Hello Everyone,
Very excited for my first trip to Japan. My initial draw to the culture was pop culture, primarily video games & anime, which has expanded to most other forms of art, music, etc. I'm also very interested in the culture behaviorally and interpersonally. I’ve studied the language, on and off(mostly off), for a while but have gotten back to a very basic level over the last few months.
I'll being going with my girlfriend who is more interested in historic things and while that appeals to me as well it's lower down my list. We're both into nature and being active as well. Our trip is a somewhat typical golden route path, I think. I love the idea of simply blocking a chunk of time to explore a location naturally, and tried to do that here and there, but we do have a couple curated things planned.
Dining wise our plan is to discover and experiment as much as possible but maybe make a couple “nice” reservations as well, thinking nights 2, 3 and/or 10 are the best bets. We’ve heard having the hotel help is a good way to do that, have perused tabelog as well. Any recommendations on how / where to reserve dining wise? We probably at the least want one over the top good sushi experience.
The cities we’ll be staying in, and anything marked as “(reserved)” are set.
Hopefully, we kept it sane enough, I have google mapped most of the back and forths in this itinerary trying to leave ~30 minutes before and after things.
Thanks in advance!
Day 1 Tokyo – land in Tokyo, Haneda, around 2:30. Spend the evening exploring the Shinjuku area, make ourselves stay awake to get on schedule.
Day 2 Tokyo – force ourselves awake, explore Shibuya area in the morning: scramble, Shibuya sky, Parco. Teamlabs Bordless in the 2 – 4:30 window(reserved), continue exploring Shibuya area and maybe Ginza.
Day 3 Tokyo – Tsukiji fish market, bright and early. Imperial palace/gardens 9 – 12ish. FF Cafe(reserved) & Akihabara through the afternoon, evening in Ginza area.
Day 5 Tokyo/Hakone – explore Ikebukuro: Pokemon stores, Super Potato, in the morning. Travel to Hakone via romance car(should we make reservations?), from 2 – 5ish, Dinner at Ryokan(reserved)
Day 6 Hakone – Hakone loop(should we buy the Hakone free pass?) before dinner in the city, enjoy Onsen/Ryokan before/after.
Day 7 Kyoto – Travel to Kyoto in the morning. Tea ceremony activity reserved in Kyoto from roughly, 12:30 – 2:30(reserved). Explore: Philosopher's Path, Gion.
Day 8 Kyoto/Osaka – Private tour(reserved), bright and early, starting at Fushimi Inari, ending in Arashiyama(don't really care about the bamboo forest but heard the area is cool to explore). Plan to travel to Osaka midafternoon, arriving by 5ish, Eorza cafe(reservations) and explore Namba the first night.
Day 9 Osaka – Explore "northern" Osaka: castle, americamura, dotombori, Orix Buffalos game(reserved) early afternoon for 3 hours, food and drink tour(reserved) that evening starting at around 7.
Day 10 Osaka – Nara for the first half of the day, back in Osaka second half, for flex time to do whatever strikes us after having been there a few days. Possible nice dinner reservation.
Day 11 Tokyo – travel back to Tokyo, green car shinkansen(reserved), with hopeful clear view of Fuji, arriving just before noon. Spend rest of day in Asakusa: senso-ji, kappabashi, ueno park before exploring Sumida river area at night.
Day 12 Tokyo – Tokyo DisneySea
Day 13 Tokyo – Akihabara through the morning, Owl Cafe(reserved) at 1, Skytree(reserved) at 6, see sunset on our last night in Japan
Thanks again for reading. How does it look? Would really appreciate any feedback, anything we may be missing or recommendations.
edit: added a question to day 6
by thereal_pa4m3