Starting somewhere, or rather, how you too can get started!

During our initial Japan travel planning we’ve been browsing all the available English booking sites, and quickly realized upon comparison between them, and Google Maps, there’s actually quite a few of the available places we started eyeing missing! What’s up with that?

It seems like a flurry of pages don’t quite have the desire to adapt to the latest technology or most likely the hassle of booking page’s listing fees or maybe they don’t want to deal with foreigners that don’t speak their language or are unfamiliar with Japanese customs.

Very understandable, but maybe there are wild souls out there, willing to glance past the language barrier just to be able to experience a night in one of those hidden away paradises!

If that’s you, or maybe if you are tempted, feel free to read on and gather the information we’ve gleaned so far!

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First off, let’s consider both pros and cons of bracing a foreign language booking system:

Pros:

• Availability
• Price
• Vacancy
• Additional Options

Let’s go through them really quickly

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Availability
Clearly, you can’t book on a booking page if the place isn’t listed there.

Price
Let’s keep the benefits of a fluctuating exchange rate in mind as a Given.
There’s also a fee that your lodging has to pay to even be listed on a booking site. Sometimes this ends up in the price of your stay.

Vacancy
Sometimes the homepage of your selected lodging will have a more accurate or even different vacancy selection.
Apparently for Ryokan, you can only book so far up in advance, and they generally list the newly opened slots on their own websites first. This way you can snag up vacant slots before they even show up on whatever booking page is going to have them later on.

Additional Options
Most booking sites allow you to select between just the stay, breakfast, and breakfast & dinner but if you ever take a peek at Ryokan websites you will see dozens of fun plans for different meals, add-ons, private bath reservation costs included etc. Once you navigate the flurry of options you will quickly see that there’s tons of things you’d miss with a simple booking. Considering how they need to know your order before your arrival to plan into their schedule, making last-minute changes/additions doesn’t seem like an option (maybe some lodgings would bend over backwards to fulfill a last-minute request but don’t count on this). 

Cons:

• Convenience
• Old websites
• TL might not always work (lol)
• Country Restrictions
• Cash Payments only
• Loyalty Points & Cashback Losses
• Language Barrier

Convenience
If you don’t want to think past an images and whatever is listed on booking.com or hotels.com you may want to stick to what you are used to. Booking through some of these websites can drive you insane. We’ve experienced all kinds of fun issues, from translation plugins crashing all filled details to full on ai hallucinations. It takes some time and effort, and if you don’t have those, stick to the good old reliable

Old Websites
Some of these sites have not been updated in over a decade, yet they somehow allow reservations without a hitch (other than the hurdles of navigating and translating them). Expect to have to switch your browser, or fill in the same contact info or payment method 5 times.

Unreliable Translation
The future is now, or not. You will quickly discover the limitations of modern machine translations. Every page visit can hallucinate a different type of wordage, if it even translates it! If text doesn’t translate via the plugin, pay that you can copy and paste it into the translation tool of your choice. Text is implemented into images? Prepare to take many screencaps or it might be time to get out your phone for live translation. Translations can be overly creative on meals… Expect some difficulties and guesswork!

Country Restrictions
In rare cases checkout may require a Japanese Phone number, or a Japanese credit card/banking info. This would most likely be a full block, unless you get creative and send your lodging an email – chances are they may get back to you. From our experiences, inquiries never went unanswered, but we’ve not yet run into a full block on any of the locations we decided to go for!

Cash Payments only
Cash is king. Some places will not give you the option to pay online. Just prepare to schedule in a trip to a nearby ATM before you head to your location – ensure to to do that if you pick rural stays because there’s no guarantee you can find a working 7/11 ATM that may or may not let you withdraw cash. We’ve had some cards randomly not work and while others do out in the boonies, and that can be a little worrisome.

Loyalty Points & Cashback Losses
We figured we’d mention this for people that are absolutely addicted loyalty points from pages like Expedia, Booking.com or Hotels.com or getting cashback from sites like Honey or Swagbucks. These things can add up fast, especially for Travel costs like flights and stays.
A benefit here is that some Japanese pages connected to Ryokan do offer their own!

Language Barrier
Last but not least, the biggest hurdle, and the reason we’ve decided to make this post. It’s honestly kind of a struggle if you don’t speak Japanese… and is probably why you are here!


Don’t worry, you can do it!

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Which leads us directly into our next post:
Getting started for browsing the Japanese web