At the moment a friend and I are planning a 17 day Itinerary for January next year (which may or may not get pushed back) and wanted some input on if this is good or not.
January 11th – Fly out to Haneda airport
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January 12th (Day 1) – Arrive in Haneda and stay in Tokyo. Thought about vising the Tokyo Skytree this day if enough time.
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Day 2-5 – Spend 4 full days in Tokyo with 1 of those days going to Chichibu for their distillery (maybe Hakushu if enough time)
\- Day 2: Start off Shibuya then Harajuku. Not sure what else I could fit in here, but gonna end the day staying at the Manga Art Hotel
\- Day 3: All day Akihabara! Maybe even go off the beaten path, but heard some arcades during night time are amazing.
\- Day 4: Go to Chichibu for distillery then do Shinjuku for Evening/Night
\- Day 5: Walk the Rainbow Bridge to Odaiba, check that out, then go to Yokohama. I may switch Day 4 & 5 depending.
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Day 6 – Numazu for half a day (Baird fishmarket taproom), then go to Shizuoka and stay the night. I have heard to just skip Numazu so may go straight to Shizuoka.
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Day 7 – Go to Kyoto, partake in the Philosopher’s Path, check out Toei Kyoto Studio Park, then stay the night
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Day 8 – Check out Arashiyama for a bit then head for Kinosaki to stay the night. May skip Arashiyama since Kinosaki is about a 3 hour trip and we’ll be staying in a Ryokan with (I believe) strict check in, dinner, and check out times.
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Day 9-10 – Head to Osaka and stay there for 2 days, with 1 of those days going to the Suntory Yamazaki distillery.
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Day 11 – Head to Kagawa for 1/2 day (friend REALLY wants to try some Sanuki Udon) then go to Kobe and stay the night
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Day 12 – Check out Nada Ward then leave for Kanazawa
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Day 13 – Check out Shirakawago for half the day then Leave for Nagano and stay the night
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Day 14 – Check out Monkey park, then leave for Tokyo
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Day 15 – Go to Sendai (specifically Ishinomaki), check out the Manga Museum, and find the Kamen Rider statue. And also stay the night.
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Day 16-17 – Go to the Nikka Miyagikyo distillery, then back to Tokyo and fuck around the last 2 days.
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This is a rough draft and I have plenty of ideas where to go, but this is just an outline and wanted to see if I could adjust some things. We’re wanting to check out a few distilleries (as well as a couple breweries) while here so that’s why you see options of us going to Chichibu and whatnot. I’m also considering removing Kanazawa-Nagano as I heard the monkey park is overrated and concerned Shirakawago won’t be that pleasant in the winter.
12 comments
Spend more time in Kyoto
You can probably skip the stopover in Tokyo on day 14 and travel direct to Sendai. Changing hotels almost everyday is a lot of overhead.
Day 2 you can probably checkout Nakano as well its about 30 mins away by train from Shibuya/Harajuku area. Another option is checkout Shimokita which is only 13 mins away, and the Shirohige cream puff store is around there if you’re into Totoro stuff.
Day 3 check out the Hitochino Brew Lab in Akihabara.
Also there are a lot of great whisky bars in Tokyo that you might want to look into. Nikka has a bar around omotesando area
Do you plan to ever go back to Japan again after this trip? It just seems like your are travelling to alot of different places without actually spending quality time there.
Hi! Just adding a few options for you. Sorry I got nothing to suggest about brewery places, we went to Japan with plans of enjoying the food, weather and scenery. This is what I think would fit into your itinerary if you’re up for it :
Tokyo:(1)Tokyo Skytree is not that far from Sensoji Temple (around 2kms) – you might want to visit as well if your itinerary permits you to. Though I might have to warn you to take good care or your belongings here, we were informed by our tour guide to take extra caution at this place, we felt safe but it would do no harm to be aware of the surroundings. Mainly the place has a temple with few souvenir stores and food stalls when you walk around. We tried Melon Pan stuffed with sukiyaki and it was soo good.
(2) If you have the Mt Fuji Tour – you might want to visit Gotemba Premium Outlet (we had the option to go straight to Gotemba and go back via bullet train but we didn’t go since we didn’t plan to go shopping)
(3) Part of the Tokyo City Tour that amazed me are : (a) Marunouchi Station – the one facing the Imperial Palace. The building is magnificent and it feels like I’m at Platform 9 3/4 (Harry Potter fan here). Also inside the station has a lot of ramen places here and there so you got a lot of selections to choose from ; and (b) Imperial Garden – very touristy, but I enjoyed the garden within the city, it’s like the Central Park of New York
Osaka :(1) Please do not forget to pass by Dohtonbori! You can easily find all the must-try Japanese food here, and do a few shopping if you want to. I heard the wagyu paired with beer here is one of the best there is!
I hope you’ll enjoy your trip as much as we did! We’re planning to go back once the world’s healed. Stay safe!
While you in Tokyo, plan to spend a day getting to Mt Fuji. Magnificent view, with JR pass you can get to Otsuki station and then get on the local train to Mt Fuji station. We walked to the lake and took Mt. Fuji Panoramic Ropeway.
I have mixed feeling about some days. Like Odaiba + Yokohama in a day ?
Not totally sure what is the idea about Namazu and Shizuoka, but I would personally consider to skip completely to have one more full day in Kyoto.
For the second days in Kyoto, you would probably have time in the morning but most likely you want to be in the train in early afternoon. You could always aim to check in the latest you can, like 5-6 pm (depending on the place), but if you get there earlier, if just give a bit more time in the afternoon to go to onsen, so for example you can try to be there when check-in start so you can drop your luggage, grab the pass and yukata to go to the onsen.
Going to Kagawa is a massive waste of time and does not really make much sense just to eat some udon. Just search for it and it seems there is places in Osaka that serve it. That will save you a good 5 hours of train.
Kobe just as a “day trip”, it’s really not far from Osaka, even if you are to do it twice.
Doing Shirakawa-go and reaching Nagano all in one day sound to be a lot of transportation and it does not make much sense to me.
In general, I think you are spending way too much time in transportation always moving long distance. I do not have problem with changing city daily, but would not be in the train for more than 2-3 hours a days and you have several days that would much much more than that.
I think you are wrong about Shirakawa-go, I think the scenery with snow would be great and there is even illuminations in January if I remember correctly, so I would even consider to try staying there for the night.
Day 11 onwards seem really strange to me. You’re spending half days in places that you could base whole trips on. Kanazawa, Nagano, and Sendai are all fantastic and deserve a good look. Not to mention far from each other. Train from Kobe to Kanazawa, bus to and from Shirakawago, and train to Nagano is a lot of travel without leaving time for a proper look around.
Here are some basic tips, hopefully helpful regardless of where you plan to go.
Whatever you plan to do, make sure you look at the subway lines and transportation routes ahead of the trip and understand how to get around as it can be complicated at first. I didn’t do that and a good amount of time was spent each morning figuring out our path and then time in the stations getting our bearings.
Cash is still used a lot there and I found it the easiest way to recharge our transportation pass. If there was a way to reload using a credit card, I couldn’t figure it out because the menus were all in Japanese. Also, try to get a universal transportation pass so you can ride anything.
If you are going to ride the Shinkansen, make sure to get the cheaper tourist passes from a travel agency while still in the US. Also, make sure to reserve your Shinkansen seats at the station counter. The last thing you want is to have to stand for 3 hours even if you are going 200mph.
We also rented a wifi hotspot for internet and a few extra batteries to keep our data down on the cellphones – that was one of the best choices we made. I ordered it and had it delivered to our next hotel and then we put it in the pre-paid shipping envelope when we were done.
Also, GPS is not very accurate when you are near so many tall buildings, it shows you on another street or in the middle of somewhere you aren’t so that was kind of another pain point for us.
It would be a good idea to get some Yen before you go. Having cash as soon as we got off the plane was one less thing to worry about. Also, things may have changed since I went in 2015, but it was cheaper and there were more flight options going through Narita but it also added a painful 1.5 hour bus ride to get into the city after traveling for 15 hours.
We probably had too busy of an itinerary so we did not get enough time in each area to really explore and I do regret that so keep that in mind. The ramen and food is going to be amazing compared to where you are from anywhere you go in Japan so don’t get too hung up on having to go to a certain place for food if it is too far out of the way.
If you do have to push your trip back further, take a look at end of March or first week of April to catch the cherry blossom season, it is truly remarkable, even if you aren’t into that sort of stuff. Better weather than January also! Check out the huge Himeji Castle, that was an amazing experience, especially during cherry blossom season.
Skip walking the rainbow Bridge to Obaida. Take the train and spend your time in Teamlabs Borderless instead.
I feel like that time of year, unless you’re skiing, Hiroshima and Miyajima will be more pleasant to visit than Nagano.
So basically what I get from y’all is that I should stay longer in Kyoto, skip Kagawa, probably skip Nagano, and do a full day in Odaiba instead of a half day. This will help.
I’m no expert on Japan (covered Osaka/Kyoto/Nara/Tokyo in just under 2 weeks as a tourist), but as someone who has spent a fair amount of time backpacking generally, this seems kind of brutal.
I think it starts well up until leaving Tokyo, and then it seems like you plan to be in a new place everyday, even then some places you are seemingly going just to spend the night.
My personal suggestion would be you cut out/repurpose at least two of your days i.e don’t go to Kobe for one night when you could stay another day in Kyoto.
Sometimes less is more, try not to spend a lot of your time on trains
Appreciate the suggestions and comments. I’ll have a 2nd draft done and I’ll rethink some places I want to go.