Unbrave Girl’s Guide to Traveling Solo in Japan

In the past two and a half years, I’ve temple-hopped through Thailand, jungle trekked in Nepal, spa-ed & Bintang-ed in Bali, shopped until I dropped in Hong Kong and eaten until I popped in Seoul… all of this by my little myself (well, not so little any more thanks to a bit too much jijim in Seoul… and a few too many nacho platters in the States this past summer… and, well, all those Mickey-shaped goodies in Tokyo Disney the other week).

But I’ve never once travelled solo in Japan until last weekend. I can’t say exactly why I’ve never ventured alone in old Nippon. I know Japan and the language (well, enough to be able to coerce people into feeding me and giving me shelter). Japan is also a relatively easy country to get around due to their excellent public transportation and teeming tourism industry, especially compared to places like, say, backwoods Nepal where the favored mode of transportation is ox cart and elephant.

Additionally, as any Japanese native will tell you, Japan is a safe country. In the number of years that I’ve lived in Japan, the only dangerous situations that I’ve found myself in (like, sliding down that mountain face-first in Nagano… or waking up in a rice paddy in rural Toyama) were completely and totally self-inflicted.

In fact, if anything, Japan is trying to prevent me from inflicting so much danger on myself. Recently when the swine flu panic hit Kansai, train station attendants could be seen handing out sanitary hand wipes to passengers. When I hopped off the airport bus last weekend, the smiling, uniformed bus driver promptly handed me this packet decorated with a smiling, uniformed bus. After stuffing it in my pocket and forgetting about it for a day or two, I eventually fished it out to find out that it’s a packet of band-aids (if only I’d had that after my run-in with the Nagano mountain!).

Needless to say, I don’t remember any train station attendants or bus drivers in Thailand or Nepal worrying about my personal hygiene and safety. In fact, I was more likely to worry about their personal hygiene and safety. I got on more than a few buses or trains in those countries where I was pretty sure I contracted encephalitis just by sitting down (not to mention all the encephalitis I got from those ox carts and elephants!).

I usually take trips abroad by myself because I don’t really have anyone to go with.

Either my friends don’t have the same vacation time as me. (While I still whine that I definitely deserve more than one lousy month off in the summer and a few measly weeks off in the winter, I’ve heard some work places only dole out two or three vacation weeks a year… a year! The horror! How is anyone able to build up a proper tan with only 10-15 days of vacation time?! This is completely mystifying to me…)

Or they like to use their money to do frivolous things like save or make mortgage payments or donate to their retirement funds rather than something important like, say, invest in a poolside hotel room in Bali.

Or my friends claim to have things like spouses or kids or pets or houseplants that don’t allow them to leave the country for one month and gallivant around Nepal on an ox cart. (Of course, I’ve told them they’re welcome to bring their three-year-old or their cacti along for the trip, but they still seem to think this is a bad idea).

But I don’t really mind as I am one of those people who actually enjoys traveling by myself. It allows me the freedom to do whatever I want to do… or, more likely, it allows me the freedom to do absolutely nothing and nobody has to know that I spent the entire day in my hotel bathrobe eating room service cheeseburgers and watching pay-per-view movies.

Usually when people find out that I’m traveling by myself I get the same reaction: “Wow! You must be brave to travel alone!”.

In fact, I’m not brave.

I’m just lazy (hence the hotel bathrobe and the pay-per-view).

I’m also hungry (I can tell you that that room service cheeseburger is not the only lunch I’d be eating that day!). One of the other joys of traveling solo is that no one has to know that you ate two breakfasts… and five desserts.

I’m also not very alone when traveling. Every country that I’ve traveled to by myself I’ve met plenty of other solo travelers… and, surprisingly, most of them were women.

While I can’t find any statistics stating how many women travel on their own, The Gutsy Traveler website claims that 80% of travel decisions in America are made by women and 32 million single American women have traveled at least once in the last year. The awesomely titled site, “Ten Ways to be a Kick Arse Solo Female Traveler,” claims that women make up 50% of the backpacker and independent travel market. I’m sure more than a few of those ladies are hitting the trail on their own. Heck, I can’t be the only woman who likes to eat her five meals a day undisturbed!

Probably the main reason why I haven’t bothered to travel around Japan by myself is because up until now I haven’t really had to. In Japan, I have been blessed to have friends who like to plan trips out of town and like to regularly invite me along. They would do things like research places to go, make reservations, drive me to and fro and help me order my dinner… all I had do to was show up and pay (it was a burden, but I managed!).

Unfortunately most of these friends have left Japan for other jobs in other locales, forcing me to either start planning trips on my own or find new friends — friends with cars, enough Japanese ability to order my dinner and preferably nothing pesky like budgets or houseplants or dietary concerns tying them down.

I’m still working on the finding new friends part (any interested parties can feel free to email me!).

But vacation does not wait for you to find new travel buddies (especially when your list of requirements for potential new travel buddies includes “must feel it’s important to eat 5 meals a day while on vacation”).

Sometimes vacation just happens.

In my case, it just happened this past weekend. Due to the infinite wisdom of the Japanese government, I was unexpectedly granted a five-day holiday weekend. Entitled “Silver Week,” this smorgasbord of work-free fun consisted of two previously recognized national holidays. (Respect for the Aged Day and the Autumnal Equinox… both HUGE holidays in their own right, I’m sure! I mean it goes without saying that we must really have the day off of work to recognize one of the two days out of the year that the Earth is not tilted… and a day to recognize all the aged and in Japan there are a LOT of aged!) As this year the Respect for the Aged Day fell on a Monday and the Autumnal Equinox fell on a Wednesday, the government dubbed Tuesday the ever-important Kokumin no Kyujitsu (“Citizens’ Day” or more appropriately “The Day In Between the Two Other Holidays Which We Will Now Make a Holiday for You, the Citizens of Japan”… but you just try putting that on a greeting card!).

And, hence, yours truly suddenly had five free days off of work and all of Japan to explore and nobody to call and beg into travel planning my trip for me. Well, there were probably people I could have called but I got the brilliant idea to take a trip at midnight one night two months ago after finding out about the holiday. And if you want to coerce people into being your new BTBF (Best Travel Buddy Forever) than you probably shouldn’t call them at midnight to invite them on a trip and then inform them that they are in charge of your transportation… and hotel reservation… and ordering your meals.

I decided to take my first big girl’s all-by-myself trip in Japan to Sapporo.

I picked Sapporo for a couple reasons. First, while I have to say I’ve been able to visit quite a lot of Japan, I’ve mostly kept my travels to the main island of Honshu. Sapporo is located in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. By visiting Hokkaido, I could finally say I’d been to total of 3 islands in Japan; only 6,849 more islands to go! (Yeah, I was pretty shocked to find out Japan had so many islands. This summer I kept telling people in the States that Japan had 6 islands. Oops, my bad).

Secondly, Sapporo’s big claim to fame is beer. In fact, Sapporo is the birthplace of Japanese beer as it was home to the first beer brewery in Japan which was founded in 1876. If you’ve ever been to Japan or even heard of Japan, you know beer is a pretty big deal here. Going to the birthplace of beer in Japan is about like going to Mecca… except a Mecca that serves beer.

Thirdly, Sapporo’s other big claims to fame are dairy products and pork products. A city famous for beer, cheese and sausage?! Count me in!

I’m happy to report that my solo trip to Sapporo was quite the success! In fact, if success was measured in amount of calories consumed (as it truly should be), I’m pretty sure I’d be winning an award for my entire trip experience. Judging from my success, I think I’m qualified to hand out a few tips to lady travelers out there looking to hit the roads of old Nippon all by themselves.

So here goes: my girl’s guide to traveling solo in Japan… no need to be brave, just be hungry!

Keep Busy

One of the top reasons people have told me they don’t like to travel by themselves is because they’re worried they might get bored. Luckily, Sapporo had lots of good tourist options to keep me busy during the day. I spent two days exploring the city, including some parks and a botanic garden, a shrine, some local landmarks and, of course, the Sapporo Beer Museum (the only beer museum in Japan!) and Beer Garden (decidedly NOT the only beer garden in Japan).

The other two days I spent taking day trips out of town. One day I went for a little hiking and onsening in Jozankei, a hot springs town in the mountains.

Another day I went to Otaru, “The Venice of Japan,” known so for its canal and hand-blown glass crafts… unfortunately, not for its Italian hotties and gondolas.

While it’s easy to pack the days full of fun, there is always the question of what to do at night. I’m not really one of those people who feels comfortable going to bars and clubs by myself. And the pay-per-view options at my hotel were rather… shall we say… limited.

So I decided to keep myself busy by enjoying a game called “Make the Hotel Staff Hate Me” which was combined with the even more fun game of “Repack My Bags Every Morning.” This game began on my first day after checking in when I discovered I had been placed in a smoking room. Upon finding myself in the offending room, I promptly marched myself down to the lobby and had a rather shameless temper tantrum at the front desk. (Something I would have been way too embarrassed to do had I been traveling with someone — yet another perk of traveling alone is that you can be as ridiculously annoying as you want to be and you only have to worry about strangers hating you!) After my fit, the staff finally agreed to change my room. But because there wasn’t one single non-smoking room available for all four nights of my visit, I would have to move out of my room every morning and move into a new room every single night. As you can imagine, this was both fun for me and the entire hotel staff!

Look Busy

While it’s important to keep yourself busy so as to avoid feeling bored, it’s even more important to appear busy so as to avoid looking pathetic. This is particularly important while dining. It may be quite easy to tromp through a Beer Museum looking purposeful and perfectly comfortable, but it’s not quite so easy to keep up that appearance of purpose and comfort while hanging out at your table for one while everyone else is cozy and conversational at their tables for twos, threes and fours.

I recommend you bring along some reading material to keep you busy. Books are too bulky to fit in a hand bag, but tourist brochures are light, easy to carry, and incredibly informative.

For example, the brochure for Sapporo’s Beer Museum informed me that the purpose of the museum was to inform visitors of “the way beer has enriched people’s lives and the dream which beer creates for tomorrow.” So true that is! I can’t even tell you how many dreams beer has created for my tomorrow!

Another brochure that I picked up at the Hokkaido tourist office, entitled “The Guide to Enjoying Your Trip to Sapporo, the Capital of Hokkaido, Even More Immensely,” was full of helpful Japanese phrases like “Where are the bath agents?” (Nyuyokuzai wa doko desuka?) and “I want you to mind my valuables” (Kichohin o azuketai nodesuga) and “This is comfortably hot water” (Ii yu dana). These are all phrases I really don’t understand how I’ve been able to live without!

Make New Friends

Another benefit of traveling solo is that you do look pathetic. (Really, there are so many times that you can read that Beer Museum flyer before you start to space out, stare at the restaurant’s ceiling and look like a total sad sack). But looking pathetic also means you look “non-threatening” which often makes people feel more comfortable to talk with you, especially in Japan where “I’m shy” is a national motto.

It doesn’t matter if your entire comprehension of the Japanese language has been gleaned from the tourist brochure (oddly, “Where are the bath agents?” is not always appropriate dinner time conversation). Just keep on working your loser look and you’ll have new friends in no time! If you’re anything like me (and, God bless you if you are!), most of these new friends will be old men who will offer free potatoes and then magically disappear as soon as their wife shows up on sight. (Yes, this actually happened. Don’t ask.)

My last night in Sapporo I finally managed to meet some friends my own age. I was sitting in a Korean restaurant, waiting for my jijim to arrive and trying desperately to not look too pathetic, when the three people next to me at the counter started throwing glances my way. These were glances full of pity one would usually reserve for orphans or three-legged ponies. I threw a couple pathetic glances their way and before I knew it I had been invited over to drink and finish dinner with them.

The trio, two sisters and a boyfriend of one of the sisters, quizzed me on why I was in Sapporo (my response: “to see another island in Japan, the beer and the food”) and why I was in that restaurant (my response: “the jijim“). The group continued to quiz me on how I could ever travel alone and how I could ever come into a strange restaurant by myself. “Aren’t you scared? Aren’t you lonely?” one of the sisters asked me. “You must be brave,” the other sister chimed in.

“No, not brave,” I said, “Just hungry.”