Reddit reviews Say It in Japanese (Dover Language Guides Say It Series)

Expect to pay 10-20 bucks a day on the subway. Really depends on how much you plan to move day to day and how much you plan to walk. Major cities can be walked across in a day through the major metro areas so it's possible to land someplace, walk all day, and then just take the subway/train back. A bullet train ticket is about 130 or so. If you plan to take the bullet train, get a rail pass. One roundtrip on it pretty much pays for the pass. There are also airpasses, where you can fly to like 5 different cities for about 10,000 yen.

Food is all over the place. But in general again you'll be walking everywhere. You'll be eating all of the time and still losing weight probably, unless you are normally super active. Expect food to be generally a bit more expensive and expect to be eating a bit more than normal.

Tips -

Buy this. http://www.amazon.com/Say-Japanese-Dover-Language-Guides/dp/0486208079/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348785755&sr=1-2&keywords=say+it+in+japanese My favorite phrasebook.

Make sure your phone can type in Japanese characters if you're planning to head outside of the big cities. Often subway/train maps aren't romanized so I would cheat and type in the name of the station I was trying to get to and then look for the characters. If you have an iPhone or Android phone there are a few metro apps that are useful for planning routes.

Look into staying with a family. It can be a pretty fun first experience and you'll have someone to lean on. But depends on the family. :) Something to look into.

Plan to walk -a lot-. Perhaps more than you ever have in your life. Whenever I travel I expect to walk 6-10 hours a day. I make sure I have comfy shoes, bring anti-fungus cream, lots of clean socks, band-aids for blisters, etc etc. Not having your feet in tiptop shape can really bring down a trip.

Look into various festivals and stuff going on. There's always something interesting coming up. Spring has cherry blossom season (which is amazing), Summer has like a summer festival and fireworks someplace in the country every weekend it seems. Festivals in fall and winter as well and of course, christmas and new years is a big todo there.

And my favorite tip -

Before I went on my solo-trips to Korea and Japan, I made penpals in both countries. So, when I went to visit I had friends there already ready to show me about, go drinking with, etc etc. It was a ton of fun.

Say it in Japanese by Dover is my favorite tiny phrase book. Even after iPhones came out I still take this with me. The most charming part is that the Japanese/hiragana for each phrase is handwritten.