Three week mainland vacation next week. Looking for a critique on my itinerary.

8 comments

1. Regarding climbing Mt. Fuji: Recommended equipment is listed [here]{http://www.fujisan-climb.jp/en/erquipment/index.html).

   It can’t be stressed enough that you should bring waterproof jacket/pants and a change of underwear/socks, as conditions at the top of Mt. Fuji can change extremely quickly.

2. Kind of make no sense to do Mipig cafe and Disney on the same day, the cafe open at 10am and is almost 1h away from Disney… so you won’t be there before 11am… that is is you spend no time in the cafe. Not sure it’s worth losing hours in the amusement park for that. Like it would make more sense to go to Teamlab in the morning, then cafe in the afternoon and finish the day at the bar/club, that are not that far from the cafe.

   Fushimi Inari-Taisha and Arashiyama are on the opposite side of the city, so count about an hour to move between the two area. I would consider using day 15 or 16 to do a second day in Kyoto (as if you were clubbing all day from the morning…), use one day for Arashiyama and one for Fushimi Inari and Higashiyama. Use the other day to go to Nara. And considering that attractions close around 5pm, you can be back in Osaka not too late to go to clubs and bars.

   18, consider adding National Art Center and Roppongi Hills (for the art museum and observation deck).

   Ghibli, do you already have tickets ? If not, check if you can even still get one.

   For sure you can do a bit more than what you listed every day.

   Why do you waste time and money for return to Tokyo, you could fly to Tokyo and back from Osaka.

3. Climbing Fuji the day after flying in sounds pretty hardcore, but if you can handle it then go for it. Are you getting rental equipment for Fuji? I went climbing in October and had around 3 layers of clothes for my upper body and two layers for my legs and I don’t remember feeling bothered by weather at all. It was a nice day that day though so depends on weather conditions.

4. Are you doing a day climb or bullet climb? Would highly recommend waterproof stuff, not just water resistant… we learned that the hard way 😅 I was freezing my ass off. Assuming you’re just flying in from Okinawa or something close, it’ll be fine to travel and then climb.

   Tokyo Disneyland or Disney sea? If you’re not sure, I’m a ginormous Disney fan and would recommend Disney sea, it’s amazing! Disneyland is top tier of the world’s castle parks, but sea is even better!

5. I stayed in Kobe for a summer, the mountain is not a huge mountain, it’s more like a really big hill and might even be a slight disappointment after doing mt Fuji, but Kobe as a city is very cool, Sannomiya is a very cool area to explore if you are in Kobe, it’s a big multi floor indoor-outdoor shopping area, there is also a Sake brewing museum that has tours in Kobe, the harbor is also a cool area

6. Unless you need all of July 17 to recover from your Osaka pub crawl, you can have a ton of time to do things in Tokyo after the shinkansen ride.

7. Ghibli musuem is cute but it’s tiny and barely a whole morning thing, let alone a whole day thing btw.

   The clubs you’ve chosen in Shibuya are terrible (someone cooler than me can hopefully tell you what’s good these days)

   For Fuji, you’ll start in one layer of clothing and by the top you’ll need either ‘proper’ winter clothing or at least lots of layers. Don’t forget proper hat and gloves and definitely take a head lamp, you’ll need it to pick your footing on the rocky parts (assuming you’re climbing at night). Lots of people overprepare for Fuji, which I suppose is better than underpreparing, but you don’t need mountaineering gear, more just decent hiking gear. And take snacks and water obviously.

8. This might be a dumb question, but are they allowing solo tourism now from the United States? As in, do we still have to be a part of tour groups?