Hey all,
Going to Japan for the 3rd time in 3 days (super last minute check, sorry!) but haven’t been back in a few years and will be going with a few friends who haven’t been before and would like a sanity check on a few logistics with Yamato transport for confirmation. All of us will likely have a backpack, duffle bag, and 2 checked luggages each, so we went in expecting to use Yamato as much as possible to avoid needing to take any luggage onto a Shinkansen/bus ride to Kawaguchiko. Here’s my current plan:
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(2 days, 4/3 – 4/5) **Tokyo**
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Day 1
– Land in Tokyo in the afternoon and take ~5 sets of clothing from checked luggage to put into duffle bag, then Yamato Transport to ship our bags from the Airport -> the closest Yamato near our BnB that accepts luggage (looked up location!) to retrieve about a week later. We’ll be aiming to do laundry in Kyoto.
– Deal with jetlag, walk around, get dinner somewhere, sleep
Day 2
– Meiji Jingu / Shinjuku Gyoen
– Shibuya/Cat Street/Akihabara
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(2 days, 4/5 – 4/7): **Kawaguchiko**
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A small 2 day trip to Kawaguchiko. Likely just biking around, onsen, and attempting to catch cherry blossoms if the sakura forecast is in our favor.
Nothing really “planned” for this aside from the panorama ropeway as we were intending on just exploring and taking it slow here
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(3 days, 4/7 – 4/10): **Kyoto**
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Day 1
– Arrive in Kyoto in the afternoon from Kawaguchiko, walk around the Sanneizaka area and Kiyomizudera, slower day.
– Do laundry because all of us are stinky at this point and have the rest of our luggage still waiting for us in Osaka.
Day 2
– Wake up extremely early to go to Fushimi Inari
– Grab lunch somewhere
– Go to Kinkaku-ji in the afternoon
Day 3
– Head to Arashiyama in the morning as early as we can
– Do some shopping/exploring. Overall, slower day
Day 4
– Pack up and go to a restaurant we have a reservation for
– Head to Osaka
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(4 days, 4/10 – 4/14): **Osaka**
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Day 1
– Pick up our luggage from the Yamato if all goes well
– Nichijou Cafe
– Dotonbori
Day 2
– USJ from morning -> evening
Day 3
– Umeda area, potentially Osaka Aquarium
– TeamLab Botanic Garden in the evening
Day 4
– Pack up and bring our luggage back to Yamato to ship to our Tokyo BnB that we’ll pick up in 2-3 days.
– Nothing really planned, likely just visiting places we have pinned on our maps that we want to do
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(2 days, 4/14 – 4/15): Kamakura/Enoshima
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Day 1
– Arrive in Kamakura from Osaka
– Komachi Street
– Zeniarai Benten Shrine
– Buddha of Kamakura, potentially a hike in the afternoon if time allows for it and/or the crowd isn’t too large
– Walk down towards the Enoshima Electric Rail
Day 2
– Half day in Enoshima, leave to Tokyo in the evening
– More shrines, mostly just walking around near the water and checking out the caves and doing light shopping
– Heading back up towards Kamakura and visiting any last minute visit we wanted to that we didn’t get to on Day 1
– Taking the train back to Tokyo
– Pick up luggage from corresponding Yamato, drop off at bnb.
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(1 day, 4/16) Yokohama
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Day 1
– Early morning in Yokohama to catch a concert we have tickets for
– Line up for Ramen Takano ~10AM
– Bus to Gundam Factory
– Head back to Yokohama Arena
– Concert, then leave back to Tokyo for the night
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(6 days, 4/17 – 4/23) Tokyo
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Essentially leaving this last week to do the bulk of our shopping as we’ll have our checked luggages shipped from Osaka 3 days prior. We decided to not really overplan out these days and take it slow from here with just a general idea of the areas we’d like to visit as we’ll likely be quite tired at this point, 2 weeks into vacation already.
Day 1
– Shimokitazawa + Shibuya Area
Day 2
– Akihabara full day
Day 3
– Kichijoji area to visit a few restaurants we had listed down, likely a full morning -> afternoon due to how far out it is
– Ikebukuro on the way back
Day 4
– Ginza/Shinjuku
Day 5
– Tsukiji Fish Market in the morning
– Nothing much else planned
– Car rental in the evening for a night drive around C1 expressway loop
Day 6
– Shibuya/Akihabara again for last minute shopping
– Shibuya Sky
Day 7 (AM)
– Pack bags, take all of our bags towards the airport and pray (?)
– We’ll have 3 people each with a duffle, backpack, and 2 checked luggages, so my assumption here is that if we don’t want to make the trip painstaking at the end and disrupt the general public, we should take (2??) taxis to the airport at this point, or just go lighter on the shopping in the last few days and once again ship our luggage to the airport a few days in advance (or even just keep 1/2?)
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Insanely long post, if you went through all of this, thank you so much!
