I am usually a master trip planner but I have to say planning this Japan trip was a bit intimidating/overwhelming. For background, this will be our first family trip to Japan (traveling from Los Angeles), my daughter is seven, she is very comfortable walking 20k steps a day and is also a pretty good eater.
Please let me know thoughts on itinerary below. We love hiking and also watching shows that help us learn more about the culture so if there are any recommendations for that, would love that as well! Other questions are weaved in through the proposed itinerary. Travel dates are from March 17th to March 29th, we plan to focus this trip on Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka.
Day 0:
Land in Narita airport at 5:30 pm (rookie move, didn’t realize there was another airport haneda in the city before I booked)! Landing at Narita airport @ 5:30 pm and taking Narita express to the city. We are planning to stay in Shinjuku or Shibuya, does this sound reasonable, any hotel recommendations?
Get to hotel, rest and recover from flight.
Day 1:
AM – Shibuya crossing, Hachiko shrine, cat street
PM – explore Shinjuku
Day 2:
Disneyland – on the fence with this, since we live in LA we have been to local Disneyland multiple times. Is the Tokyo Disneyland really that different that it’s worth a visit. If it’s more of the same typical Disneyland would prefer to save this day for something else.
Day 3:
AM: Visit Tokyo skytree (Hancock tower) for views
PM: Explore Asakusa, including Senso-ji temple
Day 4:
AM: Ueno park. Museums and zoo.
PM: Ameya-Yokocho market for shopping
Day 5:
AM: Travel to Kyoto
PM: Walk around Gion district
Any recommendations for a good ryokan in Kyoto? Would also like to include a family friendly hot springs trip one of the Kyoto days.
Day 6:
AM: Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavillion)
PM: Manga museum
Day 7:
AM: Fushimi Inari shrine and its torii gates
PM: Arashiyama Bamboo Grove & Monkey Park
Day 8:
Day trip to Nara
AM: Todai-ji temple and deer
PM: Return to Kyoto
Day 9:
Day trip to Osaka
AM: Osaka castle, Dotonburi
PM: Return to Kyoto
Day 10:
AM: Travel to Tokyo
PM: Explore Ginza
Day 11:
AM: Explore Harajaku and Takeshita Street
PM: Visit Meiji shrine
Day 12:
AM: Last minute shopping
PM: Head to Narita airport
Anyway to get around $700 per person for JR pass. Planning to buy pocket WiFi when we land at Narita.
Any help, advice, edits to itinarary, recommendations for hotel/ryokan/food would be helpful. Totally new to Japan and super excited about this upcoming trip!
9 comments
Day 6 & 7: put kinkakuji and arashiyama on the same day, they’re closer and will save time. Manga museum is all in Japanese and your daughter might get bored
Do disneysea instead of disneyland
Advice about time: most commercial establishments and museums in Tokyo open at 10 AM (for the latter, at 9:30 AM) or later and close at about 7 PM. Outdoor places that close can close as early as 4 PM.
Fortunately, perhaps, for your daughter, you’re arriving just as the school year ends, so she’ll see plenty of kids her own age. Unfortunately, any places that attract children will be jammed between about 20 March and when you leave.
For views, I recommend the Tokyo government building in Shinjuku, which is free and does not require reservations (as does SkyTree).
As for food, in Tokyo I would just eat at whatever appealing restaurant is at hand when you’re hungry: the city’s got between 60,000 and 100,000 of them, and most of them are good to wonderful.
‘Shibuya Crossing’ is just a large intersection, and Hachiko is a small statue beside it. The whole area takes about 3 minutes to take in.
Currently on my first Japan trip so not an expert but I don’t think you’ll need a JR pass with this itinerary. Ours is very similar and we just purchased return bullet train tickets tokyo-osaka for £250 for two people.
From my understanding you can’t use the JR pass on most of the Tokyo metro either (tickets are very cheap anyway) and the cost of the rest of your train tickets shouldn’t add up to $700 pp.
I purchased mine on an app (smart ex) and you can hook the tickets up to your suica card when you get one at the airport or you can collect/ purchase the tickets at the station.
I’m on android and I used an e-sim that was about 80aud for unlimited data and 30 days, didn’t have an issue with it at all.
Get to places early morning (6-7am wake ups depending on how long you take to get ready and how you plan to get there). We stayed in kyoto and got to fushimi Inari around 8am and missed the crowds.
Toyoko inns and APA are business hotels that are pretty cheap but clean and functional.
Google lens is very handy, but if you’re in the main cities there’s enough English to get you by thanks to the Olympics. Also cash isn’t too much of an issue in those areas either, most places seemed to have card facilities. Having said that, It’s still a good idea to have at least 10k in yen on you.
If not on JR pass, cheap way to get to city is Keisei Main Line to Keisei Funabashi, then a Sobu Line Rapid from Funabashi to Tokyo from Funabashi
So instead of paying 3000 yen you only need to pay about 750
You can book shinkasen tickets online with the “smartex” app one month in advance worked out cheaper for our recent trip then getting the JR Pass
My trip looked like yours lol I would say go Disney then Nara it’s a 58 min train ride that’s what i did
Disneysea is different, but not amazing for 7 years old. Disneyland is more of the same but now in Japanese. The food is probably the biggest difference there. If anything, a different kind of park to visit would be the Asakusa Hanayashiki next to Senso-ji. It’s an old school amusement park and I think your 7 year old would like that.
For something like a cultural experience you could try to Nishijin-ori in Kyoto. They have a hands on display/experience thing of various kinds. Look them up and see if there’s space?
I tell everyone to go see Byodo-in in Uji. It’s beautiful and way better than something like Kinkaku-ji. You can do it same day as Fushimi Inari. You can also do a tea ceremony experience there, the cheapest one anywhere. They have English speakers iirc. It’s also rather short but that’s probably a good thing for a kid (assuming you want her to try the tea…)
For places to stay in Kyoto… All depends on your budget?
For onsen… Your day traveling back to Tokyo, book a night in Hakone instead? You can stop at Odawara on the Shinkansen then make your way up. It’s pretty, nice ryokans galore up there, and a bit of a change of pace. You’ll have onsen baths in most of those places. Ginza… Honestly I don’t know what there is to see in Ginza. Granted I live in Asia so the charm is lost on me