Hi JapanTravel,
I have started the outlines of a trip to Japan for the end of October/beginning of November next year.
3 friends going on a trip to see Japan for the first time. Age 21-23.
Our current outline of the trip is as follows, mostly taken from youtube vids and places we want to visit.
day 1 – Amsterdam —> Osaka
day 2 – Osaka
day 3 – Koyasan
day 4 – Nara
day 5 – Kyoto
day 6 – Kyoto
day 7 – Kyoto
day 8 – Kyoto —> Bullet train to Tokyo
day 9 – Tokyo
day 10 – Tokyo
day 11 – Tokyo – mt Fuji trip
day 12 – Tokyo
day 13 – Tokyo —> plane to Oita (car rental, Yamanami highway)
day 14 – Oita —> Beppu —> Yufuin
day 15 – Yufuin —> Kurokawa Onsen
day 16 – Kurokawa Onsen —> Mount Aso —> Kumamoto
day 17 – Kumamoto —> Tokyo —> Amsterdam
this is in the very early stages so we are willing to change if it suits us better.
Given the plane tickets from Fukuoka back to Amsterdam are so much more expensive then from Tokyo to Amsterdam a cheap flight from Kumamoto to Tokyo seemed wiser.
please feel free to criticize and give advice. And if its just ridiculous to add the last part then we can of course skip it, but the video from Japan-Guide was awesome and we love to see Kumamoto (for the once piece statues among other things) or if you think we should see different places instead.
looking forward to your replies 😉
4 comments
Compare to my trip to Japan in 2019, you’re going to a lot more places. I did Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka for the majority of my trip and I still feel like I wasn’t able to see everything I wanted to for the 14 days I was there. We also did a day trip to Nara, but in reality were only there for maybe 2-3 hours.
I think it’s going to come down to how you and your friends like to travel together. If y’all are down for moving your luggage a lot from place to place to experience more locations, then this trip you outlined is amazing. I’d try to spend 2-3 days in Osaka since there’s a lot of great food and touristy things to see there.
The main question I have is why make the shinkansen trip to Tokyo from Kyoto, to fly to Oita for about four days just to fly back to Tokyo?
Why not take the Shinkansen to Kitakyushu from Kyoto then normal trains to the Oita/Beppu area then fly to Tokyo from Kumamoto? (Sneaky Edit: You could also take the Shinkansen straight to Kumamoto, spend a day there, then head to Oita the next day, do your days, then take the train back to Kumamoto/Fukuoka to fly to Tokyo) That way you could do your Tokyo things, then fly out of Tokyo to Amsterdam.
That way your itinerary looks like
* Fly into Osaka
* 6 days in the Kansai area (Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, Koyasan)
* Bullet train to Kitakyushu then JR trains to Beppu and Oita
* 3 days in the Oita area
* Train to Kumamoto then flight to Tokyo
* 5 days in the Tokyo area
* Flight to Amsterdam
This would also give you several partial days. The flight to Tokyo shouldn’t take all day, and you would still have an evening in Beppu after the trip there from Kyoto.
I know a little about Koyasan, but you specifically put it on your list for a reason. I’m not calling your choice into question, but instead, love to learn why people choose what they do. What interests you most about Koyasan? What excites you the most about visiting there? Maybe I need to put it on my future itinerary to the Kansai Region.
Also, the One Piece Statues are [kinda spread](https://kumamoto.guru/locations-of-all-onepiece-statues-in-kumamoto/) out if you didn’t know.
Are your start and end locations set in stone? It seems a little odd to start in Osaka, go north to Tokyo, then fly south to Kyushu. Why not fly into Tokyo, travel down to Kyoto, travel down to Osaka, travel down to Kyushu, and leave from there (routed through Tokyo or Osaka as needed)? Or go the other direction? You could land in Fukuoka, or if that’s too expensive, land in Osaka and take a quick flight or train down to Kyushu and start there. But I would seriously consider starting at either the south or the north and making your way in one direction only rather than bouncing around.
>Koyasan
Although Koyasan is a lovely little place, you usually get the best out of it if you stay there overnight at a temple. If you don’t, it’s a long way to travel just to see for half a day, and you wouldn’t get to experience the Buddhist ceremony or the delicious food. Not sure if that was your plan already, but I thought I would mention it in case you’d planned this as a day trip.
>mt Fuji trip
What is your plan for Fuji? You can’t climb it at that time of year, so were you looking just to see it from a distance? That can be done from a few places, most of which also make for nice overnight trips with onsen and ryokan, so you might want to think about what you’d do in the Fuji region.
Days 14 – 16 are a lot of travel. Are you super interested in any of those places? Because you could also just pick one place in Kyushu and probably be happy with that, and you wouldn’t have to move around as much. I don’t think your current plan is necessarily a bad idea, but you’re spending a lot of time in the other places (Osaka/Kyoto/Tokyo) and then just sort of speeding through the last part of your trip.
Just gonna give a little advice on the Kyushu part based on my experience.
Day 14 onwards seems incredibly rushed. While you can physically do it, it just doesn’t seem worth it for the amount of time you’d be able to spend there.
Most of Kyushu has onsens, Yufuin is already a giant onsen town. So unless you’re really really into onsens it just seems a bit overkill to go from Yufuin to Kurokawa for an entire day. I would probably look to spend more time in Mount Aso instead.