Hi all,
A while ago, I tried my hand at a rather long five-and-a-half weeks itinerary that was overly ambitious, and now that I’ve done some pruning here and there, I’ve come up with a new itinerary that I guess is more manageable. I haven’t planned every day in detail yet, I just made a list of things I’d like to see and allotted what I thought might be a suitable number of days to each place. So, here goes:
10/01 – 10/05: getting there, some day trips and a bit of Tokyo
* 10/01: Arrival at Haneda late afternoon, get a Suica card, go to the hotel (Shinjuku most likely), drop off luggage, get dinner, sleep
* 10/02: Shinjuku, Shibuya and thereabouts (Meiji Shrine, Metropolitan Bldg. viewing deck, Shibuya crossing, Takeshita street, Omotesando)
* 10/03 – 10/05: day trips to Yokohama (Minato Mirai, Cup noodle museum, Chinatown), Nikko, and Kamakura (Hasedera, Daibutsu)
10/06 – 10/12: Hokuriku and Japanese alps
* 10/06 – 10/07: Kanazawa (Kenrokuen, Omicho market, Nagamachi, Higashichaya)
* 10/08 – 10/10: Takayama (Sanmachi, Teramachi, Autumn Festival on the 9th), including a day trip to Shirakawa-go
* 10/11 – 10/12: Matsumoto (mainly for the castle really), 12th will be mainly spent travelling to Kyoto
10/13 – 10/21: Kansai
* 10/13 – 10/16: Kyoto (Gion, Fushimi Inari, Kinkakuji, Kiyomizudera, Ryoanji, Arashiyama), might include a day trip to Uji if time allows
* 10/17 – 10/18: Osaka (Dotonbori, castle, Umeda Sky building, Amerikamura)
* 10/19 – 10/21: day trips to Nara, Kobe, and Himeji
10/22 – 10/24: Hiroshima and Miyajima
* 10/22: Hiroshima (Peace park and museum)
* 10/23 – 10/24: Miyajima (Itsukushima shrine, Mt. Misen) – might splurge on a nice Ryokan here; back to Osaka in the evening (to split the rather long trip back to Tokyo in half)
10/25 – 10/30: Tokyo (based most likely in Ueno for that bit)
* 10/25 – 10/29: Asakusa (Sensoji, Nakamise street), Ueno (Ameyokocho, Ueno park), Yanesen, Akihabara, Ginza, Imperial palace gardens, maybe Odaiba, also shopping
* 10/30: some last minute shopping, depart from Haneda
This itinerary is about a week shorter and has fewer stations than the previous one. I haven’t booked anything yet, so pretty much everything is still open to scrutiny, except for the 9th in Takayama (for the festival).
Questions that remain:
* Is this feasible?
* Anything glaringly obvious I still managed to miss?
* Thinking about another Ryokan stay apart from the one on Miyajima, Matsumoto maybe?
Thanks!
by Le_Zwibbel