Itinerary – 28 days – honeymoon – mid Nov – mid Dec 2022

Hi everyone, my husband and I are hoping to visit Japan from mid November – mid December for our honeymoon having had to cancel our 2 week holiday to Japan in March 2020. We like nature / eating / drinking and we want a mixture of fun and relaxation. We’re struggling to decide what else to add to our previous 2 week itinerary of Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto, Hiroshima and Osaka. Here are our current thoughts:

Nov 15th – 19th – Tokyo
We’re pretty set on this

Nov 19th – 21st – Fukuoka
The idea was to travel from Tokyo as far South as we had planned and then work our way up. We don’t have any other plans in Fukuoka other than the November sumo tournament, so is this worth a couple of days of our time? (Also seems to be hard to get tickets currently without having a Japanese address)

Nov 21st – 24th – Hiroshima
We’ve heard conflicting advice on how long to be in Hiroshima but one of our friends loved it and it might be a good opportunity to relax a bit

Nov 24th – 25th – Naoshima Island
We’re interested in art so this seems like something we would enjoy but struggling to decide whether it can be done as a day trip in between Hiroshima and Osaka, whether to stay in Okayama the night before or after, or whether to stay a night on the island itself.

Nov 25th – Nov 28th – Osaka
Too much / too little?

Nov 28th – Dec 2nd – Kyoto
We think we are going to love Kyoto so got an extra night compared to Osaka / Hiroshima

Dec 2nd – 4th – Nagoya
We would love to do something a bit wintery, so we’ve put in a bit of time to go to Nabana no Sato illumunations. With our current schedule this seems to be falling on a weekend, so any advice on whether to bother with this or not would be great.

Dec 4th – 6th – Hakone
Obviously have to do some boujie onsen kaiseki / ryokan. We had Gora Hanaouji booked for 1 night previously and were considering 2 to make it less rushed, but not sure whether to do 1 night in Gora Hanaougi and 1 night somewhere cheaper?

GAP OF A FEW DAYS
The thoughts here are whether we cut out a couple of things we aren’t sure about (eg. Fukuoka for sumo, Nagoya for Nabana no Sato illuminations) and instead go north of Tokyo. Is flying to Sapporo worth it for a few days or should we go to the snow monkey park / onsen towns for a wintery experience? Other considerations were Kanazawa.

Dec 8th – 11th – Tokyo
We are finishing up with a few more days in Tokyo before we fly home

Phew, sorry this has been a super long post, but any help would be greatly appreciated and welcomed.

Thanks so much.