Hi everyone. Planning a hopeful 14-day trip in late November to early December for my partner (first time in Japan) and myself (third time). We are mostly interested in the food/drink culture (partner is a big ramen fan) and nature-based attractions.
Some general points and clarifications:
* Direct flights to and from Australia to Tokyo are faster and cheaper (much more common route, and no layovers) than flying into Osaka, so we’re stuck with doing a bit of a round trip.
* The Kyoto leg is a bit light – didn’t want to be too ambitious in just 2 nights. We didn’t originally plan on adding Kyoto, we added it specifically for the autumn illuminations, Kodaiji, Fushimi-Inari, and Mount Kurama. Do intend to come back in a later trip though to cover the missed things – Kiyomizu-dera and the other great temples etc.
* I hemmed and hawed about a 7 day JR Pass, activating when leaving Hakone. (For anyone missing Hyperdia, I found JR West has a [route planner](https://www.westjr.co.jp/global/en/timetable/) that can find you a shinkansen route excluding Nozomi and Mizuho trains. It only works for Kansai stations and the major Tokyo stations, though.) But in the end, not getting the pass and being able to take Nozomi and Mizuho express trains with less transfers and timetable-digging won out over the ~50 AUD saving from the JR Pass.
**Day 1 – 24 November**
* Flight – Melbourne-Narita
* Airport train to accommodation
* Dinner + check in to airbnb (somewhere close to a Yamanote line station)
**Day 2 – Tokyo**
* Breakfast – bakery? Konbini if none are open
* Free time. Find local garden/temple, exploring local area
* Lunch – Unagidon: Tsukiji Miyagawa Honten?
* Teamlab planets
* Dinner – local place
**Day 3 – Tokyo**
* Tokyo National Museum, or visit local temple/garden/attraction
* Taishakuten Sando, Yamamoto-tei
* dinner: Omoide Yokocho (Kabuto); Ben Fiddich
**Day 4 – Yokohama**
* Yokohama – Yamashita Park and surrounding
* Lunch at Shin Yokohama Ramen Museum. Get there early (11:30ish)
* Rest in afternoon. Harry Hedgehog Cafe
* Late lunch/dinner in Chinatown, or head back to Tokyo and find a yo-shoku-ya place
* Jazz bar
**Day 5 – Hakone**
* Fairly early start to catch Odakyu Romancecar (Shinjuku-Hakone). Get luggage forwarded to ryokan
* Explore attractions covered by Hakone Freepass + Café Naraya
* Afternoon, try a public onsen if time? Free exploration otherwise
* Dinner and bath at ryokan
**Day 6 – Hakone, Ghibli Park, Osaka**
* Briefly explore any of Hakone we didn’t get to
* Travel around 10am to Ghibli Park Nagoya [~3.5 hrs], then travel to Osaka [2 hrs] in late afternoon. [Bit ambitious, but we don’t want to miss the park!]
* Dinner in Hozenji Yokocho
**Day 7 – Osaka**
* Breakfast at Kuromon market
* Explore Osaka – Denden town, nipponbashi shotenkai
* Lunch – a local specialty
* Dinner in Dotonbori
* Karaoke (around Namba?)
**Day 8 – Himeji, Onomichi**
* Bit of a sleep in.
* Train to Himeji Castle, leave luggage in locker
* Travel to Onomichi
* Dinner in Onomichi – Onomichi-yaki or Ramen
**Day 9 – Onomichi**
* Half-day trip to Hiroshima? For peace museum and Hiroshima okonomiyaki
* Otherwise, if not feeling it, free/unplanned full day to explore Onomichi
**Day 10 – Onomichi, Kyoto**
* Leisurely exploration of Onomichi
* Shinkansen to Kyoto (2 hr)
* Check in to Kyoto
* Early dinner and Fushimi-Inari at/after sunset
**Day 11 – Kyoto**
* Mount Kurama half-day hike
* Rest
* Flexible evening in Kyoto. Illumination at Kodaiji if up to it
**Day 12 – Kyoto**
* Breakfast at Nishiki Market
* Play this day by ear. Explore Kyoto on bikes if we have lots of free time
* Shinkansen to Tokyo at some point
* Shabu-shabu or sukiyaki for lunch/dinner
**Day 13 – Tokyo**
* ~~National Museum~~ [Free/unallocated time]
* Lunch at Menya Musashi Ramen, Ueno
* Shopping – Shibuya/Shinjuku. Tokyu Hands, Kinokuniya Shinjuku, Don Quijote
**Day 14 – Tokyo**
* Shopping and cream puffs in Shimokitazawa
* Lunch at Yajima Sushi Shibuya
* Shopping – brief look around Akihabara/Ikebukuro
* Yebisu Museum
**Day 15 – Tokyo**
* Monorail – Hamamatsucho-Haneda
* Fly from Haneda
**Questions:**
1. Haven’t confirmed any Airbnbs ~~or the Hakone ryokan~~ (now confirmed Tensui Saryo near Gora Station). I’ve stayed in Hamamatsucho, Shiodome and Yanaka-Ginza before, but would like to try something different – so if you have any recommendations for underappreciated Tokyo neighborhoods, I’d love to hear them. Otherwise I’ll just find something in Shinjuku.
2. Is this overly crowded for an itinerary? I’ve tried to incorporate rest periods into each day, but not really rest days as such. If it comes to it, I can potentially add another day onto the itinerary, as a breather.
3. Is it worth moving the Kyoto leg (currently 3 Dec) to when Osaka currently is scheduled (29 Nov), to try to see more of the autumn foliage in Kyoto?
4. I’ve only really looked into the Hakone Freepass loop, so any other Hakone must-dos would be appreciated.
5. Is it worth booking a ryokan room that comes with a private bath, or just trying to book an hour or so in a private bath in the communal onsen? I would also appreciate any recommendations for specific Hakone ryokan.
Thanks in advance!
3 comments
Depending on where you’re staying in Hakone, take into consideration that you won’t have much time to explore in the morning if you plan to leave for Nagoya at 10AM. I’ve only been there once and what I could remember is it takes a bit of time to go around. The bus ride from Lake Ashi pier near the Hakone Shrine to Hakone-Yumoto station was more than an hour due to traffic jam. It was in the afternoon, not sure how the traffic looks like in the morning.
We stayed at a ryokan called Yaeikan less than 10 minutes walk from Hakone-Yumoto station. We got a free one hour slot at their private onsen. If I remember correctly (it was 6 years ago!) they have two private onsens, one that requires reservation and another thats free to use whenever its free. The food was great, we just need to inform them whether you’re going to dine in for dinner or not before 6PM. If I remember correctly, the nakai-san will ask at breakfast if you’d like to be served dinner or not. Or you could leave a message at the front office.
First thing, even without calculating, I thing you are absolutely wrong about JR Pass. I’ll stop calculating when I reach the cost of 7 days pass. Odawara-Nagoya 8900, Osaka 6480, Himeji 3820, Onomichi 6120, Hiroshima 5170…. So you will be in Hiroshima and need to go back to Onomichi, Kyoto and Tokyo. This is much more than 50 AUD, trust me. Conclusion, you do want to get the 7 days pass from day 6 to 12.
To be honest, I find the itinerary to be extremely light on things you do each day and some are just a bit strange or oddly full.
Day 2 in the morning you can add something more clear than just a vague “Exploring”, considering lunch in Tsukiji and you mentioned garden later, then Hama-rikyu could be a good start of the day. Depending when you get out of Planets, you can consider going to Odaiba after.
Day 3 : Tokyo National Museum is great if you like history and you can add some temple/shrines just within Ueno park, like Ueno Tosho-gu and Shibazu-ike Benten-do just to name two. For garden, you are not too far from Tokyo Dome City that is next to the beautiful Koishikawa Korakuen garden and Tokyo dome city have winter illumination. Skip Omoide Yokocho and do it later when you visit Shinjuku…. At lest for me it would make sense… if you were not going to eat some sandwich 40 minutes away from Ueno.
Day 4 : Shin-Yokohama is 30 minutes away from Yamashita Park, so if you return to Chinatown, you just wasted almost an hour in the train to go to the Ramen museum. Would make more sense to me to do something in the morning close to Shin-Yokohama, then do everything in Yokohama in the afternoon, could add the Red brick warehouse, Monatomirai, Yokohama landmark Tower, Cup noodle museum and yes I would go eat in chinatown.
Day 5 : The popular things to do in Hakone include Hakone Shrine, Hokone Onshi park, cruise on the lake (to do the loop), stop by Owakudani on the ropeway, and Open air museum. That alone will easily take your whole day. If you are dead set on the cafe, then you can start the day by the Open air museum that open at 9am (you said early start right), do the cafe and continue the loop. Then it would make sense to end the day in a ryokan around Hakone-Yumoto. Otherwise, you can go the loop in the other direction, ending by the open air museum (or something else arond Gora, it’s up to you) and find a ryokan in that area. Keep in mind that usually for ryokan you need to check-in at 5-6pm max, so including a onsen in the afternoon could be a bit thight. The big public one is yunessun (if you go, bring a swimsuit, they have a mixed gender section with special bath).
Day 6 : Considering most attraction open at 9am the earliest, you won’t have much time to see anything before heading to Nagoya. Instead, just hop in the train as early as your breakfast is over at the ryokan. For me make more sense to get as much time as you can in the amusement park, especially as it is suposed to close at 5pm, so on your plan you have only 4 h in the park. Also, if you get a ryokan around Hakone-Yumoto, you can reach Ghibli park in just under 3h.
In Onomichi, you absolutely have to eat Onomichi ramen if you even pretend to like ramen.
Considering you plan a full day for Onomichi, even a full day trip to Hiroshima can make sense. If you want to spend two days in Onomichi, then you should look at taking a ferry to one of the islands for one of the day.
Day 13 : you listed the National Museum twice, you know, going once is enough, just switcht he ramen on the previous day instead of the sandwich. You can focus the whole day on Shibuya/Harajuku/Shinjuku and go to Omoide yokocho on that day. As this is mostly a shopping focused area, you can consider going to Meiji-jingu at the start of the day.
Day 14 : … dont’t really understand. So if ou go to the creampuff in the as early as you can and next thing is lunch in Shibuya, then just completely move shibuya on that day and forcus the previous on Shinjuku/Harajuku. Next logical move is Yebisu museum (like the beere museum ?) because it is next to Shibuya then finish the day by Akihabara or Ikebukuro (likely not both).
For recommended area to stay, Shinjuku would make sense for the first part of the trip especially as it will be easy to get in the romancecar… but in that case, it could also make sense to move the things you planed around that area, like Shinjuku/Shibuya days, so it’s not too long to reach. For the second part, you can try a different area, somewhere around Ueno could work well.
As I mentioned before, no, I do not think it is overly crowded, even the opposite, there is plenty of relax day. But there is some days that are a bit odd, like with one random thing that is a bit far and for me is a waste of time in the train.
About everything in Hakone is around the loop, so if you have looked at what is around, you are mostly covered.
For onsen in the ryokan, if you have the budget to pay for a room with private bath, go for it, otherwise just select a ryokan that have a family bath you can rent.
If you’re going to Hiroshima, you might want to consider visiting nearby [Miyajima island](https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3401.html). See it’s famous torii and walk to the top of the hill for some nice scenery. Combined with the visit to Hiroshima, you can do this in two days.