Hello everyone,
I am looking for advice. There are specific legs of our Japan trip that I have been doing a lot of research on, but still trying to determine viability given some of the places we are looking at going are more out of the way. Specifically the major question is whether or not it is feasible/worth going to see the snow monkeys and Shirakawa-go houses from Kusatsu given the long travel times, or if we should instead go to Hakone routed through Tokyo and continue on to Osaka.
We want to focus on the shortest travel time between the locations as possible and it seem renting a car would be the best option. We do plan on buying the JR pass as well, before the end of the month to get the better pricing.
Some details of our trip/locations are below. Would love your advice and feedback if you have done a similar trip. This thread has helped a ton in my research!
Travel days/locations –
* Day 1-2 – Kusatsu Onsen Ryokan
* Our hope is that even with the delayed foliage, we will see some in the mountains. This would be late October.
* Day 3 -Nagano/Shirakawa-go – World Heritage Suganuma Gassho-zukuri Village?
* This is where I could use some advice. There are two things we would like to do, seeing the thatched houses in Takayama and the snow monkeys. However, based on all my research, this doesn’t really seem feasible from Kusatsu, even if we change day 4 from Osaka, as it takes two hours by bus to the snow monkeys and then something like 6 hours to get to Shirakawa-go. The only feasible options seems to be **renting a car**. Would you recommend doing so or are there transportation methods that are faster that I am missing?
* The other option we considered is instead heading back through Tokyo to go to Hokone. This would allow us to do another thing we are interested in which is views of Mt. Fuji. Our understanding is there isn’t much to do in Hakone, so a night visit may be sufficient, and then continue down to Osaka.
* Day 4-5 – Osaka
* One of these days would like to commit for going to USJ for Mario World. We know it is pretty busy, but that park looks amazing and with Mario being the first game I played as a kid, a little nostalgic as well. That said, we can sacrifice a day here for the – Shirakawa-go if that leg is possible based on feedback.
1 comment
There’s no snow in late October, in which case I definitely wouldn’t bother with the snow monkeys as the scenery is less attractive and monkeys will not be naturally bathing at this time (I have read that they feed the monkeys to encourage hanging out around the onsen, make of that what you will).
If you want to see “a” thatched roof village, then Hida Folk Village (short local bus ride outside takayama) is much easier to organize than Shirakawago (Intercity bus access only) since you are on the JR Pass, or you can do Kayabuki no Sato as a half day from Kyoto.