JAPAN preparation

Good day everyone! 
So, today is thursday 1 july! 

Last weekend I was at a good friend of mine with whom I am flying to japan this year.
We fly in the end of this month to middle of august.
We stay in Tokyo for several days and change then to Osaka! Because hotels are utter expensive, we stay in two host families. Here is the link where we booked our host families!
It's pretty easy and I like the idea of staying at someones home to get to know the culture even more and to be not lost in the foreign country!

We already have booked our flight tickets a while ago. 
Due to the fact I am working in a travel agency, we got a little discount on the tickets! 
We are flying from

• Hannover HAJ to Frankfurt FRA with Lufthansa (1 hour)
• Frankfurt FRA to Tokyo Narita NRT with Lufthansa (10.55 hours)

And back it goes

• Osaka KIX to Tokyo Narita NRT with All Nippon Airways (1.15 hours flight)
• Tokyo Narita NRT to Frankfurt FRA with Lufthansa (11.40 hours flight)

I will later on post some tips for such long flights and how you probably gonna survive them well!

Sooo... 

I will actually talk today a little about the thing, I got today.

The japanese rail pass!

We booked it over this site and everything went pretty well.

It came, as it was said to, with a FEDEX package today:

Whats all in? 

4 railpasses.

Why 4?

Both of us have two. 

One for over all japan (we got the one for 7 days)

And than one for the Kansai area (we took the one for 4 days)

Thats not all, of course not.

There was also the bill and we paid for everything 496 € (free shipping, yeay!)

What do we do with these tickets? 

We can not just jump into trains there when we arrive. What we need to do is to go to an JR Office and they will 'set our tickets free'. 

But we will take the whole japan pass in the end of our Tokyo stay, since we are going to use a Suica Card in Tokyo and since it only lasts 7 days (in a row, no matter if you didn't go by train at one day in your durration).

What else do we have?

Because it was for free and we found it suuuper helpful, we also wanted to have a travel guide.

This is what it looks from the outside:

And you find this on the inside:

This will be really good! 

We have an overall map with the trackage from japan.

The book is seperated in the different areas, you also have a map of the area which can be also helpful when you bought a pass for a specific area! 

And for each area you have, let me look it shortly up.. Every trainstation you can go to with the pass. For Tokyo you even have the Yamanote Line printed with each station! 

There are also exampels for journeys from one to another station (seen in the 4th pic) on the left side and on the right side you have suggestions where you can stay overnight and eat with the opening times, adress, telephonenumber and internetadress.

I would recommend getting this guide if it's your first time, because it was for free (I will say it again... YEEAAY)

But there was more in the FEDEX package.

A map with timetables!

So you have this huge map (once again an overall map) on the back and tons of timetables on the inside. 

The timetable is seperated again in areas. You have than for example KYOTO to OSAKA with all the times set. If you want a photo of that also, leave me a comment!

And last but not least, we got a sight seeing passport to japan.

So it's basically just how to use the Railpass, which trains we can take and a little information to the train.

What else to say? 
We both are super excited about the trip. It is my first long haul flight after... 4 years and Arisa's (My friend who is comming with me) first. 

This post will stay in english. But if you need any translation into german, please tell me and I will do it when I have time!

You can leave me a comment anyway if you have a further question or a suggestion about the blog.

And I will see you again in a minute when I post the guide how to survive a long haul fly!