Planning a trip to Japan starting in late July, will be a total of 20 nights. Have seen lots of helpful advice and insights here, so was hoping to get some experienced people’s thoughts on specific aspects of our trip, and any input appreciated!
Travelers will be my wife and myself (both late 50s) and our mid-20s daughter (who is finishing up a one year stay in Kyoto, so we’re meeting her there). First time in Japan for my wife, I’ve only been to Tokyo and only on short business trips.
Here’s the itinerary, based on where we will be staying each night. Where we are pretty sure of day trips to different areas I included that, but not activities at each location (which we expect to be flexible anyway for non-reservation things):
Night 1: In Tokyo, after landing at Narita late afternoon. Head off to meet daughter in Kyoto first thing on day 2.
Nights 2 – 5: Kyoto. Including a day trip to Nara / Fushimi Inari.
Nights 6 – 10: Osaka. Will include one day at Universal Studios (daughter a big fan) and a day trip to Hiroshima / Miyajima. On Day 11 early train to Kanazawa. Note this will likely only be 2 or maybe 3 days exploring in Osaka.
Nights 11 & 12: Kanazawa. On morning 13 will take first bus to Shirakawago, spend day there, then bus on to Takayama.
Nights 13 & 14: Takayama.
Nights 15 & 16: Ryoken in Hakone.
Nights 17-20: Tokyo. Flight home early evening of day 21.
We are looking for people’s thoughts on a some specific things (but of course welcome any thoughts):
* What do people think about a day trip from Osaka to Hiroshima/Miyajima? It sounds like it would be a packed day, but we are planning reasonable amounts of downtime overall so a packed day here and there we can deal with. It looks like if we took the early train from Osaka and then went to Miyajima in the morning, explored there in the morning, went back to Hiroshima, visited the Peace Park in the afternoon, and then had dinner in Hiroshima and explored the city a bit, we would be exhausted at the end of the day but glad we made the trip. The reason we didn’t want to spend the night in Hiroshima is that we want the ability to decide specific activities on given days based on weather when we get there.
* The Kanazawa / Shirakawago / Takayama / Hakone stretch. We were trying to avoid hopping from room to room, but in this 6 day stretch we’re in three different rooms. All of the locations look very different, and very interesting, so we were thinking it would be worth it. Thoughts on that? Is there one place you would take off the list to spend a longer time in the others?
* Hakone variant 1. We are deciding between the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo vs a visit to Ghibli Park. If we did the Park, we could make our room-hopping even worse by spending only one night in Hakone (but still the better part of two days in Hakone). At the end of the second day, we would travel to the Nagoya area and stay somewhere near the park. Spend the next day at the park, and then at the end of the day travel on to Tokyo.
* Hakone variant 2. If we decide not to do Ghibli Park, then rather than spend two nights in a ryoken (expensive nights!), at the end of the second day in Hakone we could move on to Tokyo, and spend one extra night there. The ryoken look amazing, and also amazingly expensive. Thoughts on two nights vs one?
If you read all this thank you, and appreciate any insights or suggestions you may have!
by Constant_Act737
