This will be my first time to japan and I’ll be there for almost a month in mid-may/start of june next year. (But not during golden week) I’ll be staying for 28 days visiting (mainly) Tokyo, Hakone, Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka and Hiroshima. I’ll be visiting with my dad.
In this post tho, I mostly wanted to get advice about our 2 days trip to Hakone. I’m struggling to choose a ryokan and how to make the itinerary, because I want to do a lot of things (I hope it’s not too packed for 2 days)
Please let me know what you think about what we have planned so far!
*Btw this is my first post on this sub, and I think actually it’s maybe my first Reddit post, I don’t use reddit a lot but I’ve been finding this sub really useful lately! Anyways, I hope this post is okay, tell me if I did something wrong and also sorry for my english aaah;-;)
For now, we were looking at the Washintei Hougetsu ryokan, but it’s very pricey, 700K¥ for 2 person/1 night.. The itinerary is based on that, so we would probably have to change some things depending of where we choose to stay, but we would just change order of what’s already on the list. We choose it at first because it looks traditional, really beautiful and mostly because of the location right next to hakone shrine. It would also fit well in the middle of our itinerary, so we don’t need to lose too much time with transportation.
Let me know if there’s any similar but cheaper ryokan with a good location that could still fit the itinerary!
>DAY 1 (Thursday)
-Arrive early in the morning to Hakone from Tokyo taking Odakyu line express or romancecar
*From Tokyo, we will send our big luggages to Kyoto hotel (Next big destination after Hakone and our stop to Nagoya)
**We’ll most likely have the hakone pass, maybe the JR pass too at this point, depending of how the final itinerary looks.
-Take the hakone tozan railway to Gora and explore a bit Gora
-Take the ropeway (Gora)
-Visit Owakudani (eat black egg, go up the Kamiyama climbing course)
-Take the ropeway down to the lake
-Take the boat to moto-hakone (and maybe get a view of mount fuji)
-Visite the shrine + torii (Is this going to be really crowded on a thuesday afternoon/evening?)
-Check in to ryokan: relax, eat dinner, take onsen and sleep
>DAY 2 (Friday)
– Eat breakfast early and maybe take another onsen (if the ryokan have more than one onsen bath, and if we feel like it) before check-out
-Visit the hakone shrine again very early to hopefully have the place for ourlselves
*Maybe do it before breakfast instead, to catch the sunrise
*It’s right next to the Washintei Hougetsu Ryokan so this would probably be removed if we stay at another place*
-Go to Mototsumiya shrine using komagatake railway (if we have time)
-Hakone Sekisho
*I think I haven’t seen this one a lot on the subreddit, but I’m really interested going. Is there anyone who went and recommend it?
-Walk on the Old Tokkaido road to Amazake Chaya to eat
-Take the bus to Hakone-Yumoto. Explore a bit and buy souvenirs
-Take the train to Nagoya, maybe squeeze in a bit of shopping at the nagoya station if it’s not too late (Donguri Republic + Disney Store) and check-in to nine hours to experience sleeping in a capsule hotel
>For day 3 in Nagoya (Saturday), we want to visit the castle, kinshachi yokocho and go to the Ghibli park that recently opened.
Here’s some questions I have for Nagoya:
1-Anyone knows if reservation on the website for overseas travellers will be open by then?
2-Is Nagoya crowded on weekend for the activities we gonna do on that day?
3-Anyone thinks we would have time to do another museum in Nagoya on that day? (Interested about railway museum)
We would then arrive to kyoto at the end of that day, staying for almost a week
Also we are planning to experience staying in a temple in Heguri between Nara and Osaka (Gyokuzoin ryokan), so that’s also one of the reason why we may go more easy on the budget at hakone’s ryokan.
That’s pretty much it, thanks for reading my long post!