Hi! We’ll be travelling to Kyoto and Tokyo Dec 19 – Jan 1. We’ll be spending the first week in Kyoto and the last week in Tokyo (spending Christmas and New Year’s in Tokyo). I have Kyoto all fleshed out, but I went on a 6 hour rabbit hole trying to plan for Tokyo and got really overwhelmed with grouping locations together and what to do.
Itinerary:
**KYOTO:**
Dec 19 – land in Tokyo, take the train to Kyoto. We get to Kyoto at night.
Dec 20 – Senbon Torii, Kiyomizu, Yasaka, Nishiki Market, Gion at night
Dec 21 – Arashiyama in early morning (bamboo, couple temples, just explore nature), then do a rest of the day trip to Uji, Gion if we couldn’t get to it on Dec 20
Dec 22 – Osaka day trip. Castle, aquarium, etc
Dec 23 (check out day) – early morning is kinkaku, imamiya shrine + kazariya, then leave for a stay in a lake biwa onsen
**TOKYO: mostly unplanned except for the “anchor” events we already have.**
Dec 24 – arrive to tokyo in late afternoon (staying in shinjuku). exploring the area
Dec 25 – got reservations at an anime cafe in ikebukoro, so most likely will spend at the very least half of the day in ikebukuro? We don’t know what to do for the rest of the half for Christmas! (Ice skating in midtown, maybe? But I heard it can be too crowded to get tickets that day).
Dec 26: Studio Ghibli museum in the early evening. Don’t know what to do beforehand.
Dec 27-Dec 31: unplanned
Jan 1 – fly home
I see so many things to do, and I got overwhelmed with how to plan in a way that makes sense, keeping in mind that one of us in the group is disabled, so zipping around different parts of the city in one day is not ideal. We’re not super interested in museums or seeing tall buildings. We do love shopping, nature and traditional like parks and shrines, bars, off the beaten paths kind of stuff too.
Things we know want to go but don’t know when to put on our itinerary: Tokyo Disney Sea, Akiba, Shibuya, Nakano Broadway, Senso-ji?
Please help with a few “tokyo-musts” or some things we can fill in for our Tokyo itinerary! Thank you so much!