We’re flying into Narita on Dec 22ndWe have a rail pass that we’ll be redeeming at NRT.We’re sending our larger luggage straight to our hotel in Hiroshima and will do that for all of our city changes.
Day 1 – Arrive at NRT at 4:50PM, travel from NRT to Nagano with an estimated arrival of 10pm. We plan to take the NEX to Tokyo and from there we take a train to Nagano.
Day 2 – Jigokudani monkey park day trip and then Shinkansen to Hiroshima
Day 3 – Miyajima Island for a nice hike and exploring and back to Hiroshima for dinner
Day 4 – We’ll set out to do Peace memorial/musuem, Hiroshima Castle, X-Mas lights down Peace Blvd
Day 5 – From Hiroshima to Himeji castle for a stop early in the morning, if possible we want to try to get to Nijigen No Mori but do not have any real plan on how to get there some time in the afternoon, from there we would end up in Osaka.
Day 6 – 9 – Potentially bouncing back and forth from Osaka and Kyoto for these days6 – Osaka Aquarium, Osaka Castle, Dotonbori cruise, TeamLab Botanical
7/8 – Kyoto for Arashiyama & the monkey park, Kinkaku-ji, Kiyomizu-dera,
9 is pretty open and flexible, maybe a trip to Nara.
From here on it gets a little bit more up in the air for us. At this point we’ll be staying in Tokyo for the rest of the trip and it’s really not well planned out because I don’t know what it’ll be like doing most of this stuff during New Years.
We will be staying in Ginza
Day 10 – Making our way back to Tokyo. Yokohama day trip before getting to the city. Gundam Base is the priority for Yokohama.
Day 11 & 12 are both Disney days (New Years means not a lot will be open so Disney fits perfectly. How likely are we to get any fast pass/quick queue for anything?)
Day 13 – 16 – Not sure of the chances of seeing the palace. We’d like to see Gotokuji Temple, see a Kabuki single act. We have a bunch of the ‘nerdy’ stops to make around Shinjuku and Shibuya. Reservations for a lot of our stops filled up far too quickly and I’m not sure how walk-ins are handled, any advice? (Pokemon Cafe for example)I’d like to make it to both TeamLabs AND Small Worlds.
I have a Google MyMaps I could post for a more in depth look at some of what we’re trying to do in Tokyo if that’s allowed.
Thanks in advance!
EDIT: How do you suggest we handle not being able to get Suica/Passmo cards? We have androids 🙁