13 day Itinerary check, and a couple of questions

Background: Me, a friend of mine, and my mom are all visiting Japan from December 27th to Jan 8th. It is our first trip there, and we have booked all of our hotels. We are each planning on taking one carry on bag, a backpack, and a large checked bag. We have a hotel in Kyoto, an AirBnb in Osaka, and a hotel in Tokyo.

We will be landing in Tokyo on Dec 27th, Taking a bullet train to Kyoto, staying there until Jan 1st at which point we will go to Osaka, then leaving Osaka to go to Tokyo again via bullet train on the Jan 4th, and staying there until the 8th.

We know that most places are closed around the New Year, but we will just be doing our best to make do. Please let me know if you have any suggestions in regard to this!

All flights and stays have been booked. We are hoping to book bullet train ahead of time using SmartEX.

Question TLDR;

What is the best transport from the Narita airport to the bullet train station (idk which one lol)?

  • What should we do about luggage with said transport option

What seat type should we get on the bullet train in regard to our current luggage amount?

  • (Meaning oversized baggage area, compartment, S work seat, so on.)

What should we expect for transport from Kyoto to Osaka on Jan 1st? What is best to take since we have all our luggage with us?

Do any of you have experiences with New Years time period in Osaka? What should I expect/look out for?

We were hoping to stop by Mt. Fuji on our way back to Tokyo- again we run into the luggage issue. What should we do about this?

(an obvious fix might be to bring less luggage, but let's assume thats not an option, what could we do?) (we arent planning on bringing tons of clothes, its more of "what if we run out of shopping space" kinda thing)

What massive oversight(s) do you see with our current plans?

Itinerary

Day 1 (Dec 26th) – Airport

Day 2 (Dec 27th) – Arrival in Tokyo, Transit to Kyoto

Our flight will arrive in Tokyo at 4:30 pm, from there we will be taking the Bullet Train directly to Kyoto.

Day 3 (Dec 28th) – Kyoto Day 1

  • Kyoto Imperial Palace
  • Yasaka Pagoda
  • Kiyomizudera Temple
  • Gion

Day 4 (Dec 29th) – Kyoto Day 2

  • Arashiyama Bamboo Grove
  • Arashiyama Park Observation Deck
  • Fukuda Art Museum
  • Arashiyama Monkey Park
  •  Fu Fu No Yu Hot Spring
  • Kimono Forest

Day 5 (Dec 30th) – Nara Day Trip

  • Nara Park
  • Todaiji Temple
  • Suggestions on other things to do in Nara?

Day 6 (Dec 31th) – Kyoto Day 3; New Years Eve

  • Fushimi Inari Temple
  • Sannenzaka
  • Yasaka Shrine
  • Chion-In Temple: Planned on spending New Years Count Down here cause of the bell but couldn't find an actual schedule for it. Please chime in with any suggestions! 🙂

Day 6 (Jan 1st) – Transit to Osaka; Relax day in Osaka

TRANSPORT HELP

Spa World: Our current plan is to check into our Airbnb, and spend the day lounging around in spa world. Part of this is because we aren't sure how long we'll actually have in the day, as we know we will be waiting to take a train and get there.

Nightlife: America Mura

Day 7 (Jan 2nd) – Osaka Day 1;

  • Osaka Castle
  • Shinsekai
  • Namba Yasaka
  • Nightlife: Dotonbori

Day 8 (Jan 3rd) – Osaka Day 2;

  • Day Shopping in Dotombori
  • Free Time: We have some more free time to check out stuff we might have noticed on Osaka day 1 and want to spend more time doing. If you have any ideas please let me know 🙂
  • Kuromon Market
  • Teamlab Botanical Garden (Night)

Day 9 (Jan 4th) – Mt. Fuji and Lake Kawaguchi; Transit back to Tokyo

  • On this day we will take a bullet train to the Lake Kawaguchi area of which we will go to relax and take in views of Mt. Fuji! We will then take a bullet train to Tokyo, for the last leg of our trip.
  • (We realized we would have all of our luggage here, how could we still achieve this without lugging it all around??)
    • Mt. Fuji and Lake Kawaguchi

Day 10 – 13 (Jan 5th – 8th) – Tokyo

We have everything planned out up to this point, we dont know what to do in Tokyo yet.. So much stuff, its just so overwhelmingly huge lol. We will be staying near sengakuji station, so if you have any suggestions for stuff to do at night there, please let me know!

by Maleficent_Theme8427

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