Japan, Group trip planner
Cash-heavy, tip-free, and harder to mess up than the internet says.
Tokyo is the only world capital where cash still beats cards in 30 percent of restaurants, especially the small izakayas and ramen counters. Pull ¥30,000 to ¥50,000 per person from a 7-Eleven ATM on arrival (they take foreign cards 24/7, banks do not). Tipping is offensive, not generous, do not do it. The Suica or PASMO card is the trip-saver, tap it on every train, bus, vending machine, and convenience store. The biggest foreigner mistake is over-planning: blocks-per-day collapses against the actual scale of the city. Pick a neighbourhood, walk it, eat where the line is locals.
Not the headlines. The spots Tokyolocals reach for after the famous ones are done, and that Agoroam quietly seeds into your group's deck when you start planning.
Old Tokyo, low-rise, almost no tourists, the cherry blossoms here arrive a week earlier.
Salarymen at 6:30pm, ¥500 highballs, no English menu and that is fine.
Vintage clothing and live houses without the weekend crowd.
A bookshop open until 2am with a whisky bar inside it. The locals come post-dinner.
A neighbourhood bath for ¥520, the tattooed yakuza of cinema rarely show up, the grandmas always do.
Late March to mid-April (sakura, plan a year ahead), early November (koyo, autumn leaves), and February (cold but clearest skies for Mount Fuji). June rainy season is humid; August is brutal.
¥30,000 to ¥50,000 per person (roughly €180 to €310) for a 5-night trip. Cards work for hotels, department stores, big chains, and most restaurants in Shibuya/Shinjuku. The smaller izakaya, ramen counters, vintage shops, and shrines often refuse cards. 7-Eleven ATMs take foreign cards reliably; bank ATMs often do not.
No. Leaving cash on the table is treated as a mistake (servers will chase you down the street to return it) or as condescension. The bill includes service. Hotel bellhops sometimes accept a small envelope but only at ryokan, never at chain hotels.
Trying to do Shibuya, Shinjuku, Asakusa, and Ueno in the same day. Each ward is a separate small city. Two anchor neighbourhoods per day, with one transit hub between them, is the comfortable cap. Build in a 90-minute coffee or onsen reset every afternoon.
Free for the first trip. Everyone votes. The AI does the boring half.
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