Backpacking in Japan

It doesn’t matter how nice the ramen was, don’t leave a tip. Fear not, you won’t be seen as a rude, skint tourist. It’s just not the done thing. Great news, if you’re looking to save money.

How do you learn invaluable tips such as this? Well, that’s another piece of advice worth sharing: go backpacking with a local guide. “Expert adventure leaders will explain the customs and culture,” Georgie Collcutt from our specialist, Oyster Worldwide, explains. “Some examples of this are not to tip, not to eat in public or slurp soup or ramen, don’t cut queues, take your rubbish home with you and bow when greeting or saying goodbye.”

We bow down to this local knowledge. Not only does it save you hidden extras at the end of your bill, but it also saves you from committing a cultural faux-pas.

To the average tourist, Japan doesn’t really scream budget. A single tuna can sell for £1.4 million at Tokyo’s Toyosu Fish Market, and an expensive sushi dinner at one of the capital’s 200-plus Michelin-starred restaurants can set you back a few hundred pounds.

Georgie begs to differ: “The quality of affordable hostels and food is excellent.” Group backpacking trips aren’t just the preserve of the young, either: “The average age is mid to late twenties but people of all ages are welcome as long as they are young at heart. Japan is one of the tours that we would recommend to older participants.” Backpacking in Japan doesn’t mean ‘roughing it’ – or compromising your values. “Affordable and ethically conscious,” Georgie says. If that seems unlikely, hold onto your backpack straps, you’re in for a surprise.

A local guide can help you embrace, rather than avoid, the weirder parts of Japan’s capital. Visitors are often surprised to find out that Tokyo’s streets are safe enough to be toured by go-kart and even more surprised when they’re offered fancy dress to wear while doing so.

Japan’s national sport might be sumo but a local guide will tell you that baseball is the national obsession. There are batting cages across Tokyo where you can switch your shoes and sock twenty balls out of the park for a few hundred yen. Local guides can also help you navigate Buddhist temple visits, like the Sensou-ji temple in Asakusa, Tokyo and the Kotoku-in Temple in Kamakura .

You don’t have to backpack alone. Join a small group trip with 20 travelers and a guide. Trips like this have a very busy itinerary, stuffing in a huge range of activities every day, including evening entertainment. You’ve already got an in-built audience for your karaoke performance.

In 13 days you could hope to spend four days in Tokyo. As you leave the capital you could make a stop in Kamakura, a nearby seaside city, and a stop in Hakone, a mountain town with views across Lake Ashinoko to Mount Fuji. You’ll need four full days to soak up Kyoto, then you can make shorter visits in Hiroshima and Osaka.

You’ll need to be prepared to walk a lot; some of the best things can be seen on foot, whether that’s going deep into Arashiyama’s bamboo forest, or a stroll in Osaka’s Dotombori district, where the neon signs pixelate your night vision.

A proliferation of onsens – natural outdoor baths – have bubbled up around Hakone, using the area’s hot springs as their plumbing. The volcanic valley of Owakudani in the national park is famous for black ‘Hakone eggs’ boiled in the hot springs – you can reach the park via an exciting cable car ride, the ‘Hakone Ropeway’ which passes close over smoking sulphur fields.

There is no tower tall enough to take in the enormity of the world’s largest city, but the view from the Metropolitan Government Building is a good place to start. Afterwards, descend to explore Tokyo’s heterogeneous districts – Harajuka for kawaii fashion, Akihabara for electronics, and Golden Gai for alleyways of nightclubs. And nothing epitomises Tokyo’s density more than Shibuya, the world’s busiest pedestrian crossing.

“Dress into ruin in Kyoto, eat into ruin in Osaka” goes a proverb, but there’s nothing ruinously expensive about Osaka, the ‘kitchen of Japan’, where street food is king. Here you can try takoyaki – improbably light and fluffy balls of octopus and potato, which might make even seafood sceptics turn their heads. Once full, relax in the park under the pistachio-pale eaves of Osaka Castle.