Things I Wish I Knew Before Going to Japan
Ten chapters of getting it wrong in public, so the embarrassing part is already someone else’s.
44 pages · 10 chapters · PDF + Kindle
I flew into Tokyo convinced I was the final boss of international travel. I had studied the maps. I had memorised the etiquette.
Japan had other plans.
Within hours I was navigating neon alleys with the coordination of a baby giraffe on a frozen lake — and no amount of Googling had prepared me for any of it.
Japan is the trip people most often describe as “amazing, but I wish I had known…” — and the things they wish they had known are almost never in the guidebooks.
This is for you if…
- it is your first time and the logistics feel opaque
- you want to spend your days there, not deciphering them
- you would rather avoid the mistakes than discover them
Probably not, if…
- you have already lived in Japan
- you want a restaurant directory rather than how the country works
What’s inside
- The Pre-Flight Panic List (AKA: My Adorable Naiveté)
- The Convenience Store Conundrum
- Lost in Translation (and Loooovin’ it…)
- The Temple, The Tourists, and My Samurai Dreams
- The Rush Hour Train Survival Story
- The Karaoke Revelation
- The Onsen Incident (Or: That Time I Learned What Naked Really Means)
- The Conveyor Belt Sushi Catastrophe
- The Capsule Hotel Claustrophobia Chronicles
- The Train Station Goodbye
- Epilogue: Six Months Later
My “Ultimate Survival Guide” was about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
I had a list. The list was excellent. The list did not survive contact with an actual convenience store, where I stood for eleven minutes trying to work out how to pay for a rice ball.
It did not help at the temple, where my expert bowing confused everyone in a ten-metre radius. It did not help on a rush-hour train. It very much did not help at the onsen, where I finally read the sign on the wall and understood what “naked” meant in practice.
This is not a guidebook. It is a short, honest account of the ten moments where I got Japan wrong — the ones nobody warns you about because they are too small for a guidebook and too awkward to admit.
Read it on the plane. Arrive having already made the mistakes.
What You’ll Discover Inside
The Japan this book is about
Not the postcard shots — the places the awkward bits happen.
📖 A look at the contents
Straight from the PDF.
Go to Japan. Make Better Mistakes Than Mine.
Forty-four pages, ten chapters, one thoroughly humbled travel writer.
— Jeff
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