If you have always wanted to visit Japan for yourselves but have been put off because you think it is prohibitively expensive, hard to get around and impossible to communicate with the locals then we'd like to dispel these myths here and encourage you to take the plunge. We're sure you won't regret it.

Japan is a very expensive place to visit:
We disagree with this but it really depends on what you are comparing it with. There are certainly cheaper countries to visit but there are plenty of popular places that we have visited that cost about the same or more. The major expense with visiting in Japan is the cost of its hotels. We paid an average of around £100 per night for a double room without breakfast. This is similar or cheaper than staying in London, New York or Hong Kong for example. The price of the flights was similar to other Far Eastern destinations like Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Eating out was definitely quite cheap although we have to agree that other Far Eastern countries are cheaper. People often cite the price of an apple as an example of how expensive food is in Japan - well apples actually were very expensive but we managed to survive without them for 3 weeks. The bullet trains were a tad expensive (unless you have a JR pass), but, apart from that, getting around was reasonably cheap - but again not as cheap as other Far Eastern countries.

The bottom line: We spent a grand total of £4,200 for this three week self-guided tour. However, if you prefer to visit Japan as part of an organised tour group then the price will certainly be considerably more - you will probably spend more than we did but only go for around half the duration.

Nobody speaks English in Japan:
Well this isn't quite true but we certainly came across a few people who didn't seem to be able to speak English. As far as being a foreign country goes, Japan certainly ranks as one of the most foreign. The Japanese are similar to the British in the way that they continue to speak to you in their own language even though they know that you can't understand them. However, they have the advantage that they will persevere and take your quest on as a challenge and they won't be satisfied until they have helped you. Having said that, we didn't really have that many problems with language as most of the people that we dealt with could speak English reasonably well. We certainly didn't have anywhere near as much trouble as a Japanese visitor to Britain would have that's for sure!

Japan is a hard place to get around:
This just isn't true. A little background knowledge from a guide book helps but even without it, it is definitely possible to work out how to use Japan's rail and underground networks without assistance. Most of the signs are in both Japanese and English, the ticket machines have English instructions on, the fares are easy to work out and if all else fails, the ticket office will almost certainly understand where you want to go to even if they can't understand English. The buses are admittedly a little harder to use but a comprehensive, down-to-earth guide book like the Rough Guide should help but you will need a route map which you can probably obtain from the local tourist office.

As far as finding where the main attractions were - we didn't have any problems following one of the many free English maps you can pick up at the tourist offices. Japan is famous for being almost impossible to find particular street addresses - well we never needed to do this so we can't comment. All of the places we needed to find were clearly marked on our maps.

You can't go on your own, you have to go as part of an organised tour:
We were advised by the Japanese National Tourist Organisation not to consider touring Japan on our own. They strongly recommended going with an organised tour (and they of course organised some). Well, we ignored this and went by ourselves and we didn't regret it at all. Apart from being considerably cheaper, we were able to spend a lot longer at each place than if we went with a tour. We have been on and enjoyed quite a few fascinating organised tours over the years but we didn't think that we needed a guide with us while we were in Japan.

This was the 13th illustrated trip report that we have written but it was only the 2nd one to be written specifically for the web. If you've read our earlier trip reports then you'll know that this is by far the longest one yet.

As always, we're keen to know what you think of our efforts so why not let us know - we'd be delighted to hear from you and (if you don't mind) we'd love to add your comments to our Readers’ Comments page (we promise not to include your full name or email address). We welcome any suggestions or even criticisms that you might have and in return we'll let you know when we add other trip reports.