Japan planning thread

[Takoneko]

I’ve just booked the hotels for my third trip to Japan next year and about to start planning the itinerary in earnest.

Japan threads pop up here quite a bit and I think people spend a lot of time on planning for Japan trips. I thought it might be nice to have a shared thread where we can pool questions, tips and share research for anyone who has a trip coming up.

All budgets and styles of trip are welcome, whether you’re going hiking, temple-hopping, skiing or visiting theme parks, maid cafes and arcades and whether you’re going to hostels or 5 star hotels. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to enjoy Japan. It has something for everyone.

We’re a couple in our late 30s and our trip will be mid-budget, probably up to about £3.4k per person with food and spends. We’ve splashed out a bit on direct JAL flights and have upgraded all our hotel rooms to at least king size beds in hotels that are in really well connected locations. They are all mid-range Japanese business hotel chains rather than luxury hotels though. (Candeo, Daiwa Roynet and Sotetsu Fresa). We like Japanese food but we’re definitely more likely to be eating eat in mom and pop restaurants and mid-range Japanese chains than in fancy kaiseki places. Any recommendations for mid range restaurants with relaxed atmospheres would be very welcome.

We plan to use the Sanyo-San’in rail pass in the second half of our trip and would be really interested to share ideas for places to visit with anyone else who is planning on using that pass (or who has used it in the past). At the moment we are thinking Iwakuni, Miyajima, Kurashiki and Onomichi from Hiroshima and Himeji and Uji from Osaka, but we are open to other ideas. I speak passable tourist Japanese and we are ok with going to places that don’t cater to English speakers and muddling through with broken Japanese and Google translate.

The Tofugu website has some great explanations of grammar points. I find it really useful.

The Irodori textbooks are also completely free to download and come with listening exercises.

I also recommend watching things like Terrace House (where people speak natural Japanese) with Japanese not English subtitles on. You won’t catch every word but struggling through and catching what you can is all part of how you learn to “get by” in a language.

Yes Tofugu is really useful, their hiragana and katakana mnemonics system is excellent. You can learn it within a day, or a few days max, if you follow their guide and do the exercises.

Here is the hiragana one, they have a katakana one as well.

https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/

I also recommend watching things like Terrace House

I also recommend The Boyfriend 😸

Thank you so much for your replies esp regarding restaurant reservations which I hadn't thought about. I'd also forgotten about terrace house- might dip back into that and my all time favourite love is blind Japan.
I've had a bit of a shitty week with dental issues and general teenage strife so thinking about the trip has cheered me up this afternoon.

I will be adding the boyfriend to my playlist… for study purposes obviously. 😂

Following with interest as I'm starting to think about planning a trip to Japan in 26.

For anyone travelling in the next few months, the autumn foliage forecast for this year is now out. They update it pretty regularly depending on how weather forecasts evolve.

https://n-kishou.com/corp/news-contents/autumn/?lang=en

Following. Never been and would love to go! Kids are still young so would like to do Disneyland too! Any advice from anyone who has incorporated Disney and how kids have coped with the flight from uk etc?

Disney is really easy. Unlike the Paris parks, the Tokyo Parks are very close to the city. You just want to make sure you stay in the right part of Tokyo. We stayed in Ginza, a short walk from Hatchobori station. Getting to Maihama (where Disney is) was a 15 minute train ride. The area around Ginza/Tokyo Station is my preferred place to stay in Tokyo anyway. It’s quieter than Shibuya or Shinjuku and better connected than Ueno or Asakusa.

Excellent thread.
We're thinking of going in April 25 for up to 2 weeks. We're a family of four with children aged 10 and 13. We're all vegetarian and wondering whether people can advise how easy it is to get vegetarian food? Thank you

@Takoneko I think it’s a bit like being in a traffic jam and complaining about the traffic. When we were in Kyoto we just felt like we could really see the problem of over-tourism, it negatively impacted our experience (so crowded in some places!) BUT we knew we were contributing to that problem by being there! I think that’s what made us feel uncomfortable. We are glad we went and it’s somewhere I think a lot of first time visitors to Japan would still really enjoy but we wouldn’t go back. I remember seeing damaged bamboo in Arashiyama (people carved initials etc into it). It just felt a bit sad really.

Tourism can obviously be a good way to redistribute wealth and support businesses that really need tourism to survive. In Japan that could mean going to the less visited places esp those that have depopulation.

We really loved Hiroshima, we spent time at the Peace Park which was beautiful and visited Miyajima. Those two things were the reason we wanted to visit. What we didn’t expect was how much we liked Hiroshima as a city - it is a young, vibrant city that was just fun to hang out in the evenings, especially around downtown. There’s a pedestrianised area which was good to go to for food. Definitely get Okonomiyaki. I think what we enjoyed about wandering downtown was we get more of a sense of a regular city (compared to say Tokyo or Kyoto). We also enjoyed the same about Fukuoka.

For Himeji we just stopped by en route to Hiroshima, are you staying there? It was so worth the visit as it was really beautiful and impressive. We spent hours there.

Hey, I can probably help as I’ve spent five weeks in Japan either as a veggie or vegan. I’m going back for three weeks this autumn.

I was worried before I first went as several people told me it is ‘impossible’ to be veggie in Japan due to how common dashi stock is etc.

We used the Happy Cow app and found it very easy to find veggie friendly places in the big cities and tourist destinations. Where are you going to visit? Tokyo and Kyoto for example have several vegetarian restaurants. If you let me know where you are visiting I can see if I can recommend anywhere specific.

You do need to be careful of ‘hidden’ meet and fish ingredients in what otherwise might seem like a veggie dish (eg the stock, or bonito flakes). So I would stick to somewhere on Happy Cow or somewhere that has labelled vegetarian options on the menu or similar. I think Japanese restaurants don’t always feel comfortable making amendments to dishes so it’s not always possible to have specific ingredients removed from a dish.

It was a bit more tricky in some of the smaller places, maybe one or two nights we had to go a little out of our way to find somewhere etc. When you are out and about, 7-11 is great for lunches as you will find veggie onigiri and similar very easily.

We found ryokans that could cater for veggies too, if you want any recommendations. Most ryokans don’t, but with some research you can find some that do. Highly recommend a ryokan stay to anyone visiting Japan.

In short it’s very doable but probably just requires a little more planning on your side to find veggie friendly places and you can’t walk into just any restaurant and expect they’ll have a veggie option.

We actually had amazing veggie food in Japan and loved the food so had a great experience. Can’t wait to go back and have lots of veggie ramen.

Thank you, that's incredibly helpful. We're are the very early stages of planning at the moment so not clear on itinerary yet but I might come back to you! Probably a silly question but I'm assuming in the big cities there are Western food options, as well as Japanese?
I will definitely be encouraging my kids to eat as much Japanese food as possible but predict we may need the occasional pizza or veggie burger to keep spirits up!

@ChilliPB It’s really good to hear that you liked Hiroshima. We are staying there for 5 nights, which seems to be a lot more than most people do. We’ll be doing day trips out on most days but will be spending our evenings hanging out in downtown Hiroshima. It sounds like it’s what we were looking for from a home base.

We are going to go to Himeji on a day trip from Osaka, no overnight stop. We want to spend some time at the castle and visit the toy museum, which we’re really excited about.

Yes, you can definitely find western food if you need to get some pizza, pasta etc for the kids 😊

I think you’ll really enjoy a few nights in Hiroshima. We didn’t make the toy museum in Himeji but that looks great!

Was just having a look at the autumn leaves forecast you sent earlier and looks like we should hit peak season in a couple of places we visit, might be a bit early for some others but 🤞

I have absolutely nothing to add here except have a fantastic time! I’ve always wanted to go, it sounds amazing.

@Chatterchatter Theres lots of western (and international) options, but it is worth bearing in mind that a lot of it will be quite a Japanese take on western food.

There’s Japanese western chains like Gusto (ガスト) and Saizeriya all over where you should be able to get a pizza and some veggie sides.

I think I saw that Coco Ichibanya also now have vegetarian curry options in all their restaurants.

I don’t recall seeing many veggie burgers about (there’s no veggie burgers in McDonald’s AFAIK). I think Mos Burger has veggie burgers so you’ll be able to find one, you just can’t bank on every burger place having a veggie option like you would expect here.

I’ll keep 🤞🤞 for you too.

Based on the first forecast in Spring we were expecting to just catch the very end of the Sakura in Osaka/Kyoto and then miss it in Tokyo. In the end the bloom was delayed and we ended up at the very start of the bloom in Kyoto/Osaka and peak bloom in Tokyo and Kamakura. Hopefully you’ll get a bit of a shift in your favour too.

Yes Mos do have vegan/veggie options 😊

@Chatterchatter vegan chains like Ain Soph (which has a few restaurants in Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagano) have western options, including burgers.

Just joining the thread now. We are going in January to ski. A few days in Tokyo at the start, then on to Arai, then Nieseko, with a few days in Sapporo on our way out. Does anyone have any advice for visiting ski resorts? Im quite worried I will commit a faux pas unknowingly and not stand in the correct queue for the ski lift or similar.

I’m also a veggie! In Tokyo we went to T’s TanTan Ramen which is kid friendly and very causal. I use Google maps and search vegan / vegetarian to get some good options.

T’s TanTan is great 😊

We ate at an okonomiyaki place in Osaka that served vegetarian and vegan okonomiyaki. It was the only place we went where the vegetarian and vegan options were very prominently advertised.

https://www.oko-osaka.com

OP you sound like you have done a lot of your planning and booking already but we really enjoyed and recommend Hokkaido - the contrast to the hustle and bustle was fabulous, and we particularly enjoyed the onsen and a bear sighting in one of the parks!

@Specialnameforanoutingthread This won’t be our last trip to Japan. We really want to go up to Hokkaido someday. In my head, we that would be a northern Japan trip around Hokkaido, Aomori, Akita etc.

Whereabouts in Hokkaido were you and what was the rest of your itinerary like?

I think this trip is now pretty set in terms of where we plan to stay, but still quite open in terms of what we plan to do in and around Tokyo and Osaka. The Hiroshima part of our trip, we have a pretty good idea of what we want to do.

However, I have another three very hazy future trips in my head. A northern Japan one, a Japanese Grand Prix and Hokuriku Arch one and a Seoul-Kyushu one.