in tokyo; the senso-ji temple in Asakusa district - take losts of money for souvineers
Ueno park is a nice walk through, and the Tokyo National Museum is great to look through - its huge though (its in Ueno Park) - when i was there they had a Hokusai Exhibition on - was utterly amazing! - spent 5 hours there
the Mikimoto department store is like the eqivelent of harrods; it even has its own metro station; they have an amazing kimono department also xD
theres a Miyazaki museum somwhere too if youre into his films
ahh.... cant remember everything now
I gotta say; the best guide book ive found (and had/ still have) is
This One - so very worth it
As for Japan Rail pases - mine cost £200 and covered the enitre country - im not sure how long it was for though (mum sorted it out) - its worth it though - it allows you to travel on all shinkansen (bullet train) EXCEPT for the Nozomi (the fastest [there are 3 speed ones the second fastest is only 30 mins more] - full fare for a single is £300) and a JR railnetworks - including Osaka's metro system (im pretty sure).
as for tokyo - i sussed out the Metro system pretty quickly and you can buy a kind or Oyster card thing (if youre familiar with london's travel system you'll know what i mean) - its basicly a card with so many credits on, so you dont have to keep buying tickets as all tickets are singles on a flat fare (fare zone) system - is i remember correctly a basic inner city flat fare is 180 yen - less than a £1 to travel accross tokyo? - not too bad
the tain system in kyoto was bloody confusing
- there are two different companies that run the sytem, and they have alot of overlapping destinations, so you have alot of stations for the diff companies right next to each other; and none of the stations link to their competitors ones! teh worst was one particlar place in kyoto - theres a cross roads and on ech corner a entrace for a station; two for each company; if you went down the wrong one, and walked about 100 metres down a tunnel to the station, and then found you were on the wrong companies' station you'd have to walk all the way back again and then find the right steps to go down xD
ohh yes, sights in kyoto; theres a few; gion, obviously
but also the pontocho district - gion's rival.
other good places are Fushimi Shrine; Very pretty - one of my faves, Nijo Castle; with the nightingale floorboards, Yasaka Temple and Pagoda, Kinkaku-ji; the Golden Pavilion and Kiyomizu Temple
one problem we sometimes had was finding ATMs that took our cards; Citibank definatly takes them, but are sometimes hard to find; when all else fails the easiest way to find help is at a post office - theres alway someone who speaks english, and they usually have ATMs that take foriegn cards
the sign for post offices in japan is
hope all this help
gods ive ranted xD