So I don’t have days planned out yet – flying over to see my girlfriend who lives outside of Tokyo, we’re both terrible at planning things and just have ideas of things we’d like to do, but nothing massively takes precedence over anything else.
Wondering how to split the time between Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto, if anyone has any tips or any advice on things that might be good to group together, it would be much appreciated!
I have got a lot of ideas from this sub but I’m terrible at keeping track of what fits together and what’s doable in a day.
Here’s rough ideas of stuff we thought would be nice:
TOKYO
I guess for Tokyo it’s less about specific sights and stuff and more about goignto weird places and finding stuff that’s really different than here. Like go to nice bars and restaurants but I don’t have any specific ideas of those. Like izakaya alleys and those 80s style underground shopping places
1. tokyo skytree
2. Teamlabs Tokyo
3. Love hotels and dinosaur robot hotel
4. Maid cafe
5. shibuya crossing
6. akihabara – arcades & shops like don quiote
7. Ueno park – we have to take swan boat. Could take a whole day maybe if we need a rest day we could go on boat and chill
9. shinjuku godzilla hotel
10. Tokyo tower
11. maybe day trip to mount fuji – I think the other temples and stuff around there is we do, like hokokuji has a bamboo grove that could be me chill than the one in kyoto
12. Harajuku & Takeshita Dori for food & shops – though looks busy af
KYOTO
1. Saiho-ji teme – moss garden – looks very pretty and nice and chill
2. Maruyama Park – or anywhere that’s nice to see cherry blossoms, I read this was nice place to see them but if it doesn’t fit with rest of plan we can go somewhere else. Like we could see in Tokyo instead, like chidorigafuchi most or Shinjuku gyoen.
Kodaji temple
Arashjyama -bamboos – thought it looked beautiful but also could be insanely crowded and might not be that nice if it’s really busy
Fyshimi inari -red beams – looks really nice but if it’s crowded might not be great but maybe we should go
Nanzenjo temple – classic temple
OSAKA
1. Namba yasaka shrine – the lion head shrine
2. Umeda sky building
3. Aquarium
4. Osaka castle
5. universal studios
Itsukushima shrine – famous shrine in water I’d like to see but think it might be really far away so maybe no
3 comments
What worked for me on my last trip and my plan for my next trip in 1 week is to pick 1-3 things to do in a day that are roughly in the same area, and then fill the rest of the day with exploring. There are so many things to see/do that honestly it’s overwhelming. But the flip side is, you can usually find something cool to do just by wandering around.
In terms of where to split your trip, you can’t really go wrong any way you do it. All 3 cities are cool in different ways. I personally like Osaka the most, lots of people prefer Kyoto. Osaka has really good food and bars, which is what I like about travelling.
If seeking out cherry blossoms are part of your itinerary then checkout one of the forecasts and determine how much of that impacts your scheduling. The bloom is expected to come in a week earlier than typical this year: [https://n-kishou.com/corp/news-contents/sakura/?lang=en](https://n-kishou.com/corp/news-contents/sakura/?lang=en)
For the Moss Garden, that one requires a very specific reservation process where you mail (yes actual mail) a request in and they send back your reservation also by mail https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3937.html