I wanted some advice for my trip to Japan. I will be going November 19-30. However, I will be visiting back on March 25 – April 4th. This would be my first trip overseas that I've done solo. The March trip is going to be with a group and has the golden route plus kobe already lined up. As a result, I have been thinking about my distribution of time for my solo trip in November. There is plenty of activities that I want to do in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara. However, since it would mostly overlap with the March trip I believe that it might be easier or better to switch things a bit for my solo trip. Would staying in Tokyo the whole trip as a base of operations of sorts and do daytrips to Kamakura, hakone/nikko or Enoshima be feasible? I was honestly just thinking of staying 5 days in Tokyo and then just go to Osaka and daytrip from there to Nara (once) and Kyoto (twice), but Osaka and Kyoto would definitely overlap with the other trip and since I am doing solo on the November one it might make it a bit easier to just do Tokyo and daytrip from there? Any recommendations or tips are welcomed!
Rough summary of some of the activities that I had planned or wanted to do:
Tokyo:
LOTS OF SHOPPING ( Pokemon Center, Nintendo World, Uniqlo, Muji etc. )
Skytree
SensoJi
Teamlabs Borderless
Some themed cafes like the pokemon one
Ghibli museum (if I get tickets)
Mount Takao
Arcades in general (I don't drink/smoke so idc about bars or nightclubs at all). I would rather do other sorts of activities if possible like sightseeing/food)
Osaka:
Dotonbori
Osaka Castle to hopefully catch some cool fall foliage shots
Umeda Skybuilding
Aquarium/Museums
Mostly just try the food since everyone says it's soo good
Maybe some more shopping like dendentown or other spots
Kyoto:
Temple hopping and sightseeing
Nintendo Kyoto Museum if I catch tickets
Arashiyama and some of the other cool sightseeing spots
Nara:
more temples particularly interested in Kasuga Taisha
Would it make more sense to scrap this and do it on the 2nd trip and just stay in Tokyo and do daytrips to other cool spots like Kamakura? I would much rather do kyoto than osaka, but if I end up going to kyoto at that point might just aswell do osaka.
by JordyLA