Japan Planning Thread 3

[Takoneko]

Hi!

This is a new Japan Planning Thread for when our last one is full.

Feel free to ask any questions here related to travel in Japan, regardless of budget or style of trip.

Hi I am new to the thread, thank you for starting it:) Is it ok to ask for help with critiquing my itinerary for late May/June 2026 please? We are going for 18 days , family of 4 , dd 21 and dd 15.
I tried to accommodate our family’s various wishes. Our must do list includes: culture and history (husband), nature and mountains (me), animals (both dd’s ), marine life (dd21 absolutely obsessed), animation (dd21) and Disney (all of us).

We have not been before.

I have the high level itinerary as below:
day 1- fly Japan airlines to Tokyo from Heathrow (night flight)
day 2- arrive in Tokyo 17.20, taxi to our private “house -hotel” accommodation it is called WE Hotel family house , just north of Shinjuku ( I think) , rest and early night
day 3 - all day exploring Tokyo (girls might choose to sleep in and join us a bit later in which case DH and I would start the day with a temple or a shrine visit), Shibuya in the afternoon and some shopping …
day 4 - Tokyo all day, including team lab planets or borderless (which one is better?) plus some shopping and Takeshita street? Not planned this yet in detail
day 5 - studio Ghbili museum - this is non negotiable as dd21 studies animation. followed by Inokashira park and Kichijoji neighbourhood for shopping and food
day 6 check in at Disney Toy Story hotel and full day in Disneyland with unlimited rides vacation package - we can ride all the big rides with queue skipping as much as we want that’s why it’s only 1 day there.
day 7 Tokyo Disney Sea all day unlimited rides package and another night at Toy Story hotel
day 8 - check out Toy Story hotel, make it to the airport for a late morning flight to Ishigaki island . Staying in Fusaki beach resort (I heard it has netted swimming area to keep jellyfish away which will keep dd15 happy) . Relaxing afternoon by the pool / beach
day 9 relax on Ishigaki and snorkelling tour to see Manta Rays in the wild
day 10 relax on Ishigaki beach time with short drive to Squirrel monkey park to feed monkeys
day 11 very early flight to Okinawa island and drive to Naha - spend the day in Naha aquarium which is meant to be the best in Japan so this one is for dd21.
overnight in a hotel near Naha airport with rooftop swimming pool
day 12 late morning flight from Naha to Osaka , then 1 hour train to Kyoto. Quiet evening in Kyoto
day13 and day 14 in Kyoto - bamboo forest, hike to Fushimi Inari, maybe the monkey park , kimono rental and geisha tea ceremony
day 15 early morning visit to Nara , after lunch train to Koyasan for a 2 night temple stay with monks - vegan dinner and evening cemetery walk
day 16 early morning meditation with monks, breakfast followed by pilgrimage trail walk and exploring the town , quiet temple evening
day 17 after breakfast in the temple train to Tokyo ( over 5 hours) and check in to airport hotel
day 18 early morning flight to London

Please could you tell me if this looks reasonable and if I have missed anything crucial about this itinerary?
I haven’t figured out yet how to make it from our accommodation in Tokyo to Toy Story hotel to be there for 7 am check in and to collect our vacation package , or how to get from Toy Story hotel to the airport for our flight to Ishigaki ( should we uber to make it easier ?)
I also don’t know if the monkey park in Kyoto is worth a visit, considering we will have already done Monkey Park in Ishigaki (although they are different type of monkeys) - dd15 loves animals

thanks and apologies for the long post

Welcome!

That looks very sensible to me. I’m not terribly familiar with a lot of the places that you are going to but your itinerary looks great to me.

If the Ghbili museum is non-negotiable then you need to be online about half an hour before tickets go online (which is late night UK time) and be ready to sit in the online queue. I think they are released on a specific day each month (10th) for the following month. So all tickets for June will be sold in May.

For getting to the airport from Disney the limousine bus is probably your best bet. Getting to Disney for 7am with luggage from Shinjuku, I’d probably go for a taxi for ease.

I’ve linked the last thread in case you want to take a look.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/holidays/5312855-japan-planning-thread-part-2?page=1

Thank you ! I’ll have a look at the previous threads. It would be great to hear from anyone who visited Ishigaki, Okinawa aquarium or stayed in Koyasan to hear their experience.

I had no idea Ghbili tickets sell out so fast so thank you so much for this tip. My dd would not forgive me if I missed the chance to buy it…reminds me of the time when I sat on three different devices trying to secure Hamilton musical tickets when it first opened in London :D nearly had a heart attack trying to process the payment.

Regarding travel- I don’t know whether I need a rail pass for the journeys between Osaka and Kyoto, Kyoto to Nara and then Koyasan and finally Koyasan to Tokyo. How do you compare prices buying individual tickets and the rail pass ?

There’s definitely people who have been to those places!

A rail pass will definitely be way more expensive for your itinerary. Just buy individual tickets. The Shinkansen to Tokyo will be about £70pp but the rest of those journeys are cheap. For example Kyoto-Nara will cost about £3.50 on the kintetsu line.

That’s great to know, thank you so much for your advice. Counting the days now !

New thread - thank you!
Starting to properly look at accommodation now we have our itinerary mapped out - are AirBnB legal in all areas of Japan? Or rental apartments/houses - a lot come up on booking.com/expedia….

I’d love to join, we’re going to Japan for the second time this March for 2 weeks (preceded by 3 nights in Seoul) but sticking to Kyushu Island.

booked accommodation and travel and our itinerary looks like:
30th March fly to Kagoshima, ferry to Yakushima
30th March - 2nd April staying on Yakushima, day island tour booked, will take out guesthouse kayaks and visit the sea onsens but otherwise relax in nature
2nd April ferry back to Kagoshima (possibly to Isubuki then story train up to Kagoshima) and staying 2 nights.
4th April start mini road trip, get to Takachiho in time for the shrine performance, travelling up the Miyazaki coast
5th April booked boats up Takachiho gorge first thing then road trip to Yame via Mount Aso if the volcano is behaving and via Kumamoto to see the castle if not. Staying in Yame, see the tea plantations and have a sake lesson with a sake sommelier in the evening
6th drive to Nagasaki via Saga and the fruit bus stops, 3 nights in Nagasaki, tickets booked to the abandoned island, DH and I will take a half day trip up to Arita to scout for pottery so D.C. can have a chill day
9th April train to Fukuoka, we have a Yatai Stall tour booked the first evening and a miso making class the first morning. Probably mainly shopping and TeamLabs
12th fly out of Fukuoka first thing via an 8 hour layover in Singapore airport which I’m quite excited about!

@Almondflour i def concur get on the Ghibli tickets, it was a bun fight 6.5years ago when we went, I think I had to stay up until 1am to book them on the right day! Also highly recommend TeamLabs while you’re in Tokyo.

we went to KoyaSan and did the monastery stay, I would say 1 night is sufficient, do the night time tour with the monks, the early morning prayer service and then a self guided walk through the cemetary during the day. It was one of our favourite places and things to do while we were in Japan, the food is fantastic!

@Citygirlrurallife That looks like a fantastic itinerary. I’d love to hear all about it, because we are thinking of spending some time in Kyushu in November.

We’ve only spent a day in Fukuoka on a day trip but we really liked it. For us, Nanzoin was worth the trip out. It’s a really cool temple and the reclining Buddha is very impressive. The train station there is also really charming. The elderly man running it was super friendly and personally stamped our eki stamp books for us. They also have a cool little display with some sports memorabilia. I think it was a baseball bat used by Shohei Ohtani and a kesho mawashi worn by Hakuho Sho.

I’ve heard really good things from people I know about Nagasaki. We’ve definitely decided that we want to go there.

@Takoneko Nanzoin is def on my radar! I think aside from accommodation and the small handful of tours we’ve booked we’re aiming to take the road where it leads us, so building lists of options in each place so we have some ideas, just so glad we visited the golden circle pre-covid and now very excited to visit a whole new area (though a little sad that having awkward teens in tow makes Beppu/Yufin/Kurowara a bit pointless on this trip!)

We might be on the same flight!

Can I join please? I was wondering if anyone knows what vaccines are needed? I didn’t think we would need anything new, but Google tells me hepatitis A and B are recommended

No vaccinations are needed. It’s recommended that you are up to date with any vaccinations that are recommended in your home country but for a normal Japan holiday without any high-risk activities, there’s no need for anything beyond that.

Ah that’s nice and easy then

Hello! Very exciting seeing all your plans! We are going to Tokyo in late April/early May (I know, Golden Week). We have concerts booked at the Ariake arena and a much smaller venue, the Duo Music Exchange in Shubuya. Looking for any hotel recommendations. We are a couple, first time visitors to Japan. Hoping to get out of the city on a day trip using the Shinkansen and also Tokyo sightseeing. Budget approx £200 per night. Good transport links are key I think.

There is also ghibli park if you don’t get tickets the the museum - but it isn’t in Tokyo, I think maybe nearer Kyoto - so it might be a close second if you don’t get museum tickets (I tried and failed!).

there is a manga museum in Kyoto too if your daughters are into manga.

@lindyb2007 The Ghibli Park is on the outskirts of Nagoya. It’s not really day-trippable from either Tokyo or Kyoto.

@meikyo For hotels, I really like Japanese chains. There are budget chains and more upscale chains but I’ve never had a bad experience in any Japanese hotel. I only choose places that are well reviewed and tend not to book basic double rooms, which are tiny in a lot of chains. If you do that then you’re pretty safe. I tend to go for whatever is well-priced at the time of booking and close to train stations that are convenient for our itinerary.

Thanks all for your feedback on my itinerary. What do you recommend more; TeamLab planets or borderless?

we are staying just north of Shinjuku

Thanks for the third thread, so interesting to see people’s itineraries. We’re planning to stay in Kyoto for 3 nights in mid-April. I’m looking at Airbnb, but would appreciate any thoughts as to the most sensible area to locate ourselves for good transport and restaurants. Any recommendations please?

@Almondflour i personally think Planets - we did both and Borderless is bigger and Planets more physically interactive

If you are going to Kyoto, scrap TeamLabs in Tokyo and do TeamLabs: Biovortex in Kyoto. It's in a different league to the Tokyo ones.

Hi, Does anyone know anything about the Have Fun in Kansai pass? I got one as part of another purchase and just trying to work out what the best value options to use it for will be, or if it's just going to be money off things i don't need in the first place!

@Actnaturally agree with PP that Nanzoin is a must see from Fukuoka. Also recommend the big Buddha Tochoji in the city itself.

I’d never heard of it but it looks like a pretty good deal. Unlike a lot of passes it doesn’t force you to squeeze all the attractions into a very short timeframe. Some of the passes I’ve seen before are only good value if you pack your days with far more than I would find enjoyable.

Just sharing the latest cherry blossom forecast for those of us travelling this spring.

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

Thanks @Takoneko. I’m going to be in Tokyo and Kyoto/Osaka for full bloom ❤️