Trip Report – For Families with Children – Uncommon and Common activities in Chiba, Gokayama, Nagoya, Hakone, Ghibli, and Tokyo

I’ve been to Japan before, but this was the first time bringing kids, so that is the focus of this report. Feel free to DM me with any questions.

* June 1-19 (originally scheduled to start March 11, 2020. oops).
* 4 adults, 3 kids (girl 8, boy 9, girl 10).
* Everyone had a Suica or Pasmo physical card (or paper tickets for Shinkansen). I always held the children’s pass/tickets except to give it to them just long enough to get through each turnstile by themselves. Caution: make sure the kids hear their confirmation ding (or tweet), as we had one miss a scan once, I think because the 2nd kid in line impatiently put their card on top of the kid in front of them at the scanner.
* We tend to book a medium schedule and find some things on our own randomly. My kids tend to be rather free range, so time to do their own thing at a playground or beach is equal or more interesting to them than the big ticket items us adults get excited about on reddit.
* **Your kids will not care what other adults online think about activity X, Y or Z or how hard it was to get tickets.**
* I hired a guide for some of the days, that way if some kids needed to exit, the schedule would continue on. The kids were generally uninterested in the guide, but having a stranger be in charge does limit the usual complaining.
* We are two families and we rarely tried to all eat together. Usually only if a hired guide found a place for us all at once. I recommend emotionally accepting this before coming to Japan with groups larger than 4.

Popular Activities (generally in order of “liked” by the kids)

* teamLab planets – very unique sensory experience, especially for kids. This was a highlight of the trip.
* Peace Forest Park Athletic Field – This is along the KK line toward Haneda airport, 9 min walk east of Heiwajima station. I’ve never seen this park mentioned online, but for for elementary school kids, this place was perfect. For 100 yen kids can get into the largest and best kid-obstacle-course I’ve personally seen. Caveat: we went on a weekday in June, so the place was nearly empty, which made it a zero stress activity, YMMV.
* Sushiro (Conveyor Belt Sushi chain) – The kids really liked this and we got lucky and walked right into one near Shinjuku with only a 5 minute wait at lunchtime. It takes a few clicks to get the tablet into English mode. A highlight of the trip.
* Any Korean BBQ place (restaurant where you open-cook the raw meat at the table). The kids just really loved the concept of a grill at the dinner table.
* Nara family bike ride (guided) – kids feeding deer, what else need I say. Kids loved it.
* Hakone Open Air Museum – I didn’t go to this personally, but all the other members of the group liked this. It was much bigger than they expected.
* Nagoya City Science Museum – A ton of interactive exhibits. The science part is more applicable to ages 12+, but my kids enjoyed this and we ran out of time when the place closed. I would NOT recommend the planetarium add-on as it is a 50 minute explanation of the constellations entirely in Japanese without much happening on the overhead screen.
* Ghibli Park – We had domestically purchased tickets including Mei and Satsuki’s House, which the kids enjoyed. Everyone seemed to agree this was better than the Ghibli museum for the kids. The lines inside the warehouse weren’t too bad, except for the huge one for the area under the movie theater. We correctly bailed on that. Movie was “Koro’s Big Day Out”, which was the highlight of the visit. Buy a Nagoya 24h subway pass for any full day in Nagoya, although you’ll still need an IC card for the Linimo line to get to this park.
* Ozu Washi paper making (Tokyo) – They have a small workshop in the front of the store where we spent about 45 minutes making traditional paper. We walked in for the first slot of the day, but it was a weekday in June, so YMMV and reservations may be wise.
* Inokashira Park Zoo (near Ghibli Museum) This is a small zoo, but had decent exhibits and a guinea pig petting area (YMMV on timing of this, we missed it). Being a weekday in June, it was nearly empty.
* Anything food, they like eating and did well at just about every Japanese style restaurant, with a few McDonald/KFC thrown in when motivation was needed. YMMV as my kids just happen to like Japanese food and using chopsticks.

Popular rural excursions with kids:

* We were supposed to start in Okinawa but the typhoon perfectly cancelled that, so I rented a car at Haneda and a house in Chiba prefecture near the ocean (near Katsuura). We spent the first 4 days adjusting jetlag, waiting out the rain, and visiting the beach for unstructured play. Breakfast is hard to come by, so we would make a daily 6am family outing to the Family Mart and pick out items. The only structured activity in this region was Mt. Nokogiri. My daughers enjoyed buying Japanese clothing for themselves at the Beisia. Car essentially required for this region with kids.
* We rented a car in Kanazawa and stayed overnight (2 nights) in a Gassho-style house in the Gokoyama region. Two nights in the village is probably more than is needed but the kids and adults really enjoyed the day in between with nothing to do but explore the village. Car essentially required for this region with kids.

Not as popular as I thought:

* Anything spoken to them. My kids are well above average students, but 90% of the time couldn’t be bothered to listen to descriptions of what was around them (by our occasional guides or by parents). They just wanted to explore it themselves.
* Disneyland Tokyo – I think my kids were at the upper age limit for enjoying this. Most people there were adults without kids, or families with younger kids (age 1-6). We’ll try DisneySea next time.
* Ghibli Museum – The kids sort of enjoyed this, but it was on the same day and after teamLab so probably bad luck there. A decent portion of the museum is focused on things above my kids age interest (ex: the explanations and artistic approaches of how Miyazaki does his work). Also half the second floor was a special exhibit on “Future Boy Conan”, which we hadn’t watched at home (my bad). The movie (“Mei and the Kittenbus” for June) was the part they most enjoyed and without it, this activity would have been a bust.
* Ninja Trick House (Tokyo) – This was fine to fill time, and the kids enjoyed it in the moment, but wouldn’t be a loss to drop it from your schedule if you wanted.
* Hakone Loop (i.e. ropeway, pirate ship). It’s worth doing if you want, but honestly if we just skipped the “free pass” and stuck with using the IC card on Tozan railway and stayed in our resort near Gora station for the final two days of the trip, it would have been fine. We had clear views of Fuji on the ropeway, but we’re from Colorado so relatively underwhelming.