Show of hands, who has ever traveled with their family? Pretty much everybody? It’s different from traveling with friends, isn’t it? Whether you’re driving a few hours down the road or traveling around the world, each family trip is its own unique blend of fun, chaos, frustration, and togetherness.
Now, picture all those family trips, and merge it with memories of when your family comes to visit you at home. Have you ever moved to a new city and then acted as your family’s tour guide when they came to see you? Great—now imagine that you made a really big deal out of this city for a long time. You read books, you watched movies, you even studied a completely new language because you were so into this place. You talked about it a lot, even though maybe nobody else was particularly interested. Let’s call that place Japan (my city was Tokyo, but obviously yours might be different). Can you picture it? Now your family is coming to visit and they want you to show them around. Feel that mixture of pride and panic? What are you going to do? How is this going to work?
It’s been about three years now since this happened to me, but I still remember plenty of tidbits of wisdom from my own experience. I was studying abroad in Tokyo when my grandparents, mom, and great-aunt flew over for a ten day adventure in Japan, traveling from Tokyo to Hakone, Kanazawa, Kyoto and back, from March 6 to 16, 2011 (yes, during the Tohoku earthquake). Looking back, I can think of two major considerations that you need to think of when you do this.
1. Taking care of them (especially if they don’t know anything about the country) and…
2. Taking advantage of their company.
Let’s get started by looking at the first one.
Taking Care Of Your Family
When it comes to taking care of your family, there are three main things to think about. Food, shelter, transportation, and weather. Pretty basic, right? Still, there’s a lot of little things you have to keep in mind. It’s your family’s first trip, after all, and with the new location they may not be thinking about these things in quite the right way, so it’s your job to think for them!
Feeding Your Family:
If you’re from a culture that’s very different from Japan, food might end up being the biggest challenge. Not to mention each family member will have different tastes. My family, for example, is not fond of seafood, which makes choice in Japan pretty limiting. Maybe your family has a vegetarian or (God forbid) a vegan. Japan’s vegetarian/vegan scene is near nonexistent. There are certain Japanese foods I’ve found to be generally acceptable (at least to a Western palette) includes:
- Noodles (ramen, udon, soba)
- Donburi (a bowl of rice with some kind of meat on top)
- Tempura
- Curry (which is sweeter than Indian curry and kind of similar to stew).
Going beyond Japanese cuisine, you can usually find “Western” options like Italian or steak restaurants, although it will be fairly different from what your family is used to. In the bigger cities, you may recognize some Western chain restaurants (and of course, that includes McDonalds).
Quick Tips:
- Be careful with the curry restaurants—they leave a strong impression. My mother is convinced that curry is all we ate.
- Sometimes Japanese-language menus have different prices than English ones, so if you can read Japanese you may want to get at least one Japanese menu.
- If you do, watch out for the katakana. I accidentally ordered raw beef on the trip because I didn’t connect タルタル (tarutaru) with tartare (raw beef). I ate it anyway, and now it’s a family joke.
- Convenience stores usually have something for everyone. It’s a good way to start the day for breakfast, plus they can marvel at how not sketchy things are.
If you really want to impress your family with “weird” Japanese food (it’s not weird, but your family will maybe think it is), okonomiyaki is very foreigner-friendly. Call it a Japanese Pizza or a Japanese Pancake (I’ve heard it both ways), it has a simple base of flour, egg, and shredded lettuce and is topped with mayonnaise and a sweet glaze, and you can add pretty much anything you want to it. For bonus points, make sure the restaurant has table grills so you can watch a waiter cook it in front of you and/or make it yourself. Everyone can order something different and cut their pancake into pieces to share. I took my family to a restaurant like this in Shibuya on their second night, and they talk about it to this day!
If your family has dietary restrictions, first be aware that a lot of Japanese soy sauces are made with gluten, and they are used in a lot of dishes. Restaurants and waitstaff may not be very familiar with gluten allergies, so people with sensitivity to gluten should exercise their own judgement when eating out. Vegetarians may need to do the same, because I’ve seen waiters recommend “肉なし” (niku nashi–no meat) dishes that had fish or even processed meat. “Niku nashi” ramen or other soups may have beef or fish broth. (Nobody’s trying to trick anyone, it’s just that not everyone shares the same idea of what constitutes meat). You can usually find more tips for working around these issues in travel guides and on blogs like NeverEndingVoyage.com.
Where To Stay:
As for hotels, keep in mind the age and health of the people you’re traveling with! My friends and I had a blast at a ryoukan in Nikkou, but you should probably avoid Japanese-style rooms if you are traveling with older people. If they didn’t grow up sleeping on the floor, it will probably be too hard on their backs and joints now. For the same reason, you may want to be aware of how close your hotel is to public transportation to avoid long walks.
Quick Tips
- You may want to double-check whether your proposed hotel is meant for business travelers, particularly if you’re sharing rooms. We ended up with a salaryman-type hotel in Kyoto and it was noticeably more cramped than our other hotels.
- If you’re traveling with younger family members then capsule hotels may be a lot of fun (for one or two nights). Keep in mind that the bath may be shared. Some people aren’t going to be comfortable with that.
While I like to think that a hotel is just a place to sleep between activities, there’s a couple of general pointers I’d like to throw out there. First, Japanese hotels tend to be smaller than their Western counterparts. Second, hotels that come with breakfast are awesome. Usually (but not always) the breakfasts are quite nice. Third, in general, hotels near main stations are going to be pricey when compared to their quality. If you stay at a hotel next to a station that isn’t the biggest in the city, or if you are able to stay somewhere a little further from the station, prices are going to drop down a bit. Just depends on how much money you want to spend!
How To Travel:
You can travel in Japan by foot, bicycle, car, taxi, or airplane… but train is by far the easiest and most efficient when it’s available (and it’s available a lot). Foreign tourists can and should buy the Japan Rail Pass, which offers unlimited passage on JR trains, including the shinkansen (bullet train) for 7, 14, or 21 consecutive days. There is one caveat, though: It can only be purchased outside of Japan and is invalid for non-tourist visas, so if you are studying abroad or working in Japan, no JR Pass for you. Use the online route planner at Hyperdia.com to figure out which train you want and what transfers you may need to take, then make your free seat reservations at the JR office in any major train station. The best guide I’ve seen for the JR Pass can be found here.
There are also going to be times where it may be worth taking a taxi. Grandma can’t walk as much as she used to, after all. Split between several family members the cost isn’t too terrible, though it is definitely going to be more expensive than taking the train. Taxis are everywhere, but just make sure you know where you want to go. A surprising number of taxi drivers seem to not know their cities very well. That being said, taxis are plentiful. If you find them lacking, though (maybe you’re visiting someplace pretty inaka aka the countryside) you can find taxi phone numbers inside of phone booths or you can simply ask the clerk at a convenience store to call a taxi service for you. Make sure to buy a bottle of tea or an onigiri as a way to say arigato.
How To Pack:
My grandparents are well-traveled and usually take one big bag for the two of them on their trips, so they were a little skeptical when I told them to bring a carry-on sized bag for each of them. It’s easier to maneuver on the shinkansen, subway, and buses, and lighter to carry (or wheel) if and when you need to walk part of the way to the hotel. Not to mention the crowded subway and train stations – A giant bag like that will just get in the way. I think they admitted I was right when we had to walk up a mountain in Hakone.
As for what to pack, the only special advice I gave my family was to bring their own medications (you can get things like basic painkillers in Japan, of course, but the dosages are different) hygiene products, and to not worry too much about forgetting anything else, because you can probably buy it in Japan. They were seriously worried when I told them a lot of shrines, temples, and other sites don’t have toilet paper in their bathrooms though, and packed a good supply of personal tissues (but if you spend a lot of time in a big city like Tokyo, you’ll probably pick up a collection of free personal tissues anyway).
I also recommended to my family to bring a little less than they think they need. There are washers and dryers in most hotels. Plus, if you find yourself running out of tshirts or underwear, there’s always a Uniqlo nearby to get you through a couple more days. You’re also going to surely bring back a lot of things too. That means extra space in your suitcase will help your family to accommodate the purchases made along the way. Keeping everything in that one carry-on suitcase will make those mountain treks all the more pleasant.
Seasons & Weather:
Finally, think about the weather! This will really depend on where your family is from and what they’re used to, but I’ll try my best. My mom, for example, refuses to ever travel to Japan again in March because it was “too cold,” so maybe she’d like something a little warmer. That being said, your family may be from Greenland, so avoiding August may be a good idea (you may be shocked at hot hot and humid Japan can get). Here are some general tips about the weather. Please adjust accordingly to your family’s preferences.
January, February, March: New Years is a lot of fun and something your family may enjoy. That being said, it’s pretty cold. But, if your family can deal with the cold, it also happens to be one of the driest, sunniest times of the year for Japan. Plus, after New Years tourist spots are less crowded. It’s a win-win unless you can only do warmer weather. The Northern half of Japan is probably getting some snow. Hokkaido is probably buried in it.
April: Cherry blossom season is happening. There’s a little more rain, but in general it’s pretty sunny (though still kind of cold). It’s warmer than January-March, for sure, but only just by a little. The end of April is Golden Week, so if you don’t like crowds and lots of people traveling, avoid this time.
May: The beginning of May is also Golden Week. Same thing applies: Lots of people are traveling, lots of places are crowded. That being said, after Golden Week everyone goes back to their regular lives and the weather is pretty nice. Not too hot, not too cold. Slightly rainier, but not super rainy (unless you’re down in Okinawa, then expect some rain).
June, July, August: Welcome to rainy season. It’s going to be overcast and rainy, so this might be something worth avoiding. June/July is a nice time to visit Hokkaido. After the rainy season (early or mid June) it becomes hot and humid. Like, really hot and humid. July and August are not good times for people who don’t like heat and humidity. Note that typhoon season really gets going in August.
September, October: These two months tend to consist of more typhoons. It’s not constant typhoon after typhoon, but they can put a damper on your travel plans. Usually by mid or late October the typhoons stop, making October a nice time to travel (once the humidity breaks, anyways). It’s hard to know exactly when this will happen, but second half of October is a pretty good bet.
November, December: Like January – March, these months are fairly dry and not rainy. The temperature is usually a little warmer in November too, making it a nice time to travel. Some warm-weather loving families won’t be too pleased with the weather, but the lack of rain and the lack of freezing temperatures make it a pretty safe bet to travel. December is more of the same, though colder. It does lead up to New Years though, which is fun!
For a full breakdown of weather, month-by-month, be sure to visit Japan-Guide’s When To Travel page.
For my family, when they came in March it was too cold for them (thank goodness they didn’t come November-February!). There was still snow at the time, and waiting in line to get into museums and other tourist attractions wasn’t their idea of fun. We even rode some tourist buses in a full circle, waiting for the lines to die down (then we got out and went inside the museum).
Taking Advantage Of Your Family (Not Just Paying For Things)
Photo Jim G
Before my family came to visit, I had already been to Kanazawa and Kyoto, so I can say this having experienced both sides: while you and your friend may try to play it cool on your backpacking trip (fooling no one, by the way), when you’re with your family, there is no way to look less like a tourist. Give up and embrace it. There are lots of embarrassingly touristy things to do that can actually be pretty fun.
First of all, embrace the tours and tour guides, in whatever form they come in. In Nara my friend and I avoided the volunteers at Nara Station out of a mix of bashfulness and youthful desire to somehow seem less touristy. My grandparents possessed neither sentiment and off we went, trailing behind an energetic English-speaking retiree who literally took us to every temple and shrine in the city (apparently they form a convenient circuit, which my friends and I never realized on that first trip).
Besides seeing even more temples, I learned more about the history of each, found out how to make the deer bow, and for some reason took a picture with a mother and her newborn son in traditional christening attire. In Kyoto, my friends and I explored the geisha district, but missed a lot of key information and major sites that was later covered on the walking tour my grandparents signed us up for. I’m not saying my friends and I did it wrong the first time; I’m just saying it can be easier to do these potentially corny or embarrassing things with family.
It turns out that a lot of Japanese people are very proud of their culture and keen to show it off to interested tourists. Once I started going around with my pack of relatives, a surprising number of people came over to chat or went out of their way to show us something interesting. One woman approached us in a public park and asked if we would be interested in seeing traditional Japanese wedding clothes—her son and his fiancé would soon be coming to take their engagement photos. And frankly, as awkward as I found the offer at the time, it was pretty much the only chance I had during my year in Japan to see something like that. I even found out that the groom was an alumni of the school I was studying at.
What I’m trying to say is, even though my family’s enthusiasm and eagerness (for some reason) embarrassed me, their openness and interest appealed to a lot of people we met and gave me a chance to see and experience a side of Japan I didn’t see as an exchange student. Although acting as a 24-hour tour guide sometimes felt like herding cats, traveling with my family was a fun way to rediscover Japan and show them what the big deal was. And despite a looming nuclear meltdown overshadowing the last half of the trip, everybody still says it was one of the best they’ve ever been on.