Welcome back to my channel.

So the past couple of weeks

I have been putting out some Japan videos,

that I guess I have been saving up over the past a year.

After every video,

I always ask you guys to give me a video suggestions

on what you would like me to do.

So a lot of you guys actually asked me to make a video,

on how safe Japan is to travel to as a woman,

when you're going alone.

As you guys know, I do travel to Japan very often.

About 95% of the time I travel alone.

Have asked me if I had any scary experiences.

I'm just going to talk about them today in this video.

This is going to be a chatty video,

just talking about my personal experiences

and experiences of others traveling in Japan,

or living in Japan as well.

About like five or six years ago,

I made a video on how safe Japan is,

and I mentioned in that video,

that Japan is a safest country I've ever traveled to,

and that hasn't changed.

Of course, when you travel, it doesn't matter where you are,

it doesn't matter how safe the country is,

having common sense is the most important thing.

What I mean by that is,

even though I said Japan is the safest country

I've ever traveled to,

that doesn't mean you should just walk down

random dark alleyways just because,

supposedly it's a safe country.

So like I said, when I travel to Japan,

I usually go alone.

Because what?

I go very often and most of the time it's for work.

There have been times where a friend,

or my husband, or sister would travel with me,

but that's only on the rare occasion.

It's because if the trip is solely for work,

I don't want to drag people around with me

because it's just not fun for them.

It's like a waste of time, a waste of a trip.

So the first time I went to Japan alone was when I was 22,

eight years ago.

That was when Liz Liza wanted to work with me

and wanted to fly me to Japan, to meet them.

I remember at that time, my parents were very scared,

because it would be my first trip overseas, alone.

I also was a little scared,

but also I was quite confident

because I have been to Japan twice before that.

So I knew my way around.

I had basic Japanese knowledge at that time,

the trip was fine.

I ran into no issues.

And because of that trip,

after that, I was traveling alone a lot

to many other countries.

In other countries, I did run into some issues,

which I will go into a bit later,

but for now I'm just going to focus on Japan.

So walking around Japan alone as a woman,

I can confidently say that

there is no other place in the world

where I feel as safe as I do in Japan.

I can walk around alone at nighttime, no problem.

Say if I was really hungry at midnight,

and I wanted to grab something at 7-Eleven,

I would have no issue just going down the street

and going to my local 7-Eleven,

picking up some food and walking back.

The only time I did have an issue,

where there was a guy following me,

was about eight years ago.

I was at Ikebukuro cross-station

and I was walking with my friend.

We were going from the station to go back to our hostel.

We were speaking in English

and I noticed there was a guy

who was matching our walking pace.

So I asked my friend to walk slower.

She didn't know what was going on.

She was like, "Oh sorry,"

and walked really slow.

I noticed that he also did the same.

At that point I knew he was trying to follow us.

So I let my friend know,

and we walked into a convenience store

to just kind of buy some time and walk around a bit.

He followed us into the convenience store.

I think we only stayed in there for like five minutes.

I bought some stuff.

Then I noticed there was a police box outside.

We just went to the police box and stood outside.

I saw him go out of the convenience store.

I don't know if he noticed us or not.

It was kind of dark and it was like across the road,

but he eventually walked off.

So I waited there for an extra 10 minutes

until I knew it was safe to go back to our hostel.

That was the only weird stalking incident I had in Japan,

and that was like in 2012, eight years ago.

Since then I've traveled to Japan, maybe about 20 times.

I've lived in Japan for a year and a half,

and that has never happened again.

I guess if you are in Japan or any country,

and you notice that someone's following you,

I would immediately go to a place where it's crowded,

where there's lots of people around.

Also because now smartphones are a thing these days,

get someone you know on the phone,

talk to them.

Talk to them on loud speaker if you can as well,

just so they would know.

If something were to happen,

then you know your friend on the phone would be suspicious.

Even though I said that I feel very safe

walking around Japan at nighttime,

I always still have like an eye out for my surroundings.

You just always have to make sure just in case.

I do remember back in the day,

if you were a woman walking alone in Shibuya,

you will always get approached by many guys.

I've seen it's happened to many Japanese woman as well,

and most of the time,

they just keep walking and ignoring them

until the guys give up.

But some of these guys are so persistent.

They don't give up, which really annoys me.

Like they were literally followed a woman

for like maybe a hundred meters down the streets.

My trick to get rid of them is,

if they approach me, I just say to them in English,

"Sorry, I don't speak Japanese,"

and just pretend you don't understand

what the hell they're saying,

and they will walk off pretty quickly.

These days it doesn't happen as often as it used to.

I wrote a story where police

have actually been tracking that,

so I realized over the past couple of years,

it happens nowhere near as often as it used to.

If you are with someone else,

it's less likely it will happen.

But honestly,

they usually approach you in a very public place.

So you can just ignore them, walk off,

or tell them no, they won't do any harm to you

because there's so many people around.

So even though Japan is very safe,

there are of course dodgy places

that you probably should avoid.

Just like every country, there are tourist traps.

Places that are there just to rip you off.

If you had been to Japan in the recent years

and have been walking around Shinjuku

to Kabukicho especially,

you might hear an announcement that is said in English,

I can't remember exactly what the announcement said

but it was something along the lines of,

"Be careful, don't get scammed,

don't follow people to bars and all.

This has never happened to me either,

because I don't go to too many bars,

but I have heard of some cases

where foreigners would go into a bar

and get charged like $100 US, for a beer.

I also heard another story where a guy just got scammed.

They forced him to go to the ATM,

and withdraw a lot of money,

and they took all of it apparently.

Once again, these are just stories I've heard.

I've never actually seen or experienced this myself.

Also keep in mind that these announcements

are there in Kabukicho for a reason.

So just be careful.

Like in Japan, some bars had a bar charge,

usually around five to $10 at most.

That's normal.

And also if you're walking around Kabukicho,

which is like the party area,

you will see lots of guys walking around,

trying to get people to go to their bars.

Not all of them are dodgy.

Sometimes you can get some really good deals.

I was with a group of maybe eight people,

we got an all you can drink package for 1,500 Yen,

around $15 for an hour, which isn't bad.

He originally said 2,000 Yen

and we just bargained it down to $15.

You can also back in at karaoke places

and they might give you a deal.

But yeah once again,

just be really careful of being overcharged.

I've never had any of these issues with big chains,

or bars or karaoke,

but once again, just use common sense.

Also, I should mention that I'm not really a party person.

I don't hang out at these party areas at night,

like in Shinjuku, Shibuyu, and Roppongi very often.

So maybe because of that,

I never ran into such situations.

I've actually seen this happen,

but I was in Kabukicho

and there was a group of foreigner guys,

just in front of me,

they were just walking,

minding their own business,

and then suddenly there was like a group of people

trying to stop them,

and trying to drag them into their bars.

I knew straight away it was a scam.

I knew that they would try and charge them a lot of money.

I think eventually the guys just kept walking

and the guys were trying to get them to go into the bar.

Kept following for a bit,

but because they just kept walking and showed no interest,

in the end they just gave up.

I just wanna talk a bit about transport.

So for taxis,

I've taken taxis many times in Japan and never had an issue.

Yes taxis are expensive,

but they all just use a meter

and you just pay whatever it says at the end of your trip.

I've heard times where some taxi drivers

would even give me a discount.

In Japan, I've never had an issue of people scamming me.

I have been scammed in Korea once.

I was meant to pay $4 for a five minute ride,

and then the guy charged me $40.

I didn't know any better and I just paid it.

But I have had some people that wrote comments on my videos

saying that they did get scammed in Osaka

a few times from taxis.

Personally I have never had that happen,

but yeah, just make sure that you're paying

exactly what is on the meter,

and make sure the taxi driver has the meter on

whilst you are on your trip.

The next thing I want to talk about is groping on train.

So this is a big one.

I get asked this a lot.

Has this ever happened to me?

"No."

I've been in packed trains

and not once has it happened to me.