Family trip to japan

[Climbles]

We are planning a trip to Japan for 14 days in October. My DH, DD (12) and DS (9).
We are flying in and out of Tokyo. Any recommendations for places to go, hotels to stay at etc?

Which less famous places did you love most? (We want to go back too.)

@NeverendingCircus I think my favourite was Engaku-ji in Kamakura. It was genuinely quiet and peaceful without any crowds and in really beautiful surroundings. There were only a small handful of people across the whole site. We loved Kamakura generally, but my favourite part of the day was the time we spent mooching around Engaku-ji. I know Hasedera and the Daibutsu are the big headline must sees there but I enjoyed Engaku-ji more even though the photos from the Daibutsu with the full bloom sakura are the most impressive of our trip.

Over-tourism in Kyoto is a huge issue. There’s just too many people for the infrastructure to support. I felt like I was contributing to a problem that is making the city really unliveable for the locals. The overcrowding on the trains and buses was the worst of the whole trip and I felt really awkward about the impact on people just trying to go about their daily lives. We’ll go back someday in the “off season” or when the yen recovers and tourism dips, but for now I feel like there’s a whole country to explore with lots of beautiful sites to see. I’m not going to rush back to tick off “must see” places in Kyoto. That FOMO is why they are struggling so much.

Japan isn’t overrun with tourists, the problem is that too many tourists are cramming into the same few places and whilst Osaka and Tokyo have infrastructure that copes with big numbers, Kyoto doesn’t. It’s a city of less than 1.5m people that gets around 80-90 million tourist visitors per year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-24/japan-record-tourist-numbers-are-clogging-up-kyoto-s-public-transport

@Takoneko, We visited Kyoto last August as part of our three week trip and thankfully it wasn't overcrowded at all, but was very hot, so i guess it's a case of choosing fewer tourists or more comfortable weather.

I think that’s exactly it. We’re going to save Kyoto for a future trip at a less busy time of year.

I'm thinking 6 days in Tokyo might be too much/top stressful. How long did you spend in Tokyo?

Japan had 25 million visitors from overseas in 2023. When tourism stats are quoted in Kyoto, the majority are Japanese tourists. Don’t forget other nationals visit for business, not tourism.

We spent 6 nights/7 days in Tokyo. We did a day trip to Kamakura and spent 2 days at Disney though, so it ended up being 4 days in Tokyo itself.

For first timers I don’t think 6 days is an excessive amount of time for Tokyo. Especially not if you want to do any day trips (e.g. Kawagoe, Kamakura, Nikko, Yokohama). Tokyo can be a fantastic base for exploring other places.

What are the things you want to do on the Tokyo portion of your trip?

Japanese tourists clog up public transport and other services in exactly the same way as international tourists. I’ve never been to a city before where they had to have a Disneyland-style queue management system to board a regular public bus.

People who enter the country for business aren’t usually counted in those numbers as they won’t have entered on a tourist visitor visa/ visa waiver. Some of them may still decide to go and see some tourist places whilst they are there though. I think the numbers for business travellers are far far lower than for tourists though, I don’t think it moves the needle much.

Actually, I may be wrong on the visa thing so feel free to ignore my second paragraph. I’ve just remembered that Japan allows short term business trips without a work visa.

We did 5 days in Tokyo, 6 would have been fine.