Hi everyone!
I wanted to talk about my experience traveling in Japan with my wife and our 7 year old daughter. We had gone to Japan for our honeymoon after getting married, but my daughter had never been. She has travelled internationally before, going to France last summer.
We just got back last weekend, and everything went pretty well! My daughter had a blast, and we really didn’t have any issues that were unique to having a 7 year old with us. All of the people we met along the way were really supportive and thoughtful around our daughter. Lots of “kawai!!!!” and other playful banter with her. She brought a bunch of stickers with her that she would hand out when she made a connection with people, and this seemed to endear her to a lot of them.
Our trip included stays in Tokyo, Kawaguchiko, Takayama, Noto, Kaga, and Kyoto. We rented a car which we drove from Tokyo, through most of the cities, returning the car in Kaga. Our stays were a mix of hotels and ryokans, with a machiya in Kyoto.
Our biggest concern around travel with our daughter was her finding something that was palatable enough to her. She does love rice and had it for pretty much every meal. She definitely was more apt to try things out of her comfort level earlier on, and towards the end we compromised with getting her some Uber Eats in Kyoto as she was starting to get homesick. I had done a lot of emailing with the places we were staying to make sure they had more kid friendly meals, and everywhere was very accommodating.
Our only “walk in” issue was a restaurant we stopped at driving from Kawaguchiko to Takayama. We stopped in Matsumoto to visit the castle and tried to walk in to a restaurant for lunch. They informed us that they didn’t allow children under 12, which we said that was fine, no hard feelings. As we turned to go back out into the rain (this was the day Tropical Storm Mawar was going though Japan) they reconsidered and said we could stay for lunch as the restaurant was empty. We had a great meal and they said they were glad we stayed.
We tried to plan a lot of activities, and built a lot of flexibility into those plans so our daughter could choose what she wanted to do, to have more a feeling of control over her time. Some the activities included canoeing near Kawaguchiko, two day long guided tours, and a few animal cafes.
Feel free to ask any other questions about the places we stayed, things we did, renting a car and driving, etc.
3 comments
Nice trip,
I ve a question about driving rental car. How did it go?
I ve rented a car for the end of June, how was it to get out of Tokyo ?
Kind amused the person at the empty restaurant during a tropical storm didn’t “read the air” before turning you away and then reconsidering since that seems to be a thing Japanese people pride themselves on.
>They informed us that they didn’t allow children under 12
Was that restaurant a smoking only establishment? The only time I’ve ever been rejected when my son was with me was because the restaurant did not have a non-smoking section.