Japan- Terrified of planning once in a lifetime trip!

[Americanlaw]

We’ve recovered from all sorts of awful things and DH wants us to take DS, 17, to Japan as a once in a lifetime trip this summer. It’s probably too late to plan already, I don’t know.
We’ve had very few holidays (think week in Devon) .I am totally frozen with fear at how to even start planning.
has anyone been, can anyone recommend- even down to the level of detail of stay here, eat here ? DH has no budget, just says we are going to push the boat out - but I suspect it would be more budget with a few posh nights.
please be gentle! I am finding it difficult to plan anything at the moment, thank you very much.

Ridiculous “no budget”

you need to get an idea from him unless you’re Beckham’s level of wealth

Have you thought about using a tour - either self guided or a group? Also if planning yourself look at tours for ideas of the must sees - Tour Hound is a good place to start for ideas of itineraries.

Have you thought about going on an organised group tour?

Why are you planning it if it makes you so anxious and it’s all DH’s idea

And surely you have a good idea of family finances and what the budget is?

Ha. Great minds!

Travel agent?

I would recommend speaking to someone like Trailfinders. We used them for a big holiday and they were great at hearing what we wanted and choosing hotels etc with us. They also booked our flights and any excursions we wanted to do.

There’s a great Japan planning thread on the holidays board.

top tips.

summer is very hot and humid in Japan and that makes it uncomfortable, if you can avoid summer that’s better.
dont th8nk of it as holiday of a lifetime and try and tick every box. The most interspersed things in Japan can be the terribly mundane, but it’s so different shopping, the local convenience store, trains, the hotels, getting a bowl of noodles in a temple for lunch are all interesting in themselves.
its not hard to travel round, the transport system works.
even cheap hotels are good, small, but clean and safe.
its cheap to ea5 out.

I lived there for a couple of years but still used trailfinders to plan a trip just to save me the time of planning. But it is easy to do yourself.

japanese baths are great but read the etiquette guide first.

don’t talk loudly on trains.

wear slip on shoes.

Japan is fantastic and you will have a great time @Americanlaw. I second the pp's advice - get yourself on this thread.

You can post on there and the incredibly helpful posters will help you with all your questions.

My son's going to be there for work in August. I'll warn him about the weather.

i travel to Japan frequently as my family live there. For your first trip, I really wouldn’t recommend going in the summer (40deg plus heat and humidity for six continuous weeks last year) unless you plan to visit the north island of Hokkaido which is much cooler. Spring and Autumn are much more pleasant to travel and sight see .

Weather is nightmarish in Summer. Go in Spring or Autumn. Getting there is very expensive, train travel and accommodation there is pricey. Day to day and eating out is incredibly cheap.

I wrote a mammoth blog post about our trip last year

https://affordacool.wordpress.com/2024/04/25/japaneasy/

Get ChatGPT to plan out every detail. Then modify to suit your exact needs.

Thank you, this is very helpful.
I can see I e a lot of research to do!
it sounds horribly hot!
dh not keen on paying tour company but guessing it might be a worthy investment!

I would go and buy a guidebook, they often have sample itineraries, decide on a few ‘big’ places you want to go, then you can plan where you need to stay or if you are going to travel to different areas, then decide when you want to go, and look at flights, once flights are booked you can book hotels and that is the major planning done.

Good luck OP, it’s scary the first time you do this, flights are generally non refundable, get those booked, hotels can usually be refunded up to a few days before staying so you can book some and then narrow down when you are more certain of what you are doing.

We visited Japan with Inside Japan ... we got ourselves to Tokyo, and met our small group there. The trip we chose gave us a lot of freedom to do our own thing (DH and I prefer to travel independently), whilst having the safety net of travelling with a small group and guide.

For first-timers, I'd absolutely recommend them.

Another recommending Inside Japan - we had a fab holiday in 2023 and used them. They did a great itinerary for us and lots of useful info packs etc.

I was exactly like you this time 6 months ago!

Japan can't be "done" in one trip I think, you'll have to accept that it'll be a highlights of Japan trip, especially for a first time visit.

The Japan planning threads are very useful, lots of tips, do check them out.

We went for 3 weeks in March, 2 adults only, and squeezed in quite a lot. The way that I decided my itinerary was having looked at various tours and guided trips, I took places from their itineraries that I liked the look of and used their route as the basis of my trip. One tour company I spoke to was going to charge £10k per person? for 2 weeks, there's no way I would pay that.

We stayed in a mix of business class/ cheaper hotels (the Japanese chain APA was very reasonable) and shorter stays in pricier places.

If you go to the Japan planning thread and talk about when in the year you want to go, you'll probably get a lot of help. Good luck and have fun.

We went to Japan a couple of years ago, mostly with an organised tour, but as we were finishing that we realised that we could have done it ourselves. DD has done it twice with her BF, once before Covid and once since, just this January. She said it was much easier this time because DeepL and/or Google Lens does all the language work, plus lots of places take cards whereas before it was almost all cash.

If you are staying in Tokyo for a few days, plan a side trip up to Nikko, which is a peaceful mountain resort where Tokyo people go for some cooler air in the summer. There is a steam train ride and a variety of luxurious trains to get there with, as well as a "lucky" bridge where everyone tries to get their wedding photos taken. We tacked this on at the end of a tour at the recommendation of a Japanese colleague and we were very proud to work out how to use the buses to get around.

We’re here at the moment, used trailfinders but then booked it all ourselves, well I say we, but DH has! Kids are 11 and 14. Flew Manchester to Dubai then to Toyko, and have made our way down the country currently on a bullet train to Hiroshima! Amazing country, wonderful people, go for it!

I personally don’t think paying a tour company is worth the money in Japan. I’m also there now and we booked everything ourselves. The tour companies are really expensive and Japan is very safe, hotels are reliably good (even cheap ones) and public transport is extensive and reliable. It’s somewhere that you can’t go too far wrong with when self-organising.

It’s worth looking into just getting a quote costs you nothing. Trailfinders were able to get bundle discounts of flights and hotels that we weren’t able to get on our recent trip to South Easy Asia. We need my flight via Singapore to Chiang Mai, my flight Chiang Mai to KL, hotel in KL, flights for both us KL to Singapore, hotel to Singapore and then both flights home. They were 25% cheaper than us trying to do it ourselves as they could utilise code share and airline partner discounts. They organised private transfers which were great.
I have used them for some trips and organised other myself, but I usually get a quote to see how their price compares.
Plus they give you great tips - I had 15 hours in Singapore airport and the Trailfinders agent told me about the swimming pool where I could have a swim, get and shower and relax a bit,
My daughter has left for Japan today to stay with her cousin who lives there - April is one of the best times, transiting through China made the flights more affordable.

Friends went in July /August 2024 - it was 40° with 100% humidity. Their teenagers found it exhausting and didn't enjoy some of the days out due to the heat. It isn't really getting below 20° during the day until the end of October (have family in Japan). Spring or late Autumn are the best times for visiting if you don't cope well with heat.

Trailfinders got us a very good deal on flights as we wanted to go from a regional aiport. They also got us a good deal on the hotel in Tokyo which was excellent.

But agreed - if you have the time to do a bit of planning then doing it yourself is really quite easy.