Has anyone done a cruise around (at least a bit) of Japan? Any suggestions?

[CrystalSingerFan]

Japan is on my bucket list, I'm 66 and single, and have been on various cruises. (Fred Olsen, MSc, Hurtigruten).

Can anyone report back on their experiences of this? It seems like an easy, safe organised way of trying the country out, plus some cruises include S Korea, which sounds interesting.

Yes exactly. You can click to get rid of a chatbot you know OP.
I went to Japan last year, my trip was booked with Inside Japan. They were so helpful at every stage of the process, including when I had to rearrange the itinerary halfway through the trip for health reasons. So if you are "old and ill" you might want to persevere with them.

Unfortunately the cruises don’t get you into the countryside and you miss so much. Rarely is a Shinkansen train journey included. Plus - you send in your luggage by the luggage forwarding system. You just have a day bag and your luggage arrives before you do. You send it the night before. It pays to have a good tour company in the uk who knows these things.

Just being on a ship will limit dining and what you can see. It’s inevitable.

Thanks! That's one of the things I like about cruising - unpack and pack once only for the whole trip.

Also, good to know about the cheap taxis (presumably they take credit cards?) and I love your Hiroshima story.

I'm certainly happy using local public transport in Europe. One of my favourite discoveries on my various trips to Zeebrugge is the 'Kusttram' that runs along the Belgian coast and is a two minute walk from the cruise terminal. 7.5 euros for a day pass, go right for Ostend and the French border and go left for Knokke-Heist and the French border.

May I also ask how many of the public transport signs are in English as well as Japanese?

@Takoneko

Thanks!,

"You don’t have to hotel hop every night to see lots of places. If you stayed in Tokyo, Osaka/Kyoto and Hiroshima only, there are tons of places that you can see from those cities in less time than it might take you to get from a port to a city centre in some places."

That's a really good point. Maybe I should consider that as well. I've realised from other people's posts, is that I tend to take relatively short holidays. I've never spent three weeks on holiday, as a PP did. Or travelled to the Southern Hemisphere, or the Eastern one (if that's a thing?). The only long-haul trips I've done were to North America.

It's so nice to get these thoughtful suggestions to help with the planning.

@OhDear111

"you send in your luggage by the luggage forwarding system. You just have a day bag and your luggage arrives before you do."

That sounds fantastic. When I walked a (short variant of) the Camino de Santiago on my 60th, a group of Jersey bankers I met on the way had used this service with the Spanish postal service. It sounded brilliant - they just had day packs, This certainly sounds helpful.

We found the train stations have English information eg on the platform information signs, and we didnt have a problem with local trains either. The subways are the same, in that the signs are digital and change from Japanese to English. The buses were a bit trickier but nothing that cant be managed with Google maps etc. following the 'blue dot'.

I agree with many of the other pp that you would miss out a little on the varied experiences in the evening and that you could gicve some serious consideration to a land based tour group. @Takoneko and I and some others have been 'off the beaten track' a bit and have given us some of our favourite Japanese moments so thats why we're encouraging you to think about a tour rather thana cruise. But if is not an option open to you, it's not an option but i think its helpful to know about the luggage forwarding service etc.

@Neverthoughtiwould

How was Seoul?

My knowledge or Korea is limited to watching MASH, shambling around the BM Korean galleries, and eating Korean food (many years ago) in Hammersmith. (Obvs K-pop and food have become better known in England recently.)

I like the idea of flying into Tokyo and flying back from Seoul.

@Specialnameforanoutingthread

"think about a tour rather thana cruise.But if is not an option open to you, it's not an option"

A tour is certainly an option. I think my current approach is that I want to dip my toe in the water, metaphorically. If I enjoyed my first experience of Japan, I'd definitely go back and do tour(s). Plus getting such helpful suggestions from Mumsnetters is brilliant as part of my pre-trip research. 😀

@CrystalSingerFan I suspect you'll like it - there's been quite a lot of people on the Japan Planning threads and everyone has really enjoyed their trip. We've been twice and we're certainly happy to go back again...

@CrystalSingerFan I’ve never been away for more than a couple of weeks either and I don’t like changing hotels too often. You can squeeze a lot into two weeks. For context, our last itinerary was 3 nights Tokyo, 5 nights Osaka and 5 in Hiroshima and we saw tons.

Day 1: arrival in Tokyo early morning. Sightseeing in Tokyo.
Day 2: we went to a ceremonial sumo event at a Tokyo shrine and did some other sightseeing.
Day 3: Day trip to kawagoe.
Day 4: Morning sightseeing and shopping, then bullet train to Osaka. We did a bit of sightseeing in Osaka, including Abeno Harukas 300 at sunset and dinner.
Day 5: Day trip to Uji (could also have easily been Nara or Kyoto but we’d done those in 2024).
Day 6: Katsuoji temple and evening in Osaka
Day 7: Day trip to Himeji.
Day 8: Day trip to Okayama and Kurashiki
Day 9: Some last minute shopping then bullet train to Hiroshima where we went to the gardens and art museum.
Day 10: Iwakuni in the morning and Miyajima in the afternoon.
Day 11: Day trip to Onomichi, evening baseball match in Hiroshima
Day 12: Day trip to Okunoshima (bunny island)
Day 13: Day trip to Fukuoka. Temple and shrine walk and side trip to Nanzoin and the giant reclining Buddha.
Day 14: Hiroshima peace park, atomic bomb museum and castle. Evening flight home from Hiroshima via Tokyo.

We saw so much in the days and then hung out in our base cities soaking up the atmosphere in the evenings. We book independently, but a good agent should be able to put you something together that allows you to see a lot without changing hotels constantly and incorporating some guided tour elements.

Apart from bunny island, none of our day trips were more than an hour’s journey.

If you wanted to include South Korea, there’s ferries to Busan from Fukuoka and I think maybe also from Osaka.

Thanks so much. 😄

I fully expect to enjoy it, inspired by an old friend who did an escorted tour post-70's, and a younger couple who got engaged there in cherry blossom season last year. (They'll be going back for their honeymoon.)

OTOH the strongest memory for my sister, who went for work reasons, was her husband waking her up in their Tokyo hotel bedroom and saying "darling, it's an earthquake, you don't want to miss this."

We did a 20 day cruise with Princess Cruises a couple of years ago. We had a couple of days in Tokyo beforehand. We really enjoyed the cruise and got to see a lot of different places in Japan plus Busan and Jeju in South Korea. We said if we go back to Japan we’d go land based and see some of the bigger cities like Osaka and Kyoto as they weren’t on the itinerary. We really liked Tokyo and Yokohama in Japan but didn’t really spend enough time in any of them. We loved Busan and Jeju in South Korea too. I’d say go land based for your first visit and perhaps put a 7-10 day cruise on the end as it’ll provide some R&R. Side note, we went in August. Do not go then as it’s far too hot and humid. We had to stick to school holidays. Would recommend Princess.

@Popsicle30

THis is fascinating. Thanks for the Princess recommendations. How would you rate them compared to other cruise lines (I've done Fred Olsen, MSc and Hurtigruten.) What's the demographic using them?

Thnak you. This is itinerary is hugely helpful and kind.

I particularly liked the Bunny Island at Ōkunoshima suggestion (I've heard of the deer at Nara).

Did you also visit the Poison Gas museum? What was that like?

@CrystalSingerFan Bunny island was a highlight of our last trip. I absolutely loved it.

The poison gas museum is tiny but really informative and interesting. Sometimes WW2 history in Japan can be a bit “there we were, just minding our own business, when suddenly the Americans nuked us” but we found it really good at not shying away from the more uncomfortable stuff.

There’s also some interesting ruined buildings, a nice little visitor centre and lots of great places to walk, admire the view and meet bunnies. We thought we might be there for a couple of hours but ended up staying far longer than we expected. If you go, buy bunny food before getting on the ferry over.

Another tiny little museum that we enjoyed was the white snake museum at Iwakuni.

The deer at Nara and Miyajima are also really great. I loved Nara in 2024.

@CrystalSingerFanKillashandra? If so, we have similar tastes in books.

I've been to Japan both by land based travel and on a cruise (Celebrity Millennium). There are benefits in both.

I'll start with the cruise. The passengers were a little younger than Fred's and probably similar to MSC. Very few children on board. We went in November, and went from t shirts and sunshine in Kagoshima to snow in Aomori and Hakodate. The whole trip was spectacular. We just got off the ship and did our own thing. Some examples of things I will always remember:

-walking up the active volcano Sakurajima (in the safe zone) watching it venting as we headed up the path. We travelled to the island on a local ferry with a very excited group of kids

• having a gentle snowball fight with a little toddler (with mum's permission and amusement) in Aomori
• taking the tram to the peace park in Hiroshima, rattling between people's houses with their washing on the balconies, and the seeing the tram conductor with his whole gloves and polished leather.bag indicating each intersection. Them a group of schoolchildren singing under the laced dome.
• climbing the steep streets of The Slopes in Hakodate and marvelling at the precise placement of each house giving a view of both sea and the mountains above. We also appreciated roadworks barriers made of a gathering of squirrels. Perfect Japan. Whimsy and beauty.

We stopped at Busan on the ship, and had some extra days in Seoul after the cruise.

Before this becomes an essay,, I will just add that having the evenings in Japan and getting out into the countryside are things you would miss with a cruise. Think steam over the onsen, leisurely dinners on land and the incredible stillness and vistas in the surprisingly wide open spaces.

What ever choices you make, have a fabulous time.

@Takoneko

Thanks for all the suggestions. All these brilliant ideas are leading to what my late father called 'mission creep'. Everything sounds unmissable. I will report back as and when I make it over.

@CrepuscularCritter

Yep. I'm a Killashandra fan. What excellent taste you have. 😉

Love the sound of the live volcano. Going up one has always been on my bucket list, but I assumed it would be Etna. Hopefully it will be Sakurajima this year.

Thanks also for the Celebrity Cruises suggestion - I've started paying more attention to the overnight stops on various cruises to take advantage (hopefully) of the Japanese evenings. I certainly appreciate them on the continent. Tell me more about the "roadworks barriers made of a gathering of squirrels". Photo?

We’ve only been with Princess. We’ve done a few with them and really like them so I’d personally recommend. We always go school
holidays as we have a 10 year old. They have kids clubs but it’s never overrun with kids and not particularly aimed at families. I’d say an older demographic, perhaps old school cruising. We’re going on one of their newer ships in April and expecting it to be a bit different as I think they’re aiming it at a different crowd.

One of my favourite memories about our trip to Japan happened in the night.
We were staying at a ryokan in a village. After dinner we decided to go for a walk and the sound of frogs/toads in the fields was just tremendous. We then walked around the corner and found what seemed to be the most space age, new tech vending machine that we'd seen so far.
I'm probably not describing it very well, but it's this kind of contrast that I love about Japan. The traditional/modern, that somehow manages to coexist.

You miss a lot on a cruise because you miss trains and most of the country. It’s a snapshot within reach of a port. So limited.