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

Hi everyone! Can I come join you?

Very early in planning my 40th birthday trip in two years time for me, my husband and our daughter (who will be 9 years old by then).

I’m looking forward to browsing through this thread and the first one to read all of your planning and updates about your trips!

You’re very welcome! Hopefully you’ll find the threads useful. If you have any specific questions then I’m sure there will be someone on here who can help. There’s been a whole range of different places and activities covered by the posters on here.

Currently on our last night in Osaka before traveling home tomorrow. What an amazing trip - we have all absolutely loved it. I've grown very fond of Kei cars, heated toilet seats and Family Marts. Found it tricky at times finding somewhere to sit down for a drink or some food with kids, especially in Tokyo but maybe that was a bit of culture shock too but we found our way and they've been much more adventurous than I thought. Gyozas and edamame beans were the surprise hits and they have had a lot of konbini pastries and karaage!

One thing I will say is some people described our decision to travel to Japan with young kids (5 and 8) as brave and seemed surprised but they've been absolutely brilliant, very rarely complained of tired legs when I've clocked up an average of 20k steps per day so they'll have done more. Other than food preferences and finding meat options rather than just seafood, I think it's been no harder with the kids than without so thought that might help anyone reading in a similar position.

Once we're home I could summarise where we went / what we roughly did each day in case that helps anyone with similar aged children planning a future trip but appreciate lots will want to skim over that detail :)

@Plan2025 Glad you’ve had a wonderful trip! I’d love to hear about the details when you’re back. I haven’t really thought about it much since my last trip, but now that you’ve mentioned it, I do remember it feeling way harder to find somewhere to just stop and sit for a bit, especially in Tokyo and Osaka. Public benches felt few and far between compared to London and sitting on the floor is a cultural no-no. I remember regularly thinking that it would have been nice to have somewhere to just sit, drink my vending machine tea and people watch for a bit.

Yes that's it, I wondered if it's just me being so used to England's cafe / bar culture but it could well be there were plenty of places but we just didn't know what to look out for.

I've found the use of bikes so interesting here also. The ability to carry multiple children on one, barely anyone locking them up and also umbrella stands/clips to cycle with an umbrella up! Not sure it would work in UK windy weather. Another thing we noticed once we got to Kyoto was even on quiet side roads, noone crosses until the red man turns green.

@Takoneko

I got home last night after a fabulous trip . I saw all the attractions I wanted to and had perfect sight seeing weather . I would definitely recommend people visit Japan . Thankyou for all your help and enthusiasm on this thread , it’s really helped .

Were you on the initially very bumpy BA flight back to London? I arrived home yesterday too. Loved Japan - amazing family holiday.

So glad to hear you had a great trip!!

Well I’ve been back two weeks, missing Japan and already planning my next trip. Thinking of going 2027 in either April or December. So many things I bought that I wish I’d bought more of.

Planning a very different trip this time, Thinking of a driving trip around the areas that see a lot less tourists and then finishing up in Tokyo for a couple of days for shopppng, I’ll be re reading both threads to get ideas of places to visit

@MyCatsSlave I always feel like that when I get home. I have a shopping list for next time, one more trip booked and have started mentally planning for the trip after that with all the places that didn’t fit on our April 2026 itinerary. 😂

For our next couple of trips we are planning to visit less visited regions too.

You might find these statistics from the JNTO interesting. This shows the % of overseas tourists that visited each prefecture in 2024.

https://public.tableau.com/views/3_3_Number_of_visitors_by_prefecture/DB_1_1_2_?:embed=y&:sid=&:redirect=auth&:toolbar=n&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

Japan doesn’t have too many tourists, they are just crowded into too few places in Japan. There’s 24 prefectures (out of 47, so more than half) that were visited by no more than 1% of overseas tourists. Only 5 prefectures were visited by more than 10% of overseas tourists and I’m not sure Chiba even really counts, as I’m pretty sure that Narita Airport and Tokyo Disneyland are doing most of the heavy lifting there.

Omg yes I was . I lost some of my wine because of the bumps lol .

Ha ha! You started early then 😉

@hattie43 @MyCatsSlave glad you had a great time. We are thinking of returning in November 26.
@Takoneko I wish I’d allowed more time for shopping. I think nine floors of Ginza Uniqlo deserves a few hours of my itinerary next time.
We loved the omiyage shops at the stations, and we bought gifts and treats after every day trip. The shops at Kamakura and Okayama stations were especially good.
I was a bit underwhelmed by the konbinis (sorry!) but the Eki Ben stands were fabulous. We even bought them to eat in our room after a very long day out.

@Pusspot My favourite shopping experiences were actually in the more provincial places, so I’m not surprised to hear that about Kamakura and Okayama. We quite liked Hiroshima for shopping.

The Muji at the Minnoh Q mall by Minnoh Kayano station was hands-down the best one I’ve visited. It’s an enormous, warehouse-type space and so much less claustrophobic feeling than the Ginza store. There were loads of really helpful staff for the far smaller volume of customers and it was very quiet and peaceful in there with no queues for the tills or changing rooms. If anyone is a muji fan, I fully recommend stopping by if you’re visiting Katsuoji and Minnoh Falls. It’s a far more relaxed and pleasant shopping experience than in the big city centre ones that I went to in central Tokyo and Osaka.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/h5z89hrZqjXmVVCH9?g_st=ipc

@Takoneko thank you - I will add that to the shopping itinerary. Sounds like a calmer experience! The other shop we liked was Takashimaya in Namba. We had a lovely time wandering around at 10am when it was still quiet. The kimono department is beautiful (and very expensive).

@Pusspot I don’t think we went in there. Sounds great.

My main regret is not buying more of the niche, only in Japan stuff. I should have bought way more sumo merchandise in Ryogoku and more of the bath salts and foot patches that I love.

Re nowhere to eat takeaway food, my tip is to look up and visit the roof terraces of dept stores and malls. There are often places to sit and eat or chill out there.

Children - yes, it’s probably one of the easiest places to take a small child on holiday. Clean, toilets and vending drinks everywhere, and plenty of chain family restaurants (such as Ootoya and Kura).

Shopping - if you see something you like as you go around, best buy it (unless heavy!). You can never guarantee seeing it again as there are so many regional specialities.

Last trip I wish I’d bought hinoki aroma oil.

Tip for those travelling to Tokyo... if you're interested in vintage markets the Oedo antique market is great. Some of it is a bit Portobello Road (western) but there's loads of Japanese decorative things.
First and third Sunday each month.

Oedo Antique Market | Tokyo International Forum Co., Ltd.

@BlackSwan we stumbled on this market last month. It was wonderful to see all the different stalls. We were walking to the station and detoured to see the forum - had no idea the market was there. There was also a flower show taking place in the forum itself, which we only found because we went to the toilets!

That's really lucky! Did you buy anything? I bought some pretty painted bowls - wish I bought more... but it was our first day in town.

I was willing myself back to Japan when I was in half-sleep this morning. Alas, didn't work.

@BlackSwan we didn’t buy anything, but the stalls looked fascinating. I recommend visiting inside the forum - so much glass!

Does anyone know how easy / hard it is to get Tokyo Disney tickets?

kind of dropped the ball and missed out on getting a vacation package for April (though I do have a different hotel on the monorail loop booked) so would be very happy with day tickets.

Are they readily available?

my children will kill me if I’ve screwed this up 🫣

@Florally gettkng Disney tickets isn’t hard. it’s not like getting Ghibli or Pokémon cafe tickets where they sell out almost instantly. We booked ours a couple of weeks ahead and could have waited until the day before without issues.

What dates in April are you looking at? Most of April hasn’t gone on sale yet for the vacation packages so I think you’re probably too early rather than too late on that. It looks like the still have plenty of availability for the first couple of days of April. You can only book five months in advance so the rest of April will become available this month.

Hi all, just wondering if anyone could help me decide on places/areas to stay?

Specifically Osaka, where we have three nights, and Tokyo, where we're staying for five nights. Thinking about possibly splitting Tokyo into two stays?

We have actually been to Japan this year, and have booked flights to go back in September as we loved it so much! We stayed in Kitehama (Osaka) this year, and probably looking for something different next time. In Tokyo we were in Shinjuku and would be happy to stay there again, but looking for some more ideas.
Even though we're not long back, we've flummoxed ourselves already about whereabouts to stay next time, so any thoughts are welcome!

Also planning on a stay in Kobe, and Hakone- possibly a ryokan, if anyone has any recommendations? Not planning on doing much in Kyoto this time, perhaps just a day trip.

TIA for any thoughts!

My recommendation for Osaka is to just stay as close as possible to a subway station on the Midosuji line. We stayed in Kitahama last time in a hotel attached to Yodoyabashi station, and the hotel was perfect for the day trips we were doing but the area is a bit quiet in the evenings. The time before that we stayed in the Henn Na Hotel by Shinsaibashi station. That area is definitely livelier and only a short walk to the hustle and bustle of Dotonbori.

In Tokyo I’m a fan of the Ginza-Tokyo Station area, but we’re trying out Asakusa for a change next April.