Trip Report – 13 days Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nara

Me (30F) and my boyfriend (31M) have thoroughly enjoyed our first trip to Japan.

For background, we are interested in anime, gaming, random fun and sight seeing. Not really into vintage shopping or nightlife so if that’s something you’re interested in, I’ll save you some time as there won’t be much of that here.

**First, I’ll highlight any general things we experienced and some tips.**

* If you want to be respectful, at the minimum learn hello, good morning, good evening, excuse me and thank you. I got around with just this, and it was all I needed. Otherwise, I pointed or used google translate which worked just fine.
* If you are arriving in Haneda airport, there is a welcome suica machine straight ahead to the left (right before the Tokyo Monorail extrance) out of the post custom gates.
* The luggage transport service was amazing. I do recommend having all addresses written down for yourself (this can be in English) so you can do it easily. If you have troubles finding out where to write what, [google a sample image](https://www.kanpai-japan.com/sites/default/files/uploads/2015/06/takkyubin-form-translation.jpg) or ask the staff at the hotels for help. It wasn’t very expensive but it really does help when you’re not wanting to drag luggage around as you will mainly be going down and up many staircases to reach public transport.
* Unless you’re prepared to buy a second pair of shoes, don’t be like me and bring 1 pair. This was the biggest mistake I made. You should let your pair reset for at least 24 hours, which ended up with very painful feet early into the trip.
* Take advantage of the Visit Japan QR codes for immigration and customs, we got out so much quicker than others because of this.
* If you’re not using a JR pass and you are going to buy shinkansen tickets, make sure you read up about this more before you go. We purchased a reserved seat only ticket and had to go back to get a base fare ticket, but then on another trip, both tickets were in 1 so make sure you do your research.
* If you are a smoker, I suggest downloading the app “smoking section” which really helped in finding smoking areas as you are not allowed to smoke anywhere on the street.
* We didn’t opt for the pocket wifi, but instead purchased Ubigi 10gb which was plenty to get us through the trip. It worked just about everywhere, with only slight struggles in rural areas on the shinkansen (which has free wifi anyway).
* If you are from the UK, it seems that debit cards for cash withdrawals only work in 7-eleven. They did not work in Familymart or Lawsons, so something to note. I recommend opening a Monzo account as you can use your card for purchases and they do not have any fees for purchases abroad. Majority of the time, we used our Welcome Suica cards to pay, and just kept this topped up.
* Google Maps was always very easy to use and navigate all transport systems, including buses in Kyoto.

**Arrival (day 1)**

Our flight arrived in Haneda at approximately 5PM and we were out of immigrations and customs with luggage by 5:40PM. We took the Tokyo Monorail and the Yamanote line to Shin Okubo where we stayed at Hundred Stay Shinjuku. I highly recommend this hotel, It was one of the best ones on our trip and close enough to two different lines so we could get to many different places. We didn’t do much this day because we arrived to the hotel very tired so we were in bed by 9pm after a trip to the close 7-eleven for snacks.

**Tokyo (day 2 – 5)**

We started off our first morning by going to Senso-ji at around 9am. The vendors weren’t open yet as many don’t open until 10/10:30, so we wandered around the grounds until then. It was a good time to go as it wasn’t too busy, and by 10:30 it was packed with tourists. Afterwards we made our way to Akihabara to have a browse but we were both not really impressed and didn’t end up purchasing anything. We saw a Pachinko place open and couldn’t believe that it was full of people at 11AM on a Wednesday. The sensory overload was really prevalent at this point and we weren’t used to it yet, so it was a bit overstimulating. We made our way to grab some katsu curry at Coco’s curry house, which I really enjoyed. We both were happy to try some Japanese chain restaurants and didn’t mind not eating local. Its a nice quick easy bite.

On the night time, we made our way to Shinjuku and just wandered around the streets, taking in all the lights and went into a few arcades. We vowed to not touch any more claw machines by this point, but we are all for random pointless fun, so this didn’t really happen by the end of the trip. For dinner, we went to Kabukicho Tower to get a meal from the food hall. It wasn’t very busy and it took over an hour to get our food, which was rather cold. We were pretty disappointed at the experience and definitely would have been a skip for us in hindsight.

On the next day, we headed over to Ikebukuro for pancakes from A Happy Pancake. Definitely recommend if you are looking for a place to get fluffy pancakes. We then headed to Sunshine City as we were really interested in the Pokemon and One Piece stores, as well as the big store with Gachapon machines. It was a fun experience! We went back towards our hotel and and got some Gyudon at Matsuya before heading to Shibuya to do Shibuya Sky. We booked Shibuya Sky 1 month in advance to have the couch reservations, and it was a nice break for our feet after a lot of walking, we really enjoyed this and the panoramic views at night time. We went just after sunset.

The following day was our favourite. One of our friends was in Tokyo at the same time as us, and we had booked ahead to do the street karts through Shibuya. This was such a fun experience. If you want to do this, you will need to book a month ahead of time as it does fill up quick and you will need to get an international driving license. It was one of the highlights of the trip for us. We went and got a burger at Shogun burger and some ice cream from Kith Treats Tokyo. The ice cream was ok, nothing incredible. We went into some arcades together and played some games.

Our last day in Tokyo for the first half of our trip we spent walking around Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. We both like to go to national and botanical gardens when we visit cities, so this was really enjoyable for us. I would love to go here when the flowers are in bloom, but it is equally beatiful at the end of September. We then went onto Nakano Broadway following a recommendation from the itinerary post I made on here, and we found a lot more cool stuff here than we did in Akihabara so we enjoyed this a lot more. We had our first Ichiran ramen, and it wasn’t our last.

**Kyoto (day 5 – 7)**

The next day was a travel day, where we started our journey to Kyoto. In Kyoto, we stayed near the main station at Daiwa Roynet Hotel Kyoto Ekimae. It was quite a nice hotel for being a business type hotel. We started making our way to Kiyomizu-dera by foot from here before stopping at a Mcdonalds to try their moon festival items, and taking the bus the rest of the way. The walk up and around the streets near Kiyomizu-dera was not enjoyable at all, as it was shoulder to shoulder with tourists. Once you got up to the temple and made your way through, the grounds were beautiful and the view of Kyoto was gorgeous. We ended up walking back down towards Hokan-ji and made our way back to the hotel. We had a calm evening with some konbini meals and snacks (the egg sandwich SLAPS).

The next day we headed to Nishiki Market and got some street food and a few souveniors. Here we purchased some engraved chopsticks and matcha to take home. We spend the evening at Fushimi Inari, arriving at the front gates by 4:30. Going through the hike through the torii gates was very busy at the beginning, with many people stopping traffic completely to get their insta-worthy pictures, but we decided we would push through and make our way slowly to the observing point half way to the peak. We made it up to the observation area by 5:30, just as the sun was setting and it was beautiful. Much quieter up at the top so you can take your time and look around (and take pictures here too without getting in everyones way). We had Yakisoba noodles from a food hall in the Kyoto Tower building. These were 10/10. We also opted into purchasing 2 Nintendo Switches from a local electronics store, as the tax free was really enticing.

Our last morning in Kyoto, we booked a Samurai experience through Viator. This was really fun and my boyfriend seemed to be an expert, because I couldn’t cut through anything for the life of me. Highly recommend!

**Osaka (day 7)**

We made our way to Osaka around 2PM and got to our hotel Aloft Osaka Dojima. I’ll be honest, probably our least favourite hotel but the pillows were very nice. We made our way to Dotonbori for some street food and Cremia ice cream (must have).

**Nara (day 8)**

We spent the morning having a slow start, but ended up making our way to Nara by 1PM. At this point, most of the deer were resting so they weren’t as aggresive as i’ve seen other people say they are. We only have 1 bum nibble incident. The smell sticks with you though, I can still remember it. It’s like a zoo or a farm. Lots of poop. We stayed around and people watched for a while, had a walk around Nara and some of the shops, and made our way back to Osaka.

**Osaka again (day 8 – 9)**

The evening after Nara, we decided to try some more arcades and got much better at the claw machines (there is definitely a method to these, we were winning loads by the end of our trip).

**Back to Tokyo (day 9 – 13)**

Our last few days in Tokyo were spent in Ginza at Mitsui Garden Hotel Ginza Gochome. Nice hotel with a public bath, but we didn’t take advantage of it. If I could redo this, I would have stayed in Shibuya as we ended up spending a majority of our time there rather than in Ginza by the end of our trip. The rest of our trip was much calmer, we went to places we wanted to see or eat at again and just enjoyed walking around without much planned.

On the first full day back to Tokyo, we went to get some Ichiran ramen again and went to Takeshita Street. I think this was a write off for us as we both didn’t enjoy how crowded it was. We went into random shopping malls and browsed around. On the evening, we got some really nice pizza from Vomero in Ginza (highly recommend).

The next day, we started our day getting some Gyukatsu from Gyukatsu Motomura Coredo Muromachi
and spent the day walking around the area looking around shops. In the evening, we went to get some shaved ice from Bar na Tsukisome, it was small and tucked away and we were the only ones in the little restaurant.

Our final day was spent primarily in Shibuya, as we ended up spending any last cash and Suica we had left on arcades or Don Quijote. Our flight back was very early the next day so we had quite an early night (9am flight).

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Overall, I really enjoyed Tokyo and Kyoto. Osaka wasn’t really incredible, but i’m glad we saw it anyway. We did rest a lot in between the morning and the evenings, and didn’t overpack the itinerary but it did give us some guidance on what to do during the days. It was definitely a trip to remember – I already miss crustless bread and all the snacks from the konbinis 🙁