Itinerary Check: Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, Tokyo, 14 days of fun!

15 comments

1. Yes, your first days are too packed for my taste. When are you going to sleep? You think adrenaline will carry you for 14 days straight? Also depends on where you’re traveling from and if you’re going to have a large time zone difference.

2. Way too ambitious. You’ll tire yourself out and won’t even really go at a pace to appreciate what you’re seeing and experiencing. Just my two cents.

3. Good plan
   I think it may be pretty hectic on the first day but the rest is nice.

4. I was just at DisneySea yesterday (Thursday). It was a great day

   Wait times were not bad, only bought a premiere access for Soaring. Just a heads up, the temperature does drop more than you think it will. The wind coming off the sea was cold, so later in the day you may need a proper jersey

5. Hi!

   Most of the rides at Sea don’t allow pregnant women to ride. I went to downtown Disney when pregnant, but I didn’t go to the park because why pay when most rides won’t let you go on.

   Every pregnancy is different and I have no idea how far along your wife will be, but jet lag, travel, sightseeing and pregnancy can all play havoc on a trip itinerary. I went to Japan at 6 weeks of pregnancy and at 5 months of pregnancy.

   I think the former Nintendo Headquarters is now a fancy hotel.

6. I don’t want to be rude but I’m laughing my ass off looking at what your trying to do in such a short time. Then died when you said your wife is pregnant.

   I’m going to assume she’s in her first trimester maybe second. Hopefully not in her third trying to knock out this list. My recommendation is to cut it in half. Your itinerary is to look and check off the box rather then enjoy and appreciate. There is so much to see and explore at each place, your plan seems to show up take photos and move on.

   Your easily looking at 10-15 miles of walking a day for 14 days. 140-200 miles possibly , non stop. It’s not easy on a pregnant lady who probably has to take a piss pretty often.

   Idk if this is your first trip or 100th but are you familiar with getting around Japan? If not add In time for getting around public transportation. It eats into your time.

   You also don’t have anytime for exploring,there’s so many cool thing you’ll see that you’ll want to go see and do. Some of our best times have been doing things that we didn’t have planned to do. I think you guys would get so much more out of your trip if you had time to be able to do that. One of our best day on our last trip was going to a park and having a picnic under the cherry blossoms. It wasn’t on our itinerary but was great. Another great day was spending a 2nd day trip to a small town near Tokyo because we enjoyed it so much. We went back to do more exploring, we bumped other things off our list to make space, but that’s ok.

   I personally recommend to make a list of all the things that you want to do in priority. Knock them out at your pace and enjoy your trip. Understand that you will not do everything you want to do. Know new things will pop up that you will do. Save what you can’t do for a future trip. I can tell you that in 17 days I was not able to knock out 1/2 of this list you have nor would I recommend or try it with a pregnant wife in tow.

   Source: just returned from a 17 day trip with my pregnant wife as well. We’re a very experienced traveler’s who have been to Japan multiple times.

   Edit: the only day that looks realistic to me was Disney Sea. Also the wife would like me to add that your wife should bring extra comfortable shoes. I bought her a pair of Nike zoom X’s day 4 into our trip.

7. Yokohama as a ramen museum where it looks like old Tokyo and you can try smaller samples of different ramen.

8. First tip: when exiting the bamboo Forrest on the lower side, by the water, it’s a short walk to the famous bridge. Then on your left hand will be a small coffee brewery. Best Macha and coffee we had there. They also sell a brie jambon baguette (nothing else unfortunately hahaha) if you go there early before 1oam there won’t big line… Otherwise, expect to wait as you will do many more times in the land of the rising sun. Oh by the way. Doing Bamboo and after that monkey park was a climb! Even we as frequent hikers were exhausted when reaching the top with all those small japanse stairs haha so please be prepared with the baby on its way 😉

   We did 4days in Osaka (started our trip there for the chronological travel reason..) and did a bit more than you list for a day trip. Remember Osaka is a big city on its own with lots of side streets and explorable places.

   Also others have said it but be careful walking that damn much with your wife 😉

   I didn’t read Tokyo fully because of the packed schedule. But Yokohama is a good place to be at night (ferris wheel and light exhibition (if… It’s still there then).

   Oh last thing, fix a suica card for the whole trip (travelconvience, u can pay everywhere with this) or a metropass 72h for Tokyo. Stay off the JR pass and if you travel by Shinkansen, book in advance 😉

9. Hachiko statue is by the Shibuya station so you’ll probably want to move that to Day 9.

   We did Yoyogi Park right after Meiji Shrine since they’re right next to eachother.

   We came from California too and we tried to fight jet lag by trying to stay awake and sleeping at 10pm but we ended up being wide awake at 330am lol so didn’t work out for us unfortunately. Thankfully, we took that opportunity to eat at Ichiran since they closed at 6am (no wait times at least)

   I’m sure you’ve heard it a lot already with the other commenters, but your itinerary really is a lot. I would just say to use this itinerary as more of a general idea of what you’d like to aim to do that day and then adjust your schedule as you see fit and toss out ones that you’re fine skipping out on. For our last full day in Japan, we were so exhausted that we scrapped our entire plan for the day and just ended up walking around and exploring. Which was perfectly fine and I don’t regret it.

   But yeah, our schedule was probably half as busy as yours and we averaged 25-30k steps a day. Also, speaking as a woman who was pregnant, it’s probably going to be tough on your wife. A woman’s body is already going through so much physical changes and adding a hectic schedule to that will certainly not be fun. Personally, I would’ve ripped my husband’s head off if he showed me this itinerary while knowing I would be pregnant during the trip lol

10. day 1 : I am assuming you will be totally wiped. adrenaline may keep you alive, and I would not recommend you stay in the hotel and sleep, but, rest, take it slow, go to sleep rather early or take a nap. I think there is a risk trying to do kiyomizudera and chasing breweries and all that is trying to push too hard. a stroll through yasaka + park may be more conservative.

    (that being said, it will depend on how long you travel, how much sleep you got. another thing, babymoon? you going alone or with kids? if you have kids or a baby with you, take any activity and assume it takes twice as long and drains double the energy)

    day 2: if you find free time just explore more arashiyama. I dont think you will though, that plan is ambitious already

    day 3: nara park and todaiji is, all things that you will find walking there, plenty for a day. and while the brewery is nice, it is a good bit away from the park.

    day 4: not sure this day can be done like that. it sounds so easy, just grab lunch at the station, 30mins, continue. but thats not what will be happening. what will happen is, you need to find a bus. and that will bring you to the station, and then 40 min are gone. now you look for food, that or that one, and then you wait, and finally food, another 40min gone, and then eat, 25min, ok what next, walk, okay and now, ok, wait for the bus, lets go to nintendo. which one, lets wait, an hour later you are back on your itinerary…

    day 5: that could be over ambitious. and are you sleeping in osaka? if not make sure you know when you need to head back. dont assume trains will run at night, they mostly dont. you will need to head back at a surprisingly early time

    day 6: you are all over the map with this one. not possible. and not north kyoto. nijojo and nishiki would be enough for one day.

    day 7: that day is light, but you know.

    ill stop here because you are leaving my area of expertise. I would recommend you put all those POIs into a map and try to plan you days, especially 4,6,7, according to what is close to each other. maybe you can find some better fits, like, when you are at kinkakuji, next to it is ryoanji. I would much rather see that than trying to catch a bus to [anywhere way south]
    another thing, your plan sometimes tries to go to the same area twice. like, one day you wanna see the spring brewery, another day you want to go to nishiki. the brewery is, if you would shove it two houses over, right in nishiki.
    try to go to an area once, or rahter, try to spend as little time waiting for the bus or in the bus as possible

    that being said, dont miss Kodaiji, but when your hotel is near Higashiyama, you can walk there. same with nishiki and pontocho and gion. stuff very close (walking distance) to the hotel can be more easily done/squeeze in.

    all in all, I dont think you put together a feasible plan. it is (and I can only judge Kansai) probably too full, and not optimized, and is ignoring time to rest, recharge, and running the risk of becoming a checkbox and not enjoyable.

    when you revised your plan ill gladly look at it again

    ah at the end, pregnant. so no baby yet. but, japan requires lots of walking, dont underestimate that. and dont push too far.

11. “McDonalds (curious to see their food in Japan)”

    Four words: Double Teriyaki Beef Burger. Yum.

12. 4 places in one day is 20K+ steps or ~8 miles. If you and your pregnant wife can walk 8 miles a day, every day for 2 weeks then you are good. Taking taxis will cut it down to about 12K steps per day.

13. For Yokohama is worth to stay until dark for the bay buildings lights. Also i think the Gundam is better with the lights espectacle.

14. We were in Spring Valley Brewery, Kyoto, today, thanks to you mentioning it. It was awesome. Excellent Beer and exquisit meals! I definitely recommand!

15. Enough people have already pointed out that you’re really stretching yourselves thin. I just want to give you a planning tip to visualize your time and maybe see where you can “cut the fat”.

    The last time we went to Japan I was 3 months pregnant and we took our 18 month old with us. We were hitting 20k – 30k steps a day and it went just fine. I also had a relatively easy pregnancy, my biggest problem was retaining water.

    Anyway for your planning sit down with an hourly planner(or make a spreadsheet) and Google maps. Use the planner to add in travel time and plan out how much time to spend where. You can use the public transportation setting on Google maps to estimate leaving place A and arrive at place B. Maybe color code travel vs. site seeing vs. eating.

    Before we had kids we traveled loose, fast, and hard. This is the way I do our trips now to make sure I’m adding in rest time and buffers for the kids needing a break and also planning for travel time when we’re at the mercy of public transportation. It really helps to be asleep to visualize and think about how the day will really go and how much(or little) wiggle room you’re giving yourselves to stop and breathe, pee, rest your feet, or investigate something cool you came across, but didn’t plan for.