is quite handy)

Well basically that’s all the preparation I needed. Visa, Flight Ticket, Japan Rail Pass, Itinerary, and oh, don’t forget to exchange your money into Yen since Japan, despite being such a modern country, is mainly run by cash money. You’d have a hard time there if you rely on your Credit/Debit Card.