First timer and going solo, looking for advice!

10 comments

1. Your Kyoto days are extremely packed. If you like having a busy schedule, it can work out but you will be hopping around.

   You are missing Nara and Uji (if you like matcha) from your trip. Nara and Uji can be done after the hike at Fushimi Inari, if you start early.

   Himeji – I would skip as it just takes time away from other things. Having done Himeji, it is nice to see… but other than the castle,I didnt find that there was much to do.

   Cup noodle museum – there is one in Osaka as well. While I liked it, it was more of a draw on your own cup and pick toppings to make your own cup noodle. If I was to go again, I would skip it. As you do not eat pork, know that all the soup base at the cup noodle museum have pork

   Yokohama also has the ramen museum and China Town. Be advised that the ramen museum has vegetarian options for ramen. The ramen museum is more of a food court ish vibe, but definitely cool.

   Museums – Edo Museum (if open), Tokyo national museum in Ueno, Team labs (planets and borderless should be open by your trip).

   What about golden Gai (if you drink)?

2. For Himeji it depends on just how into castles you are. I was based out of Tokyo on my last trip and made a full day out of it by taking the Sunrise Seto sleeper train overnight to Okayama first, seeing the castle there early in the morning, then hitting up Himeji in the afternoon before riding the Shinkansen back to Tokyo in the evening.

   If you don’t feel like sacrificing an entire day and the castle/gardens wouldn’t really hold your interest, I would skip it. You might try going a little further out to a place like Kurashiki and enjoying the canals/architecture there. Or you could go to Kobe, which isn’t as far from Osaka and has things to see like the classic Koshien baseball stadium, sake brewery tours, or just go eat some Kobe beef for a bucket list experience.

3. 1. Unless the price difference is huge get a flight that lands in Haneda airport. It’s 15-30 minutes from Tokyo with easy access to all the mainlines so no matter where you’re staying it’ll save you time & money to and fro. Narita is 1.5 hours from tokyo and most transports are not luggage friendly, private cabs will cost a mint as well!

   2. For Yokohama. I’m visiting there in March as well and it looks like quite a few interesting attractions are around the cup museum area. You have the Gundam factory with regular shows so you can actually watch a large Mecha move around, a large carvinal-like park with lots of rides (the ferris wheel at night is supposed to be amazing!) and Carny like games. An art museum with a circulating display so you never know what will be there when you visit. A HUGE chinatown area with every kind of street food and buffet you can imagine, finally the red brick warehouse. This last one has been turned into a tourist are with A LOT of famous restaurants. If there is a specific place you wanted to visit in Tokyo but the lines were to long I’d check there for it. Bills and Happy Pancake being the ones on my list for a fluffy pancake!

4. “Rate my travel itinerary!”

   Proceeds to list 30 places on every other list ever posted here.

5. Move: Namba Yasaka Jinja, Den Den Town and Shinsaibashi from day 7 to day 5. All of those places are right next to Dotombori. You can also add in Kuromon Market to day 5 as well, it is right next to Nipponbashi Denden Town. By doing that you can free up day 7 and add in Shinsekai/ Tsutenkaku to day 7, because you are already at Tennoji.

6. Your first day in Kyoto is super busy and you might need to move some of that to the next day. The stuff around the bamboo grove should only take you about half a day though, so you will have extra time to catch up or add a side trip to Nara.

   At Himeji there is a combo ticket that includes the castle and the really nice Japanese garden right beside it. I enjoyed this and felt it was worth the time spent to go there.

7. Day trip to Yokohama just for Cup Noodle is not worth it. That’s just half a day, even with the 2-2.5 hr train ride (total, both ways).

   If you were a fan of male-targeted anime, Gundam Factory is down by the Yokohama Chinatown, you have to have a ticket to enter. And a Bandai Namco store/arcade is near the Cup Noodle museum in the mall.

8. Kyoto stretch is insanely busy, Arashiyama itself could take all day if theres a ton of people. However this seems like a good time for your first.

9. i dont think you need to be visiting so many temples in kyoto lol. im planning my trip too and i only plan to visit 2-3 in total, im using the other time to visit restaurants, museums and cafe.

10. The snow monkey park involves walking 45 minutes to an hour uphill- make sure you get shoes with good traction!

    It’s entirely possible to prepay for the bus in advance by credit card, but you’d have to look up the tour number and order the tickets through a machine at a convenience store. (There’s a very modest -300 yen or so- discount on a round trip if you do it through family mart.) I’d say paying in cash on the spot is actually faster and easier, unless you speak Japanese. The signs on the bus say they now accept credit cards but I wouldn’t test it with a foreign card.

    If your ryokan happens to be in Shiga Kogen, you can use the previous advice to get there (it’s the same bus), but you hotel might have discount round trip bus tickets to the Monkey park, to be paid in cash at the front desk.

    The park admission is paid at the gate- I was able to use a suica card.

    I’d suggest being there as early as possible- we went on the earliest bus from shiga kogen that wouldn’t involve skipping breakfast, and saw people leaving the park as we arrived. It was filling up as we left.

    The cafe you pass on the way up- Ezo cafe?- was pretty good.