Traveling in mid July (It’s probably going to be hot) for our honeymoon. My partner and I have a list of things to do but will mostly let the day take us wherever it may go. We kind of like self exploration but any suggestions and improvements to the given schedule are very welcome!
Our interests include:
Food
Anime
Games
Animals (Partner loves cats)
We split Tokyo into two stays. The first stay focuses on exploration and the return trip is chill/shopping. This is mainly to account for wanting to be in Kyoto during the Gion festival.
We were also thinking of just buying most of our clothes in Japan – Good/Bad idea? Would save room in the suitcase if we were already planning on buying
|Hotel Stay|Planned Activities|Notes|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Tokyo (Near Shibuya) \[Tues – July 11\]|Arrive around 2pm at Haneda, explore a bit around the hotel in Shibuya|Mostly free time to fight jet lag. Will pick up JR Pass, SuICa card, Sim Card|
|Tokyo \[Wed\]|Asakusa in the morning, Shibuya exploration, Shinjuku at night||
|Tokyo \[Thur\]|TBD, Exploration + Themed cafes. Maybe explore locations from Persona|Wondering if we should ship our luggage to our Kyoto Ryokan to make traversing Hakone easier. Anyone ever lose their luggage? (Biggest fear)|
|Hakone (Kowakien Mikawaya Ryokan) \[Fri\]|Check out a few sights if we are able hoping to see Fuji and maybe check out the Open Air musem, hang around private onsen ryokan. *^(Time to cook myself and make people soup in the hot July weather)*|**Activate our 7 day JR pass getting here.**|
|Kyoto (Near Nishiki Market) \[Sat\]|Explore near hotel, maybe check out central/north kyoto (Kiyomizu-dera?), suggestions welcome here|Here during Gion Matsuri|
|Kyoto \[Sun\]|Arashiyama/Monkey Park||
|Kyoto \[Mon\]|Gion in the morning, Gion festival||
|Osaka (Kuromon Market) \[Tues\]|Check out the market, Aquarium, Osaka castle||
|Osaka \[Weds\]|Day Trip to Nara after checking in, Dotonbori at night||
|Tokyo (Shibuya) \[Thur\]|Shopping for return trip, check out anything we missed on the first stay of Tokyo||
|Tokyo \[Fri\]|TeamLabs Planets, Akihabara, Monster Hunter Cafe||
|Tokyo \[Sat\]|Get to Haneda for return||
How easy is it to travel within Hakone?
I’m worried I didn’t allot enough time in Osaka, but at the same time I couldn’t think of much to do there other than sight see. We aren’t into things like Universal (a little too busy for us), reason we didn’t book any big theme parks.
Does this List look viable, is it too full/not full enough?
Thanks in advance!
\*Fixed formatting
1 comment
Hi!
I hope this is OK to post. I just wanted to say, you don’t have to go to Osaka at all if you don’t think it will interest you, and it’s OK if you don’t! Not everyone likes everywhere in Japan equally. You can also get to most places in Osaka from most places in Kyoto in about 1 hour, so you can stay in Kyoto if you think that is more of your interest, or stay in Nara even.
So I would make sure the Monster Hunter Cafe is on. I know that a lot of themed cafes are temporary and change out on a fairly regular basis. I know the Capcom Cafe has had at least 3 different themes since I was in Japan in December. There are Capcom stores as well.
I like Hakone, but be prepared to not see Mt. Fuji. June, July and August have the worst probability of seeing Mt. Fuji with all the humidity. I personally still like Hakone, but make sure you are OK with not seeing it there.
I think some of your days are empty, but generally you are also likely to find things while in Japan.
Kiyomizudera is South Kyoto. What else you see sort of depends on interests. There are a lot of temples just into the hills on the other side of the Kamo River.
If you like easy hikes and nature, you can look into Enryakuji and Kurama. Both are in the mountains surrounding Kyoto.
I would think you could do more than the bamboo forest and the monkey park. Arashiyama is a nice area though, so there is plenty to do there from Tenryuji to souvenir shops.
If your partner likes cats they should look into whether you can fit in a rescue cat cafe in Tokyo or Osaka. Make sure you specifically look for a rescue one, as otherwise I think the cats do not necessarily live under the best conditions.
In terms of buying clothes, it sort of depends on your sizes? If you’re tall, heavier or have a large bust, you might find finding clothes in Japan a chore. I tend to send my bags about via TaQbin. So for my next trip I plan to send my bags from Tokyo to Kyoto and just take a small bag and my daughter’s violin to Hakone. I plan to arrive in Hakone early enough to use their same day transport to get my bags to my hotel, or just go there from the start.
I have been using TakQbin on my trips to Japan over almost 2 decades. I’ve yet to have my bags lost or even really delayed. My last trip, my hotel in Tokyo accidentally sent my bags to the Park Hyatt in Kyoto when we were staying in the Hyatt Regency. They called me up right away about the issue and the hotels sorted everything out without me having to do anything. By the time I made it back to Hyatt after sightseeing my bag was there. In that 2 decade period I have had the airlines misplace my suitcase for several days and then damage the bag so badly it was not useable anymore. I’ve also had multiple luggage delays where it took a little while for my bags to arrive but they all arrived eventually. So TakQbin has been overall more reliable than the airlines.
I hope this helps!