16 days in early April honeymoon itinerary check ( Tokyo > Kyoto > Osaka (Hiroshima, Nara) > Hakone)

4 comments

1. If you go to a department store in Shinjuku or Shibuya, check out the Depachika (Basement food floor). It’s interesting to see all the different kinds of high end foods even if you don’t buy anything. A lot of people on here meention buying supermarket Japanese snacks for gifts, but if you aren’t on a tight budget there’s a lot of much higher quality stuff that Japanese people buy for gifts in the Depachika.

2. Osaka to hakone.

   I forsee problems with this, because getting to hakone is not as fast as it seems, it looks like you could just stop by and get off but only certain shinkansen are scheduled to stop at odawara station, you’ll waste quite a bit of time waiting for the train. Even if you took the earliest train, you will end up at Tokyo around 9am and the train ride to hakone is a our and the fastest train to hakone is still an hour and half which means you’ll arrive around 10.30 am.

   It might not sound that bad but the pace of things at hakone is blisteringly slow. Everything from the bus to the trains to the Ropeway, it all feels like a leisurely jaunt. And this is assuming you took the 0630 train which means you have to get up at 5am. If you took a more reason waking time, like 7am, you could be reaching hakone around noon and the whole loop you plan to take is about 3 to 4 hours to cover most stuff. And things in hakone close around 4 to 5pm. Our hostel owner specifically warn us to eat early because he had seen guest come back hungry because nothing was open to eat other than konbini.

   At that point you’ve spent more time travelling to hakone than being at hakone and you will not feel satisfied, I legitimately feel that you need at least 2 days there to really enjoy the place or else if would just feel like you simply travelled all the way out for an expensive bath. You should dedicate at the very least the morning to explore more of hakone especially on the tozan line then head back to Tokyo.

   The ryokan would definitely be an amazing experience and you should check in as early as possible, grab some sake and senbei and enjoy the evening. Expensive ryokans always have amazing atmosphere to simply sit there and relax.

   Other things to note

   -yoyogi park and meiji jingu is beside each other, getting to either one is a pain in the ass because they are so far away from the train stations. But if you visit both at once, you save yourself a lot of walking. Yoyogi park is really nice to visit on the weekends full of people, Japanese people are very quiet even in parks and the atmosphere is really great. It nice to see families enjoying their time together.

   -Asakusa is packed like hell and not the fun kind, we didn’t even have any chance to stand about, you’ll be constantly jostled around on the shopping street. If you are going to Kyoto, I would skip Asakusa as it’s really just a temple that has more tourist than any other temple in Kyoto. A good replacement is yasaka or heian Shrine. If you are going to Kiyomizu-dera, I recommend visiting Chion-in temple, you get to walk in the temple and the dark wood temple is incredibly beautiful, and the best part is that it’s quite hidden that tourist don’t visit.

3. That mostly sounds doable! We did our honeymoon around the same time last year and followed a similar path, but took 21 days. Our pace was very relaxed and I spent a lot of time dragging my wife to camera and tool shops 🙂

   Your day trip to HIroshima is very optimistic. Miyajima is easily half a day, especially if you want to see Mt Misen. We had a day and a half in Hiroshima, saw the Peace Memorial and Atomic dome the first day after dropping off our bags and did Miyajima, Mt Misen, Itsukushima Jinja and shops the next day. You could maybe fit it all in one day but with the ferries you may end up with less time than you think.

4. I’m very much a shopper so I can appreciate the times you’ve set aside for that.