All these itineraries have me worried

31 comments

1. Everyone travels differently. Tokyo alone is so big that you’ll often see people say they love to explore/wander as well. I would love to do that my future trips. I don’t have much time off and FOMO has me needing to plan out the major spots I need to hit each day lol. I left time in between to explore. I think there are a million ways to explore just Tokyo. Hope you have a nice trip.

2. It’s all up to you. If that is your desire and style of travel than do not be concerned with what others are doing.

3. no. you can do that. I would suggest to cover some bases like having a place to sleep before going onto the airplane.

   but, you can totally play it by the ear every day. people usually make plans because they have so much on a to do list that it needs organizing. making a plan can also help you to be more efficient.
   but you dont have to do any of that…

4. Tokyo is one of two places in the world that make me happy just to get out into the street every morning whenever I’m there. You’ll have a great two weeks.

5. It depends on you. I personally like to plan in advance because I don’t want to look at my phone figuring out what to do, killing limited time I have on vacation without too much screen. But if you don’t mind constantly looking at your phone, googling or just enjoying streets walking aimlessly, then you don’t need an itinerary.

   I want a peaceful holiday without the stress of last minute planning or finding out some spots are fully booked. I’m also flexible and I know everything can be changed if weather is not nice and I’m ok with it.

   Do whatever works for you though, I know people who just like to wander streets, not even taking photos, just enjoying the vibes

6. No it is not a bad idea at all!! I’ve travelled this way before!

   My first trip to japan I had a very detailed itinerary but during my second trip to japan besides getting tickets to a concert and a few baseball games I didn’t have an itinerary at all. The only thing I really planned was travel to and from the cities I was visiting and hotels. I did have a general idea of things I wanted to do/visit but nothing was really ever set in stone.

   You should travel/do what makes you happy and not worry or pay attention to how other people travel! Everyone travels / plans stuff differently!!

7. I will be traveling in December for 2 weeks in Tokyo and another week in Osaka without any itinerary at all. Been doing exactly the same with no issue. If you’re like me then you don’t need itinerary since we are free to go whenever we want on the spot without getting locked into a schedule.

8. Everyone is different but I’d split it up between Tokyo and Kyoto. We talked to a lot of couples and Kyoto seems to be the favorite. You get an older vibe and a break from the bustling city. It’s super easy to get there on a bullet train. Personally we are doing Tokyo 4 nights -> Hakone one night at Ryoken -> Osaka 3 nights w day trip to Hiroshima -> 3 nights Kyoto -> 3 nights Tokyo. We are trying to strike a balance of seeing multiple cities but leaving our days open to wander at the pace we feel like that day. We probably won’t be back for 10 years if ever so definitely wanted to see a little more than
   Tokyo, but to each their own!

9. FWIW my wife and I were planning on doing 2 weeks in Tokyo before we started putting the itinerary together and realized that we were struggling to fill the days with places we wanted to see, so we opted to add in Hakone and Kyoto/Osaka.

10. For certain tourist spots, like ghibli museum, and restaurants you’d need to do some reserving. But otherwise I don’t think you need to do very detailed planning.

11. Yeah well maybe do some research on different areas. Totally awesome to get up and head to an area and explore. Some museums, restaurants, cafes, etc require pre booking timed slots. Kusama? Kirby? Ghibli? Teamlab? Etc. Also worth researching if any festivals, special events, etc worth checking out. One trip we watched sumo and also some traditional play.

    2 weeks is a luxurious amount of time in tokyo – 100% enough time to venture to other places or at least take a shinkensen to an onsen town, etc. a few days in kyoto, etc

    Some of the itineraries are crazy packed – most of us dont have so much holiday time!!

12. Personally, yes, I think so.

    Building in unplanned time to wander is a good idea. Having no structure and planning and just winging it? Bad idea.

    “Everyone travels differently” is fine and dandy and all, but you want to spend your time in Japan doing things, not doing the research and planning from your phone at a wifi coffee shop, that you could have done in advance.

13. Not at all. To be honest I think a lot of folks that plan every second of every packed day are setting themselves up for exhaustion, failure and dissatisfaction.

    Tokyo is an amazing city, take it at your own pace. Wander the neighborhoods. Drink in the atmosphere. Avoid the “popular” restaurants for the fun ones down random side alleys. You’ll have a more fun and more “authentic “ trip than the cookie cutter planned to the minute ones that dominate here.

14. For some people, it’s likely to be a very expensive, once in a lifetime trip, myself included, so people like to know they are getting a decent variety of experiences in the little time they have.

15. We didn’t have an itinerary… we had areas we wanted to visit and we booked the plane tickets and hotels. There were a few restaurants where we did make reservations in advanced as they were more “fancy”. We didn’t want to hassle ourselves with a strict itinerary as it was our honeymoon. We had ideas of what we wanted to see and went with the flow. We didn’t need to go to museums or amusement parks so it was much easier for us to relax and not have expectations. We had a blast! We basically planned our day around the food reservations we has as that was our main thing for going to Japan. Next time we visit we will be doing the same thing! We did not feel like we missed out on anything.

16. Personally, I think it’s good to have a loose itinerary with some free time built in. That free time can be used to wander around or just relax if we’re tired. Note that some attractions require reservations, sometimes weeks or months in advance.

    Also two weeks in Tokyo sounds like a really long time. For me, I’d probably get bored of wandering well before then. Why not at least do some day trips to Hakone or Yokohama? Why not visit Kyoto or Osaka?

17. These itineraries make me nervous out for the opposite reason. People trying to do too much, days booked solid, neglecting reserving time for meals, underestimating travel days. I’ve almost stopped reading them.

    Your plan to purposely not make an itinerary and just wander about is actually my recommendation.

    Make a sane list of ‘must sees.’ Pick one thing a day to do, maybe pick a restaurant , then just explore that neighborhood a bit, just checking things out.

    Japan is endlessly fascinating, Tokyo is huge and 2 weeks is scratching the surface. You can always go back!

18. I went for 10 days with no real itinerary. We had tickets for three things so we knew we’d be in certain cities for certain days, but otherwise left our itinerary open, and just used Wanderlog to keep a list of cool restaurants or attractions we wanted to check out to fill out time. It has a map function so you could, for example, be like “let’s spend a day in Shibuya” and the map will show you all of your possible points of interest in that area.

    It was so low-stress, and we had a really great time – some of these itineraries make me wonder if people actually enjoy their trips or if they’re just running from place to place trying to keep on schedule.

19. I love to just book my places, have a few things I know I want to see, and then explore. Everyone is different, but there is no need to over-schedule your trip. If you know you want to see / do something that is high demand, I do recommend tickets, but otherwise, why not just enjoy yourselves and explore?

20. You’re generally fine to just wander. My recommendations for planning are:

    – Make sure you know how to get to the hotel on your first night. A long plane trip is tiring and it’s unpleasant wandering around trying to find your hotel.

    – Try to cluster your destinations each day in the same general area, so that you don’t waste a lot of time on public transportation on any given day shuttling from one side of Tokyo to the other.

    – Take one day out in the two weeks to just relax and recharge somewhere. A nice coffee shop, a ryokan, whatever you prefer.

    That’s all I would do. Serendipity can be a wonderful part of travel, so I wouldn’t overplan. Have a great trip!

21. I like your idea. My SO made us make an excel sheet with every minute planned out. It’s not a vacation for me anymore. It’s a job.

22. >Is this a bad idea?

    Not if that’s what you’re comfortable doing. It’s what I do on most of my vacations anywhere and I always enjoy it.

    The only thing to be mindful of is to look up any place that you feel like you absolutely have to visit beforehand to see if there are any advance steps you need to take like buying timed entry tickets.

23. We’ve spent full summers in Tokyo twice now. We’re not good planners, so we just go in with a vague idea of a few things to try to do. This year our only two musts were Universal and Fuji. We booked our accommodations for those trips maybe a week in advance for one and 2-3 days for the other.

    If you’re into museums and gardens, Tokyo has something called the Grutto Pass that has about 100 options to choose from that’s good for two months. We used that to fill in empty time here and there. Sometimes we’d split up if something was interesting to one of us but not the other.

    Another way to plan on the fly is to visit the tourist information center at the Tokyo metropolitan government buildings. They have usually information about special exhibits and festivals.

24. Not a bad idea at all. This is Reddit, where people are mostly hobbyists trying to optimize everything.

    We didn’t have an itinerary besides a few existing tickets for things we had to get in advance (and some special events); instead we had a shared Google map of attractions and explored based on how we felt that day. It worked out great (have a detailed trip report in my post history). Different people travel differently.

25. Some people would be stressed to not have every moment scheduled. For others, being scheduled causes panic about keeping on time and checking off all of their stops.

    Some resources to keep in your pocket: [Time Out Tokyo](https://www.timeout.com/tokyo) for restaurant and event recommendations, [Tokyo Cheapo](https://tokyocheapo.com/) and [Japan Guide](https://www.japan-guide.com/) for events, day trip, and Tokyo sights ideas.

    You don’t say when you’re traveling in May, but Golden Week is April 29-May 5 next year. The good: Tokyo (aside from Disney) is often less crowded (that’s a relative observation). The bad: Smaller businesses may be closed and seats on trains for your day trip may be harder to get.

    Because there is so much to see and do in Japan, it’s not considered a relaxing vacation. But there’s nothing wrong with strolling streets and just seeing what’s there, popping into little restaurants (just be aware that cafes open later than you may be used to and lunch often ends at 2 or so), or wandering the museums in Ueno with no real itinerary. Tokyo is also a good base for day trips like Nikko, Kamakura, Yokohama, or Nagoya (that’s 4 days right there!). If you only wanted to see one or two places, you could even go to Kyoto on a day trip — though I wouldn’t really recommend it.

    Have fun!

26. From what I’ve heard try to keep to one area, tokyo is the largest city on earth, two weeks is a small amount of time, you don’t need to plan anything just have a rough idea of what you want to do, see and experience and go from there. (I always do this, it gives structure without making you feel you have to do something)

27. Tokyo is massive, and you can easily spend 2 weeks there no problem

    But if you want to do popular things like Disney Tokyo, the Pokémon cafe, dinner in Shibuya, TeamLab, etc you’re going to need reservations well in advance.

    You don’t have to schedule an entire itinerary, but I highly recommend making reservations for the things you really want to do. Maybe one or two things per day would be good enough to ensure you have things while allowing you to still spend the rest of the day exploring

28. There’s pluses and minuses to it I think.

    I went with no real itinerary beyond getting tickets to see Sumo and pro wrestling on two specific days. I figured simply being in Japan would be an experience, which it was, and I didn’t want to spend my time rushing from one place to another.

    I did miss out on some stuff that would have been cool, just because I ran out of time. However, I think that would have happened anyway. Some things just took a lot longer than I’d anticipated and I drastically underestimated the impact of jet lag as well.

    I say just relax and enjoy yourself really.

29. Spontaneity and serendipity played a large role in my enjoyment of Japan. I planned maybe 1-2 things tops per day, and then would wing it

    For example, I decided one day that I wanted to see Koishikawa Botanical Garden, and had no plans after. Then I looked on my phone and saw a Gokokuji temple nearby. Checked it out, and explored an adjacent graveyard. Then I started seeing signs for Ikebukuro everywhere, so I figured I’d check it out. Was a really cool shopping district that had a different vibe from Shinjuku, ended up getting lost in a 6 story mall. After some grub, decided wander the back alleys of tokyo, loosely aiming in the direction of my hotel.

    This all stemmed from just “I want to go to the botanical garden”. Granted, this is how I live my life – I hate rigid plans that have no flexibility. I’d be so annoyed if I couldn’t check out something cool, because the calendar says I need to admire the fountain in Main square at 1:30pm

30. If you want to stay in “Tokyo” my suggestion is take at least one night to go to an onsen town. The train is an experience. The town is an experience. The accommodation should be too. Bessho onsen or kusatsu onsen come to mind and are accessible by train. Hakone too.

31. Nah – I usually make a general itinerary. Like “these places would be cool and if we wanted to do them, this group of places would make sense together because they’re close to each other.” Then I decide to do one thing that morning and let the day take me where it takes me from there. I think it’s good to get a general idea of things you might wanna do before you get there as opposed to just wandering around tho. That way you can do some informed wandering with a general understanding of where you are and what cool things might be around so you’re not just on your phone in Tokyo looking for what might be cool around you.

    I say this but I did a few days in Barcelona completely free hand and it was amazing. Left my hostel one morning, came across some sort of Spanish rap battle concert and watched it from an overpass, stopped for food whenever something smelled nice, participated in a freedom for Ukraine march, stumbled into the old quarter in the evening, watched a group of senior citizens dancing and playing instruments in front of a church, continued walking and listened to a pair of guys performing opera on the street in the most amazing voices while enjoying a beer. Great day.