15 days itinerary sanity check

Hi there, this will be my first trip to Japan and will be visiting with my wife and an 8 year old at the end of February/early March. I’ve spent some time trying to come up with an itinerary for us, and I’m hoping to find out from some of you amazing people if there’s any recommended modifications I should make to it. I haven’t really put thought into what / where to eat. If anyone has recommendations I’m open to it. I’m personally not into sashimi, but I like most other japanese foods. My wife really enjoys coffee and would love to be able to get some each day. 僕は日本語が下手です。家族は日本語が全然話しません。

1. Get off Plane & Sleep in Tokyo: Will be arriving in Japan late afternoon / early evening after flying 12 time zones. I’m hoping to stay pretty close to Tokyo Station so that we have easy access throughout the Tokyo portion of the trip. On this day I’m not expecting to accomplish anything more than checking into our hotel and grabbing food. Was thinking of making a reservation at Pokemon Center Tokyo DX.
2. Wake Up & Sleep in Tokyo: Hop on the Asakusa Line and get over to Nakamise shopping street / Senso-ji. Spend the morning there and have a candy making class at Amezaiku Ameshin. Make our way on foot to Tokyo Skytree, and then browse at Tokyo Solamachi. Take the Asakusa Line back from the Solamachi
3. Wake Up & Sleep in Tokyo: Chiyoda Line seems to be the most direct way to get over to Harajuku Station. We would spend the morning checking out Takeshita Street, Jingu Bashi, Yoyogi Park. Make our way down towards the Nintendo Store/Disney Store/Kinokuniya and Shibuya Tokyu Food Show. Hoping there’s time in the day to also wander around the Dikanyama and Nakameguro areas. If we get down there then it seems like the Yamanote Line would get us home from either Shibuya or Ebisu
4. Wake Up & Sleep in Tokyo: a combo of the Ginza and Yurikamome lines should get us to the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation where we can spend the morning. Then pass by the gundam and statue of liberty over to Daiba 1 to check out the Shopping Street. I’m not sure which would be most worthwhile to check out as far as tokyo joypolis / or Leisureland. I think this area would make sense for most of the afternoon. Before heading over to teamLabs planets. Seams like the there’s a bus there that would easily get us back towards tokyo station.
5. Wake Up in Tokyo, Sleep in Kusatsu: I’d want to depart in the morning and get ourselves over to Kusatsu. I’m not sure the best way to get there, I think I remember reading about a bus that was convenient, but google maps is suggesting trains. Either way, once there we’d hopefully be able to have time to wander around to see the various signts and spend some time bathing/relaxing. Not sure where exactly we’d stay here. I’m thinking of leaving our luggage in Tokyo so that we don’t have to lug it around so much getting to and from here for a single night. I’m not sure if the best solution would just to be to continue renting the same hotel room for this night so we can leave our stuff even if we’re not there. But it seems like it would be a hassle with my kid to lug all our stuff across the various transfers by train and get to Kusatsu, and then repeat the process again the next day.
6. Wake up in Kusatsu: sleep in Tokyo: We’d head back to Tokyo. If we did leave our luggage in Tokyo, that means we’d just have an overnight backpack and could immediately start sight seeing once back. Was thinking of getting out at Ueno park and checking out the park, Ameyoko Shopping Street and Bookoff Plus. Then over to Yushima Tenjin Shrine where the plum festival is happening. From there I’d want to wander down through Akihabara. There seems to be a few places that seem rad. Friends for game soundtracks, Origami Kaikan, Kamikaze Style Tshirts, Mandarake, Don Quijote, and Owl Cafe. GiGO Akihabara 3. Maybe the Square Enix cafe? I think there’s supposed to be lots of vending machines just south of Kanda River that are worth checking out, but I’m not sure exactly where. Seems like Yamanote Line would be the easy way back towards Tokyo Station
7. Wake Up & Sleep in Tokyo: make our way early via the asakusa and oimachi lines to Todoroki Ravine Park where we can hike for a bit before taking the oimachi and then the toyoko line to Yokohama. It looks like the Nippon Maru, Cosmoworld (particularly the ferris wheel), Gundam Factory, and China Town would all be worth visits to over the afternoon / early evening. Seems like the Negishi Line from Ishikawacho Station would be an easy route back to Tokyo Station for sleep.
8. Wake Up in Tokyo Sleep in Nagoya: the last day in Tokyo would start with a trip to the Ghibli Museum via the Cho Line. Returning after spending the earlier part of the day there and then getting on the Tokaido Sanyo Shinkansen/using the Aonami Line to get to Legoland Japan Resort in Nagoya. I’m not really sure what to do this day. It seems like we’d arrive too late to be able to really be able to visit Legoland. But it might be too early to just retire to bed. I suppose it could be a good time to just relax? Any good places to eat or quietly check out here in the early evening?
9. Wake up in Nagoya – Sleep in Kyoto: We’d want to get into legoland as soon as the park opens and spend the majority of the day here. But we’d eventually want to clear out, and hop on the aonami line then the tokaido-sanyo shinkansen to get to Kyoto. I’m not 100% where we’d stay exactly here at this point. But hopefully somewhere that provides easy access for the next few days to our destinations. I’m not sure we’d have much time to check anything out this night after checking in.
10. Wake up & Sleep in Kyoto: Seems like a common itinerary involves getting over to Fushimi Anari Taisha early in the morning, then spending the rest of the day exploring Higashiyama/Downtown area.
11. Wake up & Sleep in Kyoto: I’d like to head down to Nara to spend some time in the park. The Omizutori Fire Festival should also be happening at this point at Todai-ji so we’d want to make a day out of exploring the area before returning to Kyoto at night.
12. Wake up & Sleep in Kyoto: We’re hoping to be able to explore the Sagano Bamboo Forest / Arashiyama Monkey Park and Sagano Scenic Romantic Train on this day.
13. Wake up in Kyoto, Sleep in Osaka: Getting over to Osaka and into our final hotel would be done as early in the morning as we can manage. This hopefully leaves us lots of time to explore Osaka Castle and Dotonburi area for the day. Maybe do the Tonbori River Cruise. Maybe check out the Kuromon Ichiba Market? I’m not sure if there’s anything else that could be done this day.
14. Wake up in Osaka & Sleep in Osaka: Universal Studios Japan / Super Nintendo World. Not sure what else could even fit in this day. I’m sure my kid will want to spend the entire day here.
15. Wake up in Osaka sleep on the airplane: It’s an 2pm flight out of Osaka so that we can get a connection in Tokyo… and apparently you only are recommended to be an hour early for departures?? So I guess we could have time to have 10 am reservations at the Pokémon Cafe in the morning and still have time to get to the airport an hour and a half before departure… maybe that’d be a nice little bookend to the trip if we’re having our first meal in Tokyo there. I’ve never been less than 3 hours early for an international flight… I feel like I might be too nervous if I try doing that… but not sure if anything else would be doable in the morning.

Anyways, thankyou for anyone who made it all the way through. Any suggestions would be very welcome. Hopefully there’s something in there that might inspire some ideas for someone else’s trip. It was really tough editing it down to maximize the places the family would be interested in. Wish I had an extra few weeks.