Hi all,
After our 3 week Japan honeymoon got cancelled (for 3rd year in a row), my wife and I managed to secure last minute flights that depart in under 3 weeks:
Paris > Taipei
HND > London
We land in Taipei on Dec 22 (morning) and our flight to London departs at 1am – Jan 5th.
**Currently we are thinking of Dec 22-26 in Taiwan and then 10 days in Japan.**
We figured it would make sense to start in Osaka/Kyoto and then finish in Tokyo to minimise travelling, but have read reports that KIX is a nightmare compared with HND at the moment.
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**Just wanted to get some thoughts as to whether it makes sense to prioritise arriving in KIX?**
As this is an extremely last minute set of plans, I am very early into our planning. We are hoping to do the following though:
**26 Dec (Osaka):**
* Land in afternoon ( I think around 4pm)
* Travel to Osaka, stay 1 night in hotel and check out the evening vibe as we wont be jetlagged due to flying from Taiwan.
**27, 28, 29 Dec (Kyoto):**
* We have always lived in NYC/London style cities so we want to prioritise the change of pace that Kyoto offers, especially as we are staying in Tokyo for the other half of our trip.
* Should we spend morning in Osaka or head to Kyoto ASAP?
* Not sure if we have the time/it’s worth cramming other day trips in? We are a couple in our 30’s who like to take time with travelling and have never had cram days. Would hate to miss out though!
**30 Dec – Jan 4 (Tokyo / Hakone(?)):**
* Check-out from hotel in Kyoto morning of 30th, make our way to Tokyo
* Visiting Mt fuji/Hakone : We would love to spend the night in a place with private Onsen in area. Would it make sense to do this on way to Tokyo from Kyoto or settle in Tokyo and then do an overnight trip?
One thing I’ve realised is that I am really struggling to create a plan for this trip. I have asbergers & ADHD so usually take pleasure in hyperfocusing/researching our trips, but have found Japan to be really hard to make decisions on. Feels like I need to know what I want to see/do, but kinda ends up being a paradox as I need to know what’s possible to be able to choose what to do.
Is there anything we should be looking at booking in advance of our trip?
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We haven’t booked any hotels yet because I am waiting to see if an earlier flight direct to Japan becomes available so we can spend more time in one destination rather than try and split it efficiently.
As such, I cant really move to a detailed plan because we have no certainty yet, but I am trying to create a shell plan that can easily be ammended.
Thanks a lot
2 comments
You will have to travel to Kansai anyway if you plan to visit. Flying into there makes the most sense even if it’s a bit longer through customs. The trains from Narita or even Haneda will be a couple of hours already. I don’t think there’s any way that the extra time in KIX going through customs will be over 2 hours.
Hakone would work for either way, it depends on how you want to do your hotels in Tokyo. Splitting the stay would let you maybe stay in a extra nice place for a day in Tokyo (not sure if that would be appealing to you) and you could leave heavier bags in Tokyo either with your hotel or in a locker.
One thing you should be concerned about is New Years in Japan. It’s a big holiday and a lot of things close around that time for a few days. I would try to get to Japan earlier and cut time in Tawain so you can have more non-New Years time there. Personally I would leave the day after I arrived in Taiwan. But if you already have plans there you probably don’t want to cancel those.
On a flight from Taipei, Tokyo is only going to have half an hour more flight time than Osaka so I wouldn’t take that part into consideration, I don’t have any knowledge of the customs situation at each but if KIX is as bad as you say it is, I’d guess you’ll get that half hour back easily.
If I was you, I’d probably look at both options and just go with whichever flights are cheaper/more convenient and then you can just flip your itinerary around if necessary.
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EDIT: Just saw that you already have a flight home booked out of Haneda so you can probably disregard my comment since you’ll need to leave out of Tokyo regardless so flying into Osaka would definitely save travel time in that situation, sorry about that.