First off, a big thank you to this subreddit!! Been lurking here for a while before I posted anything. Great tips with everything from itinerary help, hotels, and Visit Japan online for customs and immigration. Hopefully, one day I will be lurking here again planning another trip.(So sorry it took so long to post.)
Some info: Both my husband and mine’s first trip to Japan and his first time outside the US. We knew some Japanese through using Lingodeer. We took trains or walked the whole time. We both had JR passes(this was before the latest price increase) and Suica cards. We used Booking.com for all of our hotel reservations. We mainly used Google Maps to get around, and the few times we needed communication help we used Google translate.
Hotels:
Tokyo (Day 1-5) Akihabara Washington Hotel. It was recommended by this subreddit, and I can see why. It was in a great location, right near the train station and Akiba. We didn’t try the restaurant there, but the staff was super friendly and helpful and knew a little English. Only down side was the room being a tad small.
Osaka (Day 5-7) Dormy Inn Premium Namba Natural Hot Spring. Least favorite of all and that is probably due to a couple reasons. The bed was hard along with the pillows, and the blanket barely covered us. We weren’t able to use the hot spring, which was unfortunate since this was the most expensive of all our stays.
Tokyo (Day 7-12) Hotel Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku. This was probably our favorite of the places we stayed in. Biggest of all our rooms, space for suitcases under the bed, just a ton of amenities available in the lobby. The staff was very friendly and spoke a lot of English. It was just a small walk from Shinjuku station.
Itinerary:
Day 0
Flight left O’Hare airport at 12pm. We flew using ANA, and I would definitely use them again. Good food, decent bathroom, and the staff were super friendly and helpful. I sadly slept for maybe an hour.
Day 1
Flight arrived at the Narita airport at 3pm. We had filled out online the paperwork for customs and immigration, so this part went smoothly for us. We got our JR pass at the airport since the line was so short. I had ordered a pocket wi-fi with my pass, but had to pick it up at their post office desk upstairs. Booked our Narita Express tickets and headed to Akihabara. The humidity and lack of sleep really wiped us out. The only other things we did was get money from a 7/11 and get dinner at McDonalds to eat in our rooms.
Day 2
Since this day was Sunday (this subreddit warned me about busy Tokyo weekends) this was our Ghibli Museum day. We were worried we wouldn’t be used to the trains by this time, so we scheduled a 12pm entrance time. Due to the time difference we got up early and were there by 8am. So we spent time walking around Inokashira Park, just relaxing, and went to our first shrine, Inokashira Benzaiten. Ghibli Museum was amazing, and I would love to go again. We decided to hit up Nakano Broadway before heading home. It was a lot of fun, interesting, and we got a couple figures. We got back to our rooms around 6:30pm and had a quick snack before passing out.
Day 3
We stayed in the area and started by heading to Kanda Shrine. It was beautiful and so peaceful. Then we headed back to Akihabara to wait about 20 minutes till stores opened. We did a lot of shopping and went to a lot of stores people recommended here, and also just wandering into what looked interesting. We again called it an early night since I had blisters on a couple of my toes. I had new but worn in shoes, but my socks were cheap and the humidity didn’t help. By the end of the trip, I had a blister on each toe.
Day 4
Jam packed day. We took an early train to Asakusa to get in line for a reservation for Benitsuru. Walked over to Sensoji temple and explored the area along with the Thunder gate. Went back to Benitsuru for our reservation. They have amazing fluffy pancakes and would highly recommend it! Then we went to Kirby Cafe for a late lunch reservation. Loved the atmosphere and staff. The food was ok, but we knew that going in. We went to a couple stores around Tokyo Skytree including our first Pokemon Center and Donguri store there. We had been up in the air about going up the Skytree, but the area wasn’t too busy and I’m glad we did. Took lots of videos for our kid who loves the Skytree. Took a train back to our Akiba hotel and turned in before 6pm.
Day 5
We woke up early, sent most of our luggage to Shinjuku hotel while checking out, took the train, and hopped on the first Shinkansen to Osaka that was covered by the JR pass. We forgot our motion sickness meds, so my husband didn’t have the best ride. Took the train and walked a bit to our “hotel.” I picked the wrong Dormy Inn on my phone for directions. It was super humid, and I should have just checked our reservation for the address. The receptionist was very kind and took out a map to show us where the correct hotel was. We walked the half hour there, really should have taken a bus, and got to the area in Osaka that has two Dormy Inns like kitty corner from each other, went to the wrong one, and finally ended up at our hotel. The problem was our room would not be ready for hours, so we left our luggage there and ventured to Den Den town. We wandered from store to store, I probably could have done more research on where to go but luckily there were some places that Akiba had. Like Super Potato(shoutout to this subreddit which mentioned trying this store in Osaka when my husband couldn’t find what he wanted in the Akiba Super Potato). We went back to the hotel once it was ready and took a 3-4 hour nap. At night, we headed to Dontonbori. I had a list of places to go from this subreddit. Ate a ton of food including the delicous takoyai from Creo-ru. We kind of passed Honsenji temple while trying to find food places, but I would have liked to actually spend time there. We ended the night at Round One Entertainment, which we have one back home but Osaka’s is a thousand times better. We went to a lot of crane game/gatcha places and this was one of our favs.
Day 6
Super jam packed day, but we knew it would be. We got up early and took the train to Kyoto. Our first stop was Nishiki Market. We got there early so it gave us time to walk to Nishiki Tenmangu Shrine and the Kyoto Pokemon Center. We came back to Nishiki Market and had tons of food, including soy milk donuts, Unagi for the first time, and delicious chicken skewers. Then we walked to Kennin-Ji Temple and just explored. We probably could have been here more, but I wanted to get to two more places. We made our way to Kodai-ji Temple, which was one of my favorite temples. I really wanted to go to the bamboo forest in Arashiyama(knew we couldn’t do it due to time), and someone suggested the bamboo forest at this temple which was breathtaking and not too busy. Also, this temple had a Kakigori stand that was our favorite Kakigori of the whole trip. It started to sprinkle, and we wandered a little and ended up at Ryozen Kannon Temple(not planned). I recommend stopping by if you are at Kodai-ji temple. We made the long walk back to the train to get to Fushimi Inari Shrine, our last Kyoto stop. By the time we got there, it was pouring! We pushed through since this was our only chance to be here. We got soaked but it was beautiful there and not too crowded even though it was around 3-4pm. We went to the top and back down. By the time we came back down, it was barely sprinkling and there were a ton of tour groups and people. We walked back to the train, and promptly passed out by the time we made it back to our Osaka hotel. We got over 25,000 steps on this day.
Day 7
We checked out of our Osaka hotel, and this day was the day to do any Kyoto or Osaka things we still wanted to do. It was another hot day, so we only did a quick sweep of Daimaru Shinsaibashi ( of course including Pokemon Center Osaka EX) and Osaka Castle. We decided against going inside due to the huge line and us sweating so much plus we didn’t know if we could bring our suitcase inside. Before heading back to Toyko, we decided to go into the Miraiza Osaka-Jo for some air. Inside there was a pop-up cafe and shop for Detective Conan, an anime I grew up watching with my siblings. Also, there was the Kaiyodo Figure Museum, which was really interesting. On the way to the bullet train we picked up a Rikuro’s cheesecake, and took a bullet train to our Shinjuku hotel.
Day 8
We got up kind of early and went to the Meiji Shrine area. There was a bunch of performances going on so we stopped to watch for a bit. While there, I finally got to try Dango. We walked over to Takeshita street which was jammed packed! We knew it would be since it was the weekend. We got strawberries, crepes, and the Longer potato, and hit up Kiddyland. We traveled to PARCO which again was packed because of the weekend. But I wanted to make sure we saw Mewtwo at the pokemon store. Then, we took the train back and had the Japanese exclusive burger at Eggslut.
Day 9
We woke up and took the train straight to Shiro-Hige’s Cream Puff Factory. We got three differnt Totoro cream puffs and the Ponyo dessert that is only there on weekends. Besides the very bottom being delicious the Ponyo was flavorless, and we wouldn’t get it again, but all the cream puffs were amazing and delicious. We headed back and spent several hours at the Gyoen National Garden. It was gorgeous. It rained for a bit so we waited by the bathrooms with the other people picnicking there and that was fine too. Then we went back to Shibuya to go through Mega Don Quijote(bought too much lol), Shibuya Crossing(we had actually gone through it the day before and didn’t even realize it), and saw the Hachiko statue.
Day 10
Since this was planned as a free day, we went to Tokyo Disney Sea. Even though it was super hot and humid and not the weekend, it was super crowded(more than I thought it would be). They had warnings playing in Japanese and English about taking breaks from the heat. It was their 40th celebration so we ate a lot of 40th exclusive foods and walked around. The lines for rides were crazy busy, so we only did a few. The heat was getting to us, so we hopped on a train back to our hotel. This gave us enough of a break to go to Tokyo Station and walk/shop around Tokyo Character Street. Then we went to our hotel to relax for a bit. At night, we wandered around Shinjuku, mainly Kabukicho. We explored Kabukicho Tower for a bit, the Godzilla at Hotel Gracey, and Shinjuku no Nekomae.
Day 11
We used this day to explore some places a bit more. We walked back to Shibuya and took a train to Akiba. This day we did a lot of crane game places as there were figures we had our eyes on. We had brought a suitcase on our trip just for figures/souvenirs, and by the end of the trip it was full to bursting. We probably could have done more, but my blisters were getting to me. At night, we decided to try going to the famous Tsukemen place, Fu-unji. Luckily, we went at a good time(around 6-7pm) and only had to wait maybe a half hour. It was amazing, and I highly recommend it!
Day 12
We had a mid afternoon flight home. So after checking out of our hotel, we pushed our luck and went to Ikebukuro. Mainly explored the Sunshine City area for Pokemon Mega Center Tokyo, Pikachu Sweets, Donguri and other stores. We also finally went to some stores we hadn’t gone to yet like Book-off. My husband really wishes we could have spent more time here, and I feel the same way. Originally I had taken Ikebukuro off our schedule since I thought we wouldn’t have enough time. Then we were rushing to get to the airport, the Narita express could not go fast enough. We only got to the airport an hour before our flight, but Narita is so much quicker and easier to navigate (at least it was for us) than O’Hare. Long flight back to Chicago and we got our bid to get seats in Premium Economy(Again another helpful tip from this subreddit).
Places I planned but didn’t have time/energy for: Ueno Park, Ameyoko market and Tokudaiji temple, Umeda Sky Building, Yoyogi Park, Suga Shrine, Shibuya Sky, TeamLab Planets, Ramen Street at Tokyo Station, and Karaoke-anywhere.