Japan Planning Thread Part 2

[Takoneko]

This is a thread for anyone planning a trip to Japan. All budgets and styles of trip are welcome.

I got so much out of the first thread and would love to be able to continue the conversation with everyone who has been so helpful.

I fly tomorrow morning!

First Thread

I'm planning on getting a limousine bus from Haneda to Kabukicho but won't book it in advance in case my flight is delayed.

Is it easy to buy tickets at the bus from a person or machine or is it easier to book on my phone once I'm through immigration?

Thankyou . Just two weeks this time but hoping to visit again. 2027 to see blossom season. .

Two weeks is a decent chunk of time. We’ve never been able to go for longer than that and our trips haven’t felt too short. On our last visit we visited 10 different prefectures stretching from Saitama to Fukuoka, so you can see a decent amount in that time. As a first timer, you’ll definitely want to spend more time in the big cities than we did, but you’ll be able to see and do plenty.

I would like to join this thread. We are hoping to go to Japan in March/April 2026. Still at the early stages of planning. Never been to Japan before Going for three or four weeks (we are retired). Intending to fly to Tokyo and stay here for a week, give ourselves a little time to recover from the flights as well as sightseeing. Quite excited already.

Welcome @LittleLlama! March-April is a fab time to visit Japan.

My advice would be to have a rough itinerary (at least in terms of what cities you plan to visit) before booking flights. Open-jaw flights can be more time- and cost-efficient than having to loop back to Tokyo if you book round-trip flights from there.

We did open-jaw on our last two trips. In 2024 we did LHR-KIX (via Helsinki) and then HND-LHR (direct). This year we did LHR-HND (direct) then HIJ-LHR (via HND). Both saved us time and money over Tokyo return flights and trains.

We are going in Tokyo and out of Hong Kong - the flight to HK was very cheap and you can fly from lots of cities.

Hi all - my DH and I are planning our first trip to Japan in May 2026. It will be to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. I have been doing a lot of research in the last week or so. Also, read both threads here, which I found extremely helpful, and this has given me the confidence to say to DH - ‘we can plan and execute this ourselves’. He is not convinced though and prefers the security and convenience of an organised group trip through a travel agent. This is the route we are planning for three weeks there and I would be grateful for any input re how achievable it is, especially if using public transport, on our own, or is it better as first-timers to go with everything organised for us:

Tokyo (3 nights), Hakone (1), Japanese Alps ( Lake Asha, Lake Kawaguchi), Nagano and Shizuoka Olsen with snow monkeys (if possible) (1), Matsumoto, Takayama (2), Shirakawa-go, Kanazawa (2), Kyoto (3), Hiroshima (2), Kurashiki, Osaka (3) with trips to Nara and Himeji.

I realise we want to pack a lot in this trip but it is likely to be our only one to Japan, so we want to see and experience as much as possible of it.

Thank you for your help.

Why do you think it will be your only time in Japan? If you do this itinerary in relative comfort with a provider, you are looking at at least 10 grand per person before food and spending money. If you break it down into manageable chunks, you can easily do it yourself. But then each trip would only be like 3 to 4k pp all in.

@NellyBarney , thank you very much for your reply. It might not be our only trip to Japan but also, there are so many other places in the world we would like to see 😁. Do you mean we should break the trip to two trips and plan these ourselves? Some of the places I have included are our preference and not on the travel agent’s itinerary.

I have just realised that, for some reason, in my original post Shibu Onsen has been turned into Shizuoka Olsen 😊.

Another question, if I may, are reservations or advance purchase of tickets needed for visiting some of the shrines and temples? I came across only one that says reservations needed. How long are the waits to get in in the most popular ones? Thank you.

@g1c2d3 I was going to do a similar organised trip but I read the reviews and people were saying that they packed a lot in but were exhausted. To get to see everything they were having really early starts , lots of travelling to too many whistle stop places and felt they were rushing from one place to the next without really enjoying the sites . I’ve decided to set my own itinerary to include some downtime as it’s a holiday. I’ll go back to see anything else I want to and it’ll be in Cherry blossom season .

@hattie43, I usually overpack the itinerary as want to see everything there is possible to see (not always possible!) so the busy itinerary doesn’t bother me, I know it will be an exhausting journey in any case. My concern is that we won’t see enough as time will be spent waiting for others and thus missing other possible interesting places. On the other had, an organised trip takes the stress of dealing with transport, especially in so many new places.

If anyone has been on a group trip, I would be very interested to hear their views. Thank you.

@g1c2d3 You sound as if you enjoy a full schedule. It's certainly doable on your own. The money you save compared to a organised trip you can invest in more comfortable hotels, better food and most importantly, taxis. With taxis you can explore the Japanese Alps and more rural areas, and also save time for hotel/station transfers etc. In places like Kyoto, you can hire a driver for the day to see all the highlights without wasting time waiting for public buses etc. Overall you get freedom to travel at your own pace and see exactly what you like. The official Japan travel website has all your destinations with travel instructions and tips:
www.japan.travel/en/uk/

@g1c2d3 I think your itinerary is possible but you have a lot of cities/destinations on that itinerary with not very much time in each one and there would be multiple hours of travel between some of your stops. If you’re spending 3 nights in Osaka and you’re doing side trips to Nara and Himeji, you don’t actually have a whole day in Osaka. You have arrival day, Nara day, Himeji day, departure day. I’d slow the pace a bit. You might not tick off as many cities but you’d end up seeing and experiencing more that way. The big advantage of self-organising is having time to explore rather than being rushed from one photo-spot to another. I think you’d lose some of that with this sort of itinerary, which feels like group-tour pace to me.

Actually, thinking about it some more, I don’t think it’s the number of cities, it’s the number of changes of hotell. We visited 9 prefectures and at least 12 cities in two weeks this year but we only stayed in three hotels. We made good use of a JR west rail pass to explore a wide area but we weren’t checking into and out of hotels and dealing with luggage. The days when we were changing hotels were just not as pleasant or productive as ones where we just went off on a day trip with our rail pass. Checking in and out of hotels and dealing with luggage eats up time and makes using public transport less enjoyable.

@NellyBarney , @Takoneko , thank you very much for your advice. I do realise that we are trying to pack quite a lot in and transport with luggage to all these places will take time and effort. This is where the organised trip has advantage as it will definitely save time. There will have to be a compromise somewhere. I guess the solution might have to be a second trip to Japan😁.

Catch up

@g1c2d3 Another trip to Japan is always the right answer.

You can see loads in three weeks but not everything worth seeing and you’ll actually get to see and do more if you slightly reduce the geographical spread and number of hotel changes. It makes the travel more efficient, which gives you more time to really explore.

I’ll be onto my fourth Japan trip next year and still have lots of must-see things that I haven’t got round to yet.

Anyone heading off soon, just a reminder to double-check your travel insurance details. There’s been a lot of small to medium-sized earthquakes off southern Kyushu that have bern setting off my NHK alerts for the last few days.

Seriously late to the party here, currently on day 6 of a 25 day trip to Japan. Have been trying to read through all of the threads and make notes!

We are trying to fit a lot in, but this may be our only trip here because there are so many other places we want to see around the world.

We were stuck with summer due to DS still being in education, but managed to come a bit earlier due to him sitting his GCSEs this year. Weather wise it's as expected - hot and humid. But maybe not quite as bad as I had feared. I have a lovely case of Disney rash and my ankles tend to disappear over the course of the day 🤣 We've got fans, cooling towels, hats, chilly drinks bottles and I've bought a UV umbrella too. Still sweating buckets, especially now we are in Kyoto which is way more humid than Tokyo and Nagoya were. Apparently August is worse and tourist season ramps up at the end of July, so we'll miss that at least.

Our itinerary is:

Day 1 Tokyo
Days 2-4 Nagoya with trips to Tsumago/Magome and Takayama
Days 5-8 Kyoto
Day 9 Koyasan
Day 10-11 Osaka
Day 12 Hiroshima
Day 13-14 Kobe with a trip to Himeji
Day 15-16 Osaka with a trip to Nara
Day 17-19 Okinawa
Day 20-25 Tokyo

In hindsight we might have moved around less and done more trips from one location, but so far it has been OK. Planning to use lockers in some places so we can get straight out when we arrive, rather than heading to the hotel to leave our bags. They have been very strict on not checking in before 3, but no issues with leaving bags beforehand or after checkout.

So far we've been getting up and out early, then heading back for a rest after lunch before heading out again late afternoon/ early evening. This has helped with adjusting to the time difference and also avoids the hottest part of the day.

I'll report back with any tips I discover along the way.

I too am in Japan. Currently in Tokyo and it's not as hot as I was expecting- there is a helpful breeze (Bangkok was hotter i feel). I too have bought a UV brolly - they are good.

Downside is myself and DH have no clothes - British Airways lost our bag. Currently day 2 with no bag and it's stressful - we had to go shopping when we arrived on day one and I'm not skinny so finding any clothes to fit was hard. I hate shopping and its not something i wanted to have to do on holiday. I might have to go and buy more.

I'm really angry with BA they have been rubbish with info about the bag and not clear about what they will reinburse! Sods law it was the bag that didn't have the airtag. A cautionary tale - put more essentials in your carry on!!

@Riverswimmers Sorry to hear about your luggage. That sounds quite stressful. Hope they sort it out for you soon.

I agree with with Takoneko. We had three weeks with a similar itinerary including the alps etc with 6 different hotels.We like to a full itinary and thought it might be our only trip to Japan (suspect it won't be)
I possibly would group destinations so you day trip from a Central spot for example either Osaka or Kyoto, Matsomoto or Takeyama. This way you have less transfer days and can edit your trip depending on how you feel. We had planned to do Nara but ended up spending an extra day in kyoto (Zen gardens - see monty don on player - around the world in 80 gardens Japan episode)
Your itinary has lots of nice variety and if you like a fast pace and travel light it is doable

Honestly, if it’s a first trip to Japan, just don’t assume you have to fit everything in and will never go back.

You are very likely to go back!

Just a different perspective regarding hotel changes. We frequently changed hotels, even within the same city. We stayed at 8 different hotels over 16 nights and I much preferred this to day tripping from a base. I found it more convenient to stay near where we were during the day and not returning to a 'base camp' at night. Luggage forwarding was very easy between hotels in Tokyo and to cities like Osaka and Kyoto, and there was no 'check out', you just threw keys in a box or hand them to receptionist on way to the door. The receptionist also always filled out the forms for the luggage, I just told them the name of the hotel I booked and they'd google addess etc and give them a cutesy call to make them aware our luggsge was coming. If you want to travel e.g. from Tokyo to Kyoto via the Japanese Alps, you could send your main luggage to your hotel in Kyoto and just pack a pair of undies in your handbag, stay over night in a ryokan and travel on the next day. Also, many hotels we stayed at didn't get cleaned daily, they'd do a tidy up, stock up water etc but not hoover, dust, change sheets etc. So a new hotel means a properly clean room 😉 (sharing a room with a 9 year old crisp munching boy made me appreciate fresh sheets more than at home)

Oh, just to add, Japanese hotels have really everything you could possibly need for washing/skin care regime, so you don't even need a toiletry bag, so you can really travel light. We got toothbrush, toothpaste, nail file, 4 step glass skin care products, razor, hair brush, the obligatory shampoo, conditioner, body wash and body lotion, pyjamas and slippers at every hotel/ryokan we stayed at. Plus umbrellas when needed.