Here’s a report from our two week family trip a couple of weeks ago. My girls are aged 8 and 11, and are into cute stuff and animals.
Day 0 (10th April):
* Arrived at Narita terminal 1, 6:30pm. Glad we knew which train to catch and the timetable, as the direct line to Asakusa Station (Keisei Sky Access) only goes roughly every 35mins. Took 30 mins to queue for Pasmo Passports, and despite short queues elsewhere, we had to run for our 8:05pm train!
* Hotel: **Mimaru Tokyo Asakusa Station**, right next to the station exit. The Mimaru chain is great for kids. Great service, big rooms, lots of beds, a dining area and kitchenette. Asakusa is a lovely, fairly quiet place to be based, and has beautiful early morning walk options along the river and to Senso-ji if you’re jetlagged.
Day 1:
* **Senso-ji** early before the crowds. Beautiful temples and gardens, with cherry blossoms a bonus; a great start to Japanese culture before Hello Kitty and Pokemon took over! Next we stumbled upon the huge 24 hour Don Quixote nearby. Great for necessities and souvenirs alike.
* **Sunshine City** mall was next as we didn’t want too much walking after not much sleep. I didn’t know there was a **Sanrio cafe** there – luckily we were able to walk straight in! The Pokemon centre and Sylvanian Families stores kept the kids happy for a long time.
* Back to the hotel for a rest / nap, then **Nakamise Dori** (stalls near Senso-ji) and Kura Sushi for dinner. We finished at an arcade which we returned to every night as it was the only thing that kept our kids awake and fighting off jetlag!
Day 2:
* **Teamlabs Borderless** booked for 10am. No queues and straight in at 9:50am. There were a few people in there already, but it only felt crowded an hour later. Truly beautiful, well loved by the whole family.
* Harajuku next for **Takeshita street**. It was raining, so we picked up two of the famous big clear umbrellas. Sadly these were too big for our suitcases and a hassle to carry around – I suggest you plan ahead and buy a small umbrella or poncho instead. (Tiny umbrellas are cute and cheap at Don Quijote.) Plenty of interesting sights and stores condensed into a small space on Takeshita street, but nothing that you can’t see elsewhere in Tokyo, so can be skipped if you don’t like crowds!
* **Ometosando**: my kids had heard good things about Kiddyland toy store, but they were too tired to even walk all the way to the top floor, so back to the hotel for an afternoon rest.
* **Katsukitchi** (Asakusa) for dinner – best katsu we’ve ever had, lovely service, really highly recommended. We went back three more times!
Day 3:
* **Odaiba**. Here’s where the Navitime app failed: it didn’t recognise the monorail to Odaiba. Google maps recognises it as just another train. It’s just as easy to catch as a regular train too, but provides excellent views.
* **Poo museum** at DiverCity mall first. Hard to access because the mall opens an hour after the museum. We hadn’t booked but were able to walk straight in. The poo museum is tiny and seems mostly set up for social media photos, but the kids had a lot of laughs.
* **Sega Joyopolis**: I’m glad we didn’t pay for the full unlimited passes, as my kids didn’t like most of the rides. Instead we paid for entry and just paid for a couple of rides.
* **Takoyaki food court** nearby – literally only sells takoyaki – even some of the drinks have octopus in them! Bit of a mistake as our kids don’t like octopus, haha.
* **Ferry** back to our hotel in Asakusa.
* **Rickshaw tour** of Asakusa in the evening – expensive but a highlight for the kids.
Day 4:
* **Kappabashi Street** to shop for knives and book a workshop for Ganso Shokuhin Sample-Ya (see day 10).
* **Samurai Ninja Museum**: not in the itinerary, just saw it walking past. The kids didn’t want to dress up and didn’t find the tour very interesting, but my husband and I learned a lot.
* **Skytree mall**: bigger than expected; spent most of the day between the shops and aquarium. **Sumida Aquarium** is small but beautiful.
* **Skytre**e is worth a visit, but there’s not much to do up there and it’s very crowded. I’ve heard the upper floor is less crowded, but it was booked out when I booked online a few weeks before. On the day they were selling walk up tickets including the upper floor, but it wasn’t possible to upgrade our ticket, unfortunately.
Day 5:
* Travel from Tokyo to Osaka. Booked with Smartex a few days before using my Mastercard, then linked to our IC cards. We couldn’t figure out how to pick up tickets at first, but it was easy: Scan IC cards at the Shinkansen gate and a ticket will print out with your booked details. We sent our luggage by takkyubin the day before, but needn’t have bothered as there was ample room for luggage in the Green Car.
* Hotel: **Mimaru Osaka Namba Station**: a game-themed hotel (board games, card games etc) with games to borrow and many integrated into the hotel itself. Fabulous. Our Japanese room had a tatami floor, with two regular beds and three comfortable futons. My only complaint was that we had been spoiled in Asakusa being next to the station and in a quieter place; Namba station was an eight-minute walk through a bustling district (with an Akihabara feel to it; lots of gaming and anime and technology), which didn’t suit our family quite as well when returning from a tiring day.
* **Dotonbori**: the big signs were cool, but it’s not that impressive by day. Rode the weird Don Quijote ferris wheel – surprisingly high, my kids found it quite scary!
* **Teamlabs Botanical Gardens**: also highly recommended! The kids loved the freedom to race around and interact with the glowing artworks.
Day 6:
* **Harvest Hill** first, to visit the Sylvanian Families village. My girls adore these cute Japanese animal dolls, and visiting their life-sized houses was a dream come true. Harvest Hill also has animals, boats, flowers, small rides and beautiful scenery. We couldn’t find the bus from the nearest train station, but taxis were easy, and the bus back to the station was easy to find as it was a remote area with just one bus stop! Just tag on and off with your IC card.
* **Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan.** We had high expectations as it’s ranked at number six in the world, and it blew even those expectations out of the water! Incredible.
* **Tempozan Ferris Wheel**: long queue for people wanting a glass floor; we didn’t, so we skipped the queue and walked straight on. Amazing views to Universal Studios!
* Picked up takeaway pizzas from \[A\] Pizza as the kids were tired.
Day 7:
* **Universal Studios Japan**. Arrived at 8:10am. I’d read that it opens at 8, but not today! We had early entry tickets, but all queues were let in at around 8:40. The benefit of the early entry ticket is that the queue is MUCH shorter. We also paid for the 7 ride express pass: expensive but worth it as we could do all the best rides in one day with almost no queues. Truly magical for our young fans of Harry Potter, Super Mario and Minions.
Day 8:
* **Nara**: Still tired from Universal Studios, and the temples are spread far apart, so we stuck to the deer feeding near the station. We’d read the warnings, but inevitably, my eight-year-old got spooked and ran. Before we could help her, she’d been bitten hard on the back. After one more (carefully controlled) attempt, we headed back to the hotel.
* **Osaka castle**: The kids wanted to relax and play arcade games, so I headed out alone. Beautiful castle and grounds, worth a visit even with kids (there’s a playground in the southwestern corner of the park with a view of the castle). Long queue to catch the elevator, but no queue for those happy to walk up. Every floor has museum displays, so you can rest on every floor if you’re tired!
* I’m not much into social media, but on the way out through the park I tried one of the ‘viral’ ten yen cheese breads – yuck, why was it sweet?! Some things look great online but that doesn’t match reality, haha.
Day 9:
* **Kyoto** day trip. We planned just two stops that were easily accessible by train.
* **Fushimi Inari Taisha** first, because my kids love foxes. Lots of fox shrines (and souvenirs!) The red torii gates were crowded as expected, so we took a side path to the right a short way up the hill. This took us through the forest, past more shrines, with almost no people! It took us 50 minutes to reach the peak.
* **Gion**, up the Ninenzaka path. It was crowded and the kids were tired, so we didn’t stay long! We’ll do Kyoto properly when the kids are older.
Day 10:
* Travel to Tokyo. A week earlier I had accidentally booked today’s Shinkansen in the wrong direction, but luckily the refund process with Smartex is easy and cheap! We found a huge discount (30% off green car) called Hayatoku 3 Family, available for groups of 2 or more on weekends on the Nozomi train when booked at least 3 days in advance.
* **Ganso Shokuhin Sample-Ya**, Kappabashi street: Sample food making workshop. Very highly recommended! The staff at the counter don’t speak much English, but the teachers do. Our teacher Koyama was really lovely and the whole experience was delightful.
* **Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay**: our hotel for Disney. It’s the most convenient of all the unofficial Disney hotels, being across the road from the station, and had several restaurants, stores and an indoor pool. Half the rooms have views of the Disney fireworks – sadly not ours! But they can be seen from the lobby. Don’t expect regular Japan prices though – everything is expensive!
Days 11-13:
* **Disneysea, Disneyland,** then **Disneysea.** A dream seeing my kids enjoying everything. Get as many fast passes as you can, and you could do the entire park (or at least everything you want to do) in one day per park. We were glad to have a third day so our first day wasn’t stressful, but we didn’t really need it.
* My other tip is to perhaps send one adult, and perhaps a braver kid, on the rides which may be scary first. Our eight-year-old was so spooked by our first ride (Tower of Terror) that she refused to try anything scary again, so the eleven-year-old checked all the scary rides while her little sister rode the cute ones!
* Dining in the Disney parks is overpriced and not great; dining in Sheraton is also expensive but better quality. By the third night we ended up in the American restaurants at Ikspiari mall nearby.
Day 14:
* **Ikspiari Mall** shopping, then limousine bus (booked at hotel reception) to Narita. I realised by this point that we still had a lot of credit on our non-refundable IC cards. We used a little at the airport, but we should have planned it better!
by pipted