Trip Report: Second Trip June 23- July 21 Nagoya, Osaka (+day trips), Kanazawa, Tokyo. Highlights and advice (?)

I really wanted to make post for this community since I love it so much but no matter how much I try when I write about my whole trip it gets really long winded and I know, boring for others to read so I’m going to stick with my absolute highlights, some mistakes I made and some specific things I had a lot of concern about before going and researched a lot about here in the hope that it’ll help others with the same questions I had when planning my trip. It’s just my **personal** experience after my second trip to Japan so I’m not sure if I would really call it advice, just one person’s experience to add to others you will read here in your search.

**Highlight 1: Castles and Palaces**

I really loved going to castles, I went to Nagoya, Hikone, Hiroshima and Kanazawa. They were all nice in their own way. Nagoya obviously the keep is closed but it has a really great recreation of a palace that they opened a few years ago, it was very nice. Hikone was a hike and a half, seriously but it’s an original castle and you get to climb all the way up to the top using some super scary stairs so it was interesting also the mascot is cute. Hiroshima was a museum inside, you could climb up to the top there on some less scary stairs. Kanazawa had multiple buildings that have been newly built, I think that’s good in it’s own way since they show how they’re trying to recreate it to be close to the original. There was construction going on and I’d like to return some day to check it out when it’s finished. I know I missed some big ones and I hope to see them on future trips.

**Highlight 2: Observation towers**

I like these as well, I went to Abeno Harukas in Osaka and Shibuya Sky in Tokyo. Shibuya Sky is just so AMAZING during the sunset, after I got home someone asked me for a recommendation for Tokyo and it was the first thing I thought of. My minor complaint is that it doesn’t feel like they thought about the elevator situation too much, having to wait in a massive line when leaving was a pain. The elevators at Abeno Harukas where much better! I didn’t do the helipad so I only went to the indoor observation deck but it was really fun. I loved the pineapple soft serve ice cream!

**Highlight 3: Food**

I’m just a little bit of a picky eater and I also had some anxiety about going to restaurants, when I looked back on my previous trip I realized that over two weeks I had only gone to a restaurant to eat like 3 or 4 times, all the rest of my food was combini mostly… it kind of just happened without me noticing and I didn’t want to repeat that mistake again! I wanted to make sure I got out there and tried some different things so for Osaka I booked a food tour. It was 1000% worth it! idk if I can specifically name it but it was a very highly rated tour on airbnb experiences, the host was great, the food was great and the other people on the tour were super nice too, I tried sushi for the first time!

My second food highlight was Torikizoku, my friends and I did the all you can eat and OMG it was just amazing, I ate and drank so much, it was so much fun.

Not really a highlight (in fact maybe a lowlight) but I ended up going to a lot of family restaurants, I found them really easy to hang out in.

**Highlight 4: Kurobe Gorge**

It was just super, super beautiful. I was staying in Kanazawa and was trying to pick between a few things and I settled on this and it was great. I really wish I had left earlier and maybe stopped to explore a few of the stations because as it was I just took the train to the last stop and then back, there really was not much at the last stop but the train views alone were worth it. I definitely want to go back in the future!

**Highlight 5: Open air museums**

I went to Meiji Mura and Open Air Museum of Old Japanese Farm Houses in Osaka, both were great trips. I really spent all day at Meiji Mura, there was just so much to see. I enjoyed being able to go in to all the houses. If you go make sure to wear easy off and on shoes because you will be taking your shoes off a lot. I just wish there was a little more English guidance.

[Here’s an album with some highlights](https://imgur.com/a/ZpgZBC7)

Now on to some of my worries…

**Concern: Fitness, Sneakers, Socks, Feet**

So we all know there is a TON of walking in Japan and many people (er Americans like myself) may not be used to walking so much. Personally I am very overweight and unfit so needless to say when I read all the warnings about people messing up their feet and not being able to walk and hurting themselves it made me nervous. My first trip was in 2019 and I did fine then even though every day I did probably 3 to 5 times my normal amount of steps in a day, however my fitness became worse during the pandemic so in the months leading up I did try and walk more every day. I’ve seen posts where people will say stuff like “Walking \_\_\_\_\_ is nothing! You’ll walk 10 times that in Japan!” I think that’s mean, don’t let people like that discourage you, any little bit of walking you can do will help, I was only doing about mile walks a day before I went and I’m glad I did, it helped with my walking a lot. My other advice about this is just pace yourself, know your own limits. I’m pretty sure I gave this advice in my trip report from the first time too because it’s true. For me, I was alone a lot of the time so I didn’t have to worry about keeping up others and I know that’s a challenge for some people but this is a vacation YOU should be having fun, take your time and enjoy.

Another thing this sub kind of freaked me out about is sneakers, picking the absolute perfect pair. On my first trip I wore a pair of New Balances that I got from an outlet and had hardly ever worn before and they were just fine, no blisters, nothing but that pair is pretty old now so I needed a new one for this trip. I became kind of obsessed. I was also super worried about the rain. What I realized though is finding something perfect is impossible but for me at least finding sneakers that won’t rub my feet the wrong way and give me blisters is actually super easy and that’s the #1 thing to worry about (for me). I ended up getting Kizik Limas which were **amazing** for the the times when I visited places where I had to take my shoes off and all round just good to wear most of the time. My second pair of shoes were Keen whisper which I hoped would do well in the rain but I ended up in the Limas on most of the rainy days, I did really like the whispers too though. For socks I wore merino wool Bombas and Darn Tough socks, comfy socks are also a must!

**Mistake/Concern train tickets**

I made the mistake of being too confident about my ability to buy train tickets. For my first trip I stuck to the Tokyo area so just using my Suica was fine and the couple of times I had to buy tickets went smoothly so I thought this time would be no problem either. Well I was wrong! I got down to the train station at the airport and really just had no idea what I should do, I thought “I definitely don’t have to go to the booth” I mistook the machine line for a booth line and was confused for a bit and thought that maybe I could buy the Narita Express tickets after I went through the gate with my Suica (I couldn’t).

Another big dumb mistake I made wasn’t until I was buying Shinkansen tickets for like the third time, for some reason I started pressing the wrong button and only printing one of the fares so I had to go to the booth and get new tickets. After that I realized what I was doing wrong but I still don’t understand why sometimes for the Shinkansen it only prints out one ticket and sometimes it prints out two but my advice for this is if you have any questions or concerns just go and wait in line for the ticket booth and buy your tickets there, it’s better than making a mistake first and having to go wait there anyway.

My extra train advice is about green cars. You’ll typically see people here say green cars aren’t worth it but I decided to use them for my first couple of trips anyway until because of the mistake I made I ended up in a non-reserved car and realized that for me actually the standard cars are BETTER. I wanted more space for my big butt lol and the green car actually had less space in the seats because the arm rests go all the way down (maybe this differs on different trains I’m not sure). The times on the Shinkansen I never had anyone sitting next to me, there were tons of empty seats even in non reserved and I always had plenty of space to spread out. So not only are green cars not worth it, for me personally they were worse.

**Concern: Osaka vs. Kyoto**

Here I can’t give any advice because I could only choose one to stay in (well I guess I could have split my stay but I wasn’t going to do that) and I chose Osaka near Namba. I liked the Namba area a lot but if I take another trip to the area I would probably choose to stay somewhere else. I stayed in Osaka for two weeks and ended up doing four day trips to Kyoto, I really didn’t see as much of Kyoto as I would have liked. I still have mixed feelings on if I took another trip whether I would chose to stay in Kyoto or if I would just want to stay in a part of Osaka with better/easier access to Kyoto (I really did like Osaka!). So the jury is still out, it’s a difficult choice!

**Concern: Luggage Forwarding**

I was really nervous about luggage forwarding but I just went to the front desk at my hotel and they were super helpful. They even make sure to contact the hotel you’re sending them to to make sure you actually have a reservation so really there’s nothing to worry about. I had two forwarded from Osaka to Tokyo (I stopped in Kanazawa in the middle) and when I got to my Tokyo hotel they had already put them in my room for me, so nice. I also forwarded one from Tokyo to Narita airport, I made sure to do it two days ahead of time and it was also really easy to pick up.

**Mistake: Ignoring Rain**

Leading up to my trip I was really worried about just how much rain there would be and how it would effect my trip. As soon as I started traveling though I threw all that worry out the window and decided to do most of what I wanted to do anyway, after all what’s a little rain right? I’m already wet from all the sweat anyway! Everything turned out fine for me but I should have worried a little bit more. The worst for me was when I decided to take a trip up Mount Hiei despite the fact that it was raining, all the transportation was still working but the top of the mountain was so foggy and there were no views at all, I didn’t even make it to the temple because it was SO foggy. Second worst was the Kurobe Gorge return trip in an open car in the rain.

Also it didn’t effect me but rain DOES stop trains, especially thunder storms and I feel like the warnings the travel apps give when trains are completely cancelled are a little weak, like it’ll say train delayed when the trains just are not running at all and maybe won’t for the whole day.

**Mistake: Timing**

So many attractions will open at like 9 or 10 and will stop letting people in at 4:30. You want to get started early but it’s not that easy because it’s not like things open early either. So often I’d be finishing up something around 2 and I’d have to seriously think about if it would be worth going to the next place I wanted to go to because I wouldn’t get a lot of time there. So it probably pays to plan a lot more around this.

So that’s it! I hope this might help someone just a little bit.