April 2-16, Trip report.

I just returned from my first trip to Japan, and I loved it so much. So I wanted to share my experience.

I’m Belgian, and we (boyfriend and I) travelled with a Dutch travel organisation. It was a group trip, but the great thing was that only the travel days were fixed, and we didn’t have to do any activities together as an entire group. So there was a lot of freedom. And the itinerary was great. It took away a lot of stress for me, because I didn’t have to arrange hotels and transport myself. Not that I’ve visited Japan, I think that next time we’ll just do all of the arrangements ourselves, but for the first trip it was great this way.

Anyway, this is what we did:

**April 2-3:**

* Flight from Amsterdam to Tokyo, transfer in Frankfurt. This day was extremely stressful because our first flight was delayed and we thought we weren’t going to make the second flight. Luckily it all worked out. We arrived in Tokyo on the 3rd and were at our hotel room at around noon. 7 hour time difference with Belgium so we were exhausted, but obviously didn’t go to sleep.
* We went to Harajuku in the afternoon, and Shibuya crossing in the evening. On the way to Shibuya we went to Suga Shrine, because I’m a weeb and wanted to visit the red stairs from one of my favourite anime movies “Kimi no na wa”.
* In Shibuya we visited Miyashita park and had dinner. After that it was late and we were exhausted.

**April 4:**

* Travel to Osaka by Shinkansen. Originally we were meant to fly directly to Osaka, but it was apparently very difficult to get plane tickets to Osaka.
* I loved the Shinkansen ride. We saw Mt Fuji from the train, and it was an emotional moment for me. We had been looking forward to this trip for 10 years and now we were finally there!
* In Osaka we just walked around in the shopping streets, and stumbled upon Utsubo park. This park was beautiful, the cherry blossoms were still blooming, and a lot of people were having a picknick.
* In the evening we went to Dotonbori. We ate takoyaki from two different places, some amazing high-quality sushi, and two different kinds of yakitori.

**April 5:**

* Went to the Osaka Aquarium in the morning. This was actually a bit disappointing to me. Big tanks and a lot of animals, but I thought the tanks looked really bare and boring. I expected it to look prettier.
* In the afternoon we did some more sightseeing in the shopping streets like Shinsaibashi. Not really my thing for the most part, just a lot of modern stores. I preferred shopping in Kyoto and Tokyo. We did go to the pokemon center there though, which was pretty cool.

**April 6:**

* Travel from Osaka to Koyasan. By subway, train, cable car and bus.
* I loved Koyasan, it’s such a beautiful place. We walked around town for the early afternoon, visiting lovely souvenir shops. After that we went to check out our room at the Shukubo we stayed at, and visited the Okunoin cemetery and temple. We had dinner at the Shukubo, and had a quiet evening that was quite welcome by that point, we were still exhausted from the flight and the busy first days.
* Sleeping on a futon was definitely something I was glad not to repeat for the rest of the trip. We already cheated though, we found 4 more futons in the closet so we each slept on 3 futons at once. Still had aching arms and back the next day.

**April 7:**

* Travel from Koyasan to Kyoto. This was a heavy travel day. Bus, cable car, subway, train, subway again… Exhausting!
* In the afternoon we went to Teramachi and Shinkyogoku, because it was raining a lot anyway.

**April 8:**

* Arashiyama, visited the bamboo forest of course. Not nearly as crowded as I expected it to be. Only the first part of it was very crowded.
* Nishiki market at noon. Very crowded of course, but still a lot of fun.
* In the afternoon we visited Maruyama park and Gion. So this day was well filled with beautiful sightseeing and buying a lot of souvenirs.
* In the evening we had ramen in Kyoto station, which in itself is worth a visit.

**April 9:**

* Visiting Nara in the morning. This was one of the few trips that was a bit disappointing to me. Nara park was okay, but I’ve seen a lot of places that were way more beautiful. Feeding the deer sounded fun but in the end it’s just that, giving a biscuit to a deer. So not a bad excursion, but not something I’d do again.
* After Nara we visited Fushimi Inari, and that I absolutely loved. It was so much bigger than I thought. I was also surprised by how it wasn’t as crowded as I expected. Pretty crowded close to the entrance, but a lot of people didn’t bother getting all the way to the top. We were able to make pictures without anyone else on them. At this point, I caught a cold (it was making its way around the travel group) so it was hard, but we made it all the way to the top. Can definitely recommend. Do take a lot of breaks in between, though! After this we were obviously exhausted, so we had some sushi and had an early night at the hotel room.

**April 10:**

* Travel from Kyoto to Takayama, took the Shinkansen again.
* Went to Hida no Sato. I loved this, since we have a museum exactly like this (with the old houses that are built up again in the museum) close where I live in Belgium, I always love to see stuff like this in other countries I visit. Definitely worth a visit, especially for such a cheap price.
* We had a hotel room a little further away from town. There was a free shuttle bus to the hotel, but it didn’t drive until very late in the evening, so we had to make it an early night. I recommend getting a hotel close to town if you have the chance. It was hard to find a restaurant that was open early enough for us to make the shuttle bus.

**April 11:**

* Visited the morning markets in Takayama, and I was blown away by how extremely beautiful this town is. Cherry blossoms everywhere, the big river, the beautiful buildings,… It was a warm and sunny spring day, too. For me this was the most beautiful place we visited of the entire trip. Even more beautiful than Kyoto.
* In the afternoon we visited Shirakawago, which was beautiful as well. Just did a lot of walking around and enjoyed the scenery.

**April 12:**

* Travel from Takayama to Matsumoto. I was feeling pretty ill this day, so I skipped the visit to the castle to get a couple of hours of rest in the hotel room. Too bad, but at that moment it was a good thing to do. I didn’t care that much about visiting the castle (although it would have been nice) so it was the best moment to get some rest.

**April 13:**

* Travel from Matsumoto to Tokyo. We made a stop on the way in Kawaguchiko, to have a gaze at the beautiful Mt. Fuji.
* And finally we arrived back in Tokyo. We had been looking forward to our days there the most. That day we were able to visit Asakusa and Senso-ji in the late afternoon. I loved Asakusa, definitely recommend it. A good place to buy a kimono or yukata if you’re looking for one.
* And after having curry for dinner we went all the way up Tokyo sky tree. Also really impressive, and I’m glad we did it when it was dark, it was a magnificent view.

**April 14:**

* Started the day with a walk around Ueno park. Which was okay, but at this point the cherry blossoms in Tokyo had disappeared so it wasn’t more than just a nice morning walk.
* Then we went to Akihabara! Something we were very much looking forward to. We loved walking around there, visiting all kinds of crazy stores. Definitely bought some otaku souvenirs as well.
* We had some time left and ended the day in Ikebukuro. It was nice, but after having visited Akihabara we didn’t really see anything shockingly different, so we might as well have skipped it.

**April 15:**

* Our last day in Tokyo turned out to be the best day. In the morning we went to Shinjuku. Walked around town and visited Don Quijote there. For lunch we had arranged a meetup with a japanese couple that my boyfriend follows on twitch. The woman streams her day walking around Tokyo every day, and they try to meet up with their followers when they visit Japan. I don’t know if I’m allowed to link their stream here. But we had the best meal of the entire trip. They took us to a teppanyaki restaurant and made us monjayaki and okonomiyaki at the table, and they made us help which was a lot of fun. The meal was so good. They were just the nicest people ever as well, we had such a blast.
* After this lovely meal, we went to a cat cafe, right across from the big cat billboard in Shinjuku. I had never been to a cat cafe before, and I LOVE cats, so it seemed like a fun thing to try for the first time in Japan. It was fun, we got to feed the cats treats and some were very cuddly.
* We did a short walk through golden gai as well, which wasn’t open during the day, but it was fun to walk through it in the rain, it had a nice atmosphere that way.
* We ended our trip the way it began, in Shibuya. Went to the megadon there, and walked around to absorb the loudness of the city one last time.

**April 16:**

* Going home! And now I’ve been home sick for days because I didn’t get enough rest during the trip of course, so I still have a painful throat and a fever. Oh well, I’ll be okay in a few days, I’m already glad I was able to still enjoy my trip, be it with a lot of painkillers, liters of water and some bottles of pocari sweat. Can highly recommend that drink, it really helped a lot when I was tired. And aside from the gross name, the drink tastes pretty good.

​

So this trip was amazing, even with me having a cold, it was the journey of our lives. We will definitely return to Japan when we can. It did cost a lot of money of course so it’ll take a while 🙂

I think next time we’ll visit some other places, but definitely visit Tokyo again. We loved the vibe of the big city.

We also ate everything we wanted to try: Sushi (obviously), omuraisu, curry, ramen, soba, okonomiyaki, takoyaki, yakitori, a lot of onigiri,… at some point even we as Japanese food lovers wanted something else though, so we also had pasta and pizza at times. I did find it a challenge to eat enough fruit and vegetables, because most meals we had didn’t include a lot of them. I often bought little cups/bags of veggies at family mart, which tasted pretty good.

I love Japan. The people, the culture, the language,… we have been studying Japanese for a couple of years so it was fun to be able to use it a bit (even though we’re a long way from having big conversations with Japanese people).

I will miss Japan, and its polite, friendly, humble people.