Trip Report – Hakone, Kobe, Kyoto, Osaka, Yudanaka, Tokyo for 14 days over Christmas/New Year’s

I keep suggesting things to people planning trips with similar itineraries, so I figured I should stop repeating myself and do a trip report. My wife and I had done a bit of overseas travel in Europe and the US, but this was our first overseas trip to Japan – and our first with our two children (aged 7 and 10).

Hakone

Going straight from the airport to here wasn’t too bad – picked up our JR passes and pocket wifi at Narita, caught the N’EX train into Shinagawa and transferred to the Shinkansen to Odawara.

The kids were leery of going in an onsen beforehand, but ended up really enjoying it. At our Ryokan the private onsen was basically booked out, but the public one had all ages in there and was very relaxed.

My wife did a wood-turning and Urushi laquering course with Deeper Japan in Odawara. Pretty pricey, but they have a translator there the whole time and you get to do a lot. After the course, we did the Hakone train – rope train – cable car – pirate ship circuit, which was all great fun (with tremendous views of Mt Fuji). Got a bus back from Motohakone to Hakone, which was not so great. Starting earlier in the morning and going the other way (Hakone to Motohakone first) might be a better way of doing it, given the choice.

Hakone-Kobe-Kyoto.

Took the shinkansen to Shin-Kobe so my wife could visit the Takenaka Carpentry tools museum (see the theme forming here?) A very good museum for this sort of thing – a lot of hands-on exhibits that the kids enjoyed. Grabbed dinner and caught the train back to Kyoto.

Kyoto

We stayed near Shijo station, which was pretty convenient for transport. The Nishiki market and the arcades around it are great, though can get pretty busy. Lots of good shopping and good food. Mipig is a miniature pig cafe here that’s really fun, and a good alternative if you’re too busy to visit one in Tokyo. Near Shijo station is the Pokemon Centre and the Ogaki bookstore, which has some cool souvenirs and a food hall attached.

The monkey park at Mt Arashiyama does what it says on the tin – it’s a park on the top of the mountain with a whole buttload of monkeys. The bamboo forest likewise. A lot of nice food and handicrafts places between the two, in a very pretty part of Kyoto.

We did Nara as a short daytrip; there’s plenty to do over a whole day but half a day will get the highlights. The deer can get irritable if you don’t have food for them; one headbutted my eldest child in the chest. They’re OK though. Nakatanidou is good to go to for hand-pounded mochi, and on weekends/holidays there’s a lot of stalls around the deer park selling food. You’ll need cash though.

On New Year’s Day we visited the Fushimi Inari shrine. It was pretty busy, unsurprisingly, but not so much as to stop you doing anything. Then visited the Gion district, which was also very busy. There’s a good Studio Ghibli shop there and the most understated Starbucks in the world. Look for the very small plaque out the front.

Universal Studios Japan

The original plan was to catch the Shinkansen to Tokyo in the evening after doing this, which was a bad idea which we thankfully discarded.

If you have one day to do USJ, really want to get the most out of either Harry Potter World or Super Nintendo World, and have the spare cash to do so:

\- Definitely get an express pass of some sort. We got the 4 ride pass, and if I were to do it again I’d get the 7 ride pass. When we went (2nd January) we were seeing queues of 2 hours or longer on some rides, and more than 1 hour was the usual. Get the express pass as soon as goes on sale, because we got it at the last minute and (potentially as a result of this, not sure) we got the last slots in the day to visit HPW and SNW. This meant getting to the bit of the park we were really there for at 7pm with it being absolutely packed and some stuff closing partway through.

\- If you’re in the above situation, get in early and try to get a timed access pass to SNW/HPW on the day. I believe you can do both (you may want to google and double-check). No-one kicks you out of either area as far as I know, so it means you can do all the non-ride stuff early then come back later for the rides on the express pass. This is especially important if you want to do the Power Band or Wand stuff, because so does everyone else and the queues get pretty big.

\- If you’ve done the above, you’ll probably be pretty tired by 9pm, so book a hotel by the park if you can spring for it.

Tokyo

We had a total of about 5 nights in Tokyo, with a 1 night stay in Yudanaka in the middle. We stayed at the Minn Ueno, which is pretty well located and has big rooms for very good prices.

We didn’t do much touristing here, doing more shopping and eating. For the eating, I’d recommend Happy Pancake in Ometosando and pretty much anywhere in Ueno-Ameyoko. For the shopping, level 6 of Parco Shibuya has a Nintendo store and a Pokemon Mega Center next to each other, both of which with a bunch of stuff you won’t see elsewhere. A couple of doors down from Parco Shibuya is Tokyu Hands Shibuya, which is good for anything craft or tool-related. Don Quijote is good if you realise you need more suitcases or presents for people back home at 11pm the night before you fly out.

We stayed one night in Yudanaka (a 3 hour trip each way) just to see monkeys play in the snow and swim around in an Onsen. It was worth it, though I’ve heard it’s not quite as good an experience in the summer months.

The main other thing we did in Tokyo was attend a couple of wrestling events – the first grand sumo tournament of the year at Ryogoku, and Wrestle Kingdom 17 at the Tokyo Dome. The sumo I’d recommend to any tourist if it’s on while your there – tickets are about $50-60 for the cheap seats, and it’s a pretty unique event you won’t get to experience otherwise. The pageantry around it can be tricky to understand, but the sport itself is two big meaty men trying to push each other out of a ring and pretty easy to grasp. Wrestle Kingdom or other NJPW shows are great to go to if you’re interested in that sort of thing. We bought our tickets for both through [buysumotickets.com](https://buysumotickets.com) and received them with a minimum of fuss.

Tips:

\- We found internet access pretty important for planning trips, navigating, managing finances and on-the-fly google translation, so I’d recommend having a pocket wifi and a big battery or 2 to keep everything charged. We also used an eSim so we could split the party and still communicate, but it didn’t have the reception/bandwidth of the pocket wifi. I’d also print out anything you know beforehand you’ll need to show someone – hotel addresses for taxi drivers, event tickets, USJ tickets and express passes, vaccination certificates for the airport, etc.

\- We found multiple cases of different train stations, that are part of different subway companies, with really similar names, right next to one another. It can get a little confusing sometimes. Make sure you match the whole name. Thankfully almost all of them accept the same IC cards.

\- A lot of shops/restaurants/attractions, particularly outside of the big cities, only accept cash. Convenience stores have ATMs that accept a wide range of international cards, as well as having cheap good food, so visit them often to top up your wallet.

\- I’m not sure if it gets mentioned on here that much, but check what sporting events are on while you’re in Tokyo. Attending an event (baseball or wrestling) at the Tokyo dome is something I’d definitely recommend if you’re sports-inclined. I’d recommend the sumo to almost anyone as a slice of Japanese culture. It goes all day, but the big matches are on from 3-6 so feel free to show up for just that bit. Lots of people do.

\- Pokemon merch, Japanese Whiskey, and BTS merch are all far cheaper and easier to get here than elsewhere, so stock up if any of these are to your interest.