Itinerary Check, Nov 8th – 15th
All hotels have been booked. The tour in Nagano has been booked. Everything else is open.
Nov 8 – Arrive Narita at 5 pm, gather things and cards, Narita Exp to Ueno Station then hotel. Dinner likely ekiben
Nov 9 – Ueno Park, Skytree (or hotel observation deck), Otherwise wander and eat
Nov 10 – Shinkansen to Nagano for tour of temple, Sake distillery, and Snow Monkey park, Dinner TBD
Nov 11 – Anyoin Temple and Kurosawa gravesite, Hokokuji Bamboo Forest & Temple
Nov 12 – TeamLab, ???
Nov 13 – Heading to a ryoken near Kitagawatsuikiishi Park for spa, onsen, etc
Nov 14 – Head back to Tokyo, Hanzomen area, Shimokitazawa, Meiji Jingu
Nov 15 – Picture with Godzilla, [any stops between Hanzomen & Narita] Depart 6:30 pm
While I do enjoy wandering and finding a place I didn’t expect, I would like to know if anyone has any places or things that I should make an effort to get to, especially on the 12th, 14th, and 15th.
5 comments
Looks like a great plan. This is much the same as how I planned for 2017. One or two planned events and then exploring.
If you’re going to be near Asakusa, the Senso-ji temple complex is wonderful. We stumbled upon it early in the morning when it was empty, went back when it was busy, the went back briefly at nite at the end of our trip.
Since my original post got deleted simply for putting a link to my trip reports, if you’d like to read up on how explored the country and examples of stumbling upon many hidden treasures, feel free to DM me for a link.
Hi!
Some ideas of places to visit include:
Kamakura
Nikko
Chichubu
Kawagoe
Hakone
Kawaguchiko
Spend more time on Izu
It really depends on your interests.
If you’re staying in Ueno, I would probably take the Keisei Skyliner over the NEX.
You could check and see if your dates overlap with any autumn leaves illuminations in Tokyo. It might still be a little early but in October Google Autumn Illuminations Tokyo to see if any overlap with your dates.
– [5 Best Places to see Autumn Leaves at Night in Tokyo](https://jw-webmagazine.com/best-places-to-see-autumn-leaves-in-tokyo-at-night/)
– [Tokyo in November](https://jw-webmagazine.com/tokyo-in-november-best-things-to-do/)
tokyo big sight and the museum of emerging science are near teamlabs.
Check if the Nagano tour is cancellable and if so re-assess closer to the cancellation deadline. The reason is because November is not guaranteed snow cover, in which case the views at the snow monkey park are kind of lame (since it would just be tons of brown soil and rocks, and monkeys only naturally bathe in the hot springs if it’s cold enough). The park has a webcam that you can use to view ground conditions.
For a ‘generic’ tourist, Zenkoji by itself is not worth the time/cost for the detour unless it has a lot of meaning for your personal interests.