BiscottiGelato

Hi sunmoon,

These should be your primary sites when looking for resources to plan your trip:

http://kunghc.pixnet.net/blog - This guy is EXPERT of the Tokyo area. He goes to Japan with his family of 3 all the time. Tons of detailed and very well through out articles. Your place to get the most organized information in the shortest amount of time.

http://www.backpackers.com.tw/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=43 - Board of a Taiwan travel forum moderated by dude who did the previous blog. You can look at sticky posts there, some of which are really same as the article from that guy's blog. Or you can search the forum to see if your question have been answered by others before.

http://www31.discuss.com.hk/forumdisplay.php?fid=442 - Board of an HK forum focused on travelling in Japan.

To start, you should read these 2 articles from kunghc:
http://kunghc.pixnet.net/blog/post/4519918
http://kunghc.pixnet.net/blog/post/23298485

In terms of booking hotels... how proficient in Japanese are you? If you are okay with Japanese some what, you have much better selection and price if you book through Japanese travel sites then say expedia or your local travel agent. I personally used Rakuten Travel the last time I went. Use the Japanese languaged site instead of the English site (Rakuten have both). Again, more selection and better price on the Japanese languaged site. Most places in Japan settles the bill in cash so you can simply just reserve, show-up, and settle the bill afterwards. No need to worry about whether Canadian credit card will be accepted. For details on booking accomodation through Rakuten, try this post from the Discuss travel forum. http://www31.discuss.com.hk/view ... 9905&extra=page%3D1

In terms of transportation, if you are just staying in the Tokyo area, I don't know of any multi-day pass that you can buy. There's a 1 day pass that allows you to roam through most of the metro system. Otherwise you can use SUICO (equivilent of the HK Octopus system). You will probably be using the Tokyo subway/metro system instead of the infamous JR train system (unless you want to just stay on the JR Yamatote line). The JR passes they always speak of would be of no use to you if you only stay in the Tokyo area.

Try this post, from the kunghc blog to get a start on transit in Tokyo:
http://kunghc.pixnet.net/blog/post/8475980
http://kunghc.pixnet.net/blog/post/16956565

Otherwise, self-travel in Japan is very awesome. The only thing is you need to do a ton of research and preparation in order to get the max out of the experience. Enjoy and good luck!

BiscottiGelato

For food review, I actually like 食べログ: http://tabelog.com/
Google map is also good for transit, not too sure how it compares to Yahoo.

BiscottiGelato

Follow those guides, they will help u to book through Jalan/Rakuten even if you don't know much Japanese.

Make sure you come to LYK to post some of your trip photos after u r back!