Fat and Broke

I really thought my kids would do okay. They like noodles, rice, and edamame... but all they ate were POTATOES. Just kidding... but really not. I was shocked at the sheer amount of french fries at restaurants. Even Sushi Kara, the sushi conveyor belt restaurant, had french fries. Mornings Mornings are difficult because there really isn't a lot of options open before 11am. If you can, I would opt for a hotel that offers hotel breakfast or buffets. This really helped because a lot of them open as early as 6:30am.  Some family restaurants are open pretty early so check them out too! See the lunch options below for more info. For example, Royal Host in Shinjuku opens at 8am. For the jet lagged, a great option are the conbinis or convenience stores like 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, or Lawrences. Many of them are open 24 hours and most offer a wide array of snacks and food. Our kids' breakfast mostly consisted of fruit, which I was okay with since this may have been the only fiber th

If you've never been to Japan, then you need to know that CASH IS KING. Yes, there are places that take credit card but cash is still predominantly used throughout Japan. From buying SUICA to eating at a small restaurant, cash is still the only option you have at certain places. That being said, my suggestion is this.  Bring a small amount of money to exchange at the airport. The exchange rate at the airport was actually what I thought the exchange rate was at the moment (I don't remember what the rate was at Narita but the actual exchange rate when I arrived was 135 yen to $1 USD). And they didn't charge me any fee for exchanging so I was a bit confused if I missed something. Even if it was slightly under the current rate (ex. Narita was 130 yen to usd versus the actual 135 yen to usd), I don't think that the fee was anymore than 0.037% of what I exchanged. The only thing was that it took a while but mostly from people who weren't paying attention and not filling

Do I get a JR PASS? This is a debate I have every time I go to Japan. I'll make another post about JR Pass for those that don't know what it is. For the first time, I decided not to get a JR Pass. This takes a lot of thought and planning to know if it's worth buying the JR Pass and only you will know if it's worth the costs. Let's look at my situation for example. For simplicity sake, I will only refer to  https://www.jrailpass.com/ and the rates that I found here since it was one of the cheaper options. The current rates are: 7-day $229 for each Adults 14-day $364 for each Adults 21-day $465 for each Adults There's no way for me to know how many small trips I'll be taking so I'm only going to be looking at my main train fares. It's hard to get an accurate cost of things so everything is just an estimate at this point. Trip for 2 adults Google Estimate

smartEX Shinkansen  I just discovered smartEX and I'm ecstatic. Not only am I able to gauge pricing to help plan my trip, I can also pre-book seats without any worries! As a planner, this was so helpful in making sure that my plans don't get derailed from overbooked trains or confusing ticket machines. Note: You can only look at this during normal business hours IN JAPAN. Between 11:30pm-5:30am JST, you can't see the pricing or book actual seats. When you are looking at the trains, there should be an orange DISCOUNT that shows up for anything that has a reduced price. Once you click on the train, you will be able to see which discount it is. The app is pretty good at allowing you to click on the question mark to help explain what it means. Otherwise this page also explains the differences . Note: compare the prices still. Some of the "discounts" is just for the GREEN car, which is kind of like business class for the bullet train. If you weren't planning on us

Reservations open at 6pm JST, about 31 days before. https://www.pokemoncenter-online.com/cafe/en/reservation.php Current Time in Tokyo I got some amazing tips for getting a Pokemon Cafe reservation so I'm sharing it here. Pokemon Cafe reservations open at 6pm JST, 31 days before! This is great because you are not competing with everyone else who might not even want to go on the same day as you. BUT you are competing with people who want to go on the same day as you, so you need to be QUICK! TIP #1. Scope it out first! Go to the reservation page and take a look around to familiarize yourself with the page. You don't want to be looking at this for the first time when you're trying to book. TIP #2. Turn off the Google auto-translate to English.  The Japanese version is pretty straightforward and the translation messes up the calendar. The first month is fine but since you're booking out 31 days out, you want the second month. I'm trying to book May 21st here. You c

Reservations open at 6pm JST on the 10th of each month! Tokyo, Japan To get an idea before reservations open, click on HAKATA and choose 1 person. You'll probably see some openings (circles) to get yourself acquainted with the form. Tokyo Kirby Cafe Reservations Reservations for the next month open at 6pm JST on the 10th (May reservations opened at April 10, 6pm JST.) I signed on right before it turned 6pm JST to check the website. Thankfully it wasn't crashing like other websites (cough Ghibli Museum!) but there are some things I wish I knew beforehand.  There is a dropdown menu on the top right that allows you to change from Japanese to English. This is helpful if you are just looking at the website but it defaults back to Japanese every time you refresh.  EVERY SECOND COUNTS. JUST SKIP THE ENGLISH . Remember how I said you can change it to English? I feel like I wasted a good amount of time doing that... Really it was just a couple of seconds but by the time I got into