1st Solo Trip to Japan

2 comments

1. Put a Google flight tracker and buy when it’s cheaper, if you look there should be a graph that shows what is the average price so you can buy when cheaper.

   No need for JR pass especially after the price increase.

   I would not wait to be in Japan to book a hotel, you can always use booking website to find places and compare prices to book direct. If you wait too much you risk the cheaper places tonne full.

   Several of your days are all over the place or in strange order. Just check on google maps where things are and how to move between them and how long it will take.

   Nikko seeing the temple area and waterfalls is not impossible but you will need to be there as early as possible and it will be a quite full day, would be better over 2 days to have time to properly see things.

2. so lets try to make your first trip a good one

   I cant tell you when the flights are cheapest, there are a lot of “tricks” out there, but I believe, while there may be statistical significance there, personally, it mostly boils down to luck. that being said, flying on the weekend usually is more expensive

   I like getting hotels via booking.com – I know they take their cut, and in theory it can be cheaper. but for that you need to be able to find and communicate with the hotel, and kinda sorta hope nothing goes wrong. Additionally I feel like there are a number of places that dont really wanna deal with bookings outside of their chosen third party websites.

   the jr ticket may be dead with the price increase. and with one kanto-kansai trip and back you would barely break even with the old price.

   my advise for a first timer might be not to try to do too much, especially if you only have a week. stick with low time investment high return activities.

   So… on to your plan. you start with kyoto. thats… logistically not smart. you either land in tokyo or osaka (usually, I mean you could land in sapporo, what do I know…)

   so your first day will be there

   so to the real plan

   Kyoto day 1: that plan is not possible and at least 1.5 if not 2 days of stuff to do. Do not miss the higashiyama district, and you can enjoy pontocho in the evening, but nishiki (which is close by) is a daytime activity. nijo castle is nice, but with 3 days in kyoto maybe not the highes priority. I think you should do higashiyama and another day nishiki and in the evening pontocho.

   kyoto 2: that is very light. and the day you go ryoanji is the day you should be doing kinkakuji. if you start really early, that is the day you could add a nishiki afternoon

   kyoto 3: the walk in december will be… nice, not sure if its worth the time. start real early with fushimi inari, have a afternoon for arashiyama. not a perfect plan because you will be wasting a good hour in the bus, but… with the current day 1 and 2 this would make the most sense to me

   and you can find a lot of sentos (onsens with artificially heated water) in kyoto. they are not anime-pretty, but you can find one close to your hotel and go there in the evening. enjoy the hot water. a more pretty onsen will probably require a more dedicated time investment

   Do you want to see fish in aquarium, and spend time in disneysea? that would be quite a few hours you could use for something else, if you have similar experiences at home…
   just food for though…