Japan Trip Report – 9 days solo (32m)

Just got back from 9 nights in Japan. I flew in and out of Tokyo (HND) and hit the following cities in the following order:

Tokyo > Hakone > Kyoto > Osaka > Tokyo

Pre Japan: I was in Los Angeles (flew in from NYC) for 6 nights for a work all-hands event. I stayed in LA for one extra day to do light tourism. During this trip I did a lot of networking (exhausting) and also went out to team dinners/happy-hours/bar hopping late night (also exhausting) almost every day of the trip. Being in Los Angeles cut down on my flight length and cost, which made it more feasible for me to get to Japan.

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* Tokyo ( 3 nights )
* Day 1: I arrived on my 32nd birthday, and part of taking this trip was a gift to myself and an attempt to avoid the pressure of making birthday plans at home. My flight was delayed 3 hours, but I knew that the night before, which allowed me to wake up at 9am instead of 6am. It also meant I arrived in Japan closer to 6pm instead of 3pm. Knowing I was going to be tired, I stayed at one of the more expensive hotels on my trip (still only $220 USD / night). The hotel was Hotel Century Southern tower, and I highly recommend. It was very nice and not too expensive. It was a high-rise hotel in Shinjuku with great views. Since I was absolutely dead from jetlag + the previous week, all I did was walk around the area around my hotel to get my bearings straight and get food at a local Japanese BBQ spot. I did forget to get money out of the ATM and had difficulty finding a spot to eat and order, but it was my first day. After dinner I stopped at 7/11 and picked up a few goodies and drinks to stock in my hotel room. I went to bed by 10pm
* Day 2: Following a good night of sleep, I woke up early and took my sweaty LA clothes to do laundry nearby. All the instructions were in japanese and I tried to use google translate, but struggled. A japanese local who didn’t speak english helped me out (we communicated mostly with body language) – and the detergent was out of order so he went back to his apartment to grab some and gave it to me for free. While my laundry was running I took a lap around the area and just enjoyed walking through quiet residential alleys and streets. A lot of charming sights, cool views of trains walking by, nice little flower gardens. Clean streets, etc. I came back to my hotel to finish my laundry and left the house dressed for cold weather and rain. I wore Uniqlo heat tech leggings and undershirt, a rain jacket, and a fleece northface, and Goretex boots that I bought in case we had rain/cold (this all cam in handy later). I went out to Shibuya to go shopping for clothes. Right before the rain started I stoped in Family Mart for an umbrella. I popped into a bunch of stores, then went to a fantastic conveyor belt sushi spot in a mall. I talked to a Korean girl next to me, and she recommended I try Okonomyaki in Kyoto/Osaka. When I left the mall, to my surprise it was snowing, which apparently only happens like once or twice a year in Tokyo. With my Umbrella + snow gear, I was well prepped. I spent 4 hours walking around shopping, and bought 2-3 items from cool vintage stores. I tried to get cool stuff that isn’t necessarily found in the US. By this time it was pitch dark outside and the snow was coming down HARD. I came back to my hotel and instead of going out like I initially planned, I decided to just get food at the hotel restaurant because the snow was pouring, there was lightning, there was heavy wind, and I didn’t want to wear myself out. The snow kept going all night and apparently it was one of the biggest snowstorms they’ve had in 10 years.
* Day 3: After another early night to bed, I went to Asakusa to see the Senso Ji shrine. This was recommended to me by my hotel restaurant waiter the previous night. I didn’t quite get there as early as I would’ve liked and there were lots of tourists, but it was still cool to see. I had to trudge through some slush, but by late in the day the snow was basically all gone. After the shrine, I walked to the Tokyo Skytree which had pretty amazing panoramic views of the city. On my way back to the hotel I was a bit of an idiot and messed up my navigation back home on the train, but I never took the wrong train or went in the wrong direction. Just got confused by the entrances. Someone at a vintage shop in Shibuya the previous day had recommended a ramen spot that he called the best in the city (Shiina Ramen). It opened at 6pm. They used a ticketing system and there was basically no wait and it was not expensive. Very good. Before I went there, I was so hungry that I went to an izakaya and got a few glasses of Sake + a few orders of dumplings. Afterwards I headed to Golden Gai (a few blocks of narrow alleyways and cool divey bars that fit 8 or so people). Lots of places had cover fees. It was basically all tourists – mostly Australians who were in Japan for ski trips. I noticed that most people were just kinda walking around looking for a place to go and not actually stopping inside. I spent an hour or two alone drinking 1-2 beers and looking for a spot to go. I met a few people that weren’t really my vibe, and I was close to going home. Then I found a cool spot and several groups of 2-3 australians came in and we all got drunk together and had a really good time. Then a couple of cute girls came in and joined the group (sitting across the long table from me). I was almost about to call it a night and go home but ended up talking to the girl (she used to live in the same NYC neighborhood I live in) and we bounced to a Karaoke Bar. We stayed out until 3am and we ended up having a kiss at the end of the night, exchanged IG, planned to link in Osaka (but our timelines never matched up bc we were in different cities). I kinda have a travel crush and would like to see here again, but she lives far away. I got back to the hotel late.
* Hakone (1 night)
* Day 4: After a night out and having a few days to adjust to jetlag, I thought it made sense to plan a relaxing day away for recovery. I took a train a few hours to get to Hakone and stayed at a mid-budget Ryokan (Motoyo Kansuiro) and found it to be incredibly beautiful, situated right on the river, great interior design, etc. Hotel check-in was at 3pm and the dinner was 6pm. This didn’t give me any time to do anything in Hakone except stay in the Ryokan, and that was perfectly fine with me. I thought initially that Mt. Hood was going to be really easy to get to, but that would’ve been a whole other day trip. Either way, the traditional Ryokan experience was fantastic. I went down by the river and kicked my feet into the flowing river and just relaxed for an hour and watched the sunset. Then I enjoyed traditional japanese dinner served to me in my room. I put on the Yukata. It was great. Afterwards I headed to the Onsen nervously, but I was the only male in the Ryokan and had it all to myself. Even though it was like 4 degrees Celcius, the Onsen heated my body so much that I had to get out every few minutes and just relax in the freezing cold. But it didn’t feel cold at all because my body temperature was elevated. It was great.
* Kyoto (2 nights)
* Day 5: I woke up in Hakone early, got served my breakfast, took one last plunge in the Onsen, then checked out of the hotel, nearly forgetting my carry-on luggage. I took romancecar back on stop to Odawara, then Shinkasen to Kyoto. Mid trip I was seconds away from missing the transfer to a parallel train at one point, but managed to get on the right train in time. I got to my hotel at around 4pm which gave me just enough time to go outside, walk around the area by my hotel, walk around Gion, go to a random temple, and find an izakaya for dinner. The food was very solid and it ended up filling with lots of tourists – but a healthy mix of locals and tourists. The people I met at the bar weren’t really my vibe – wanted to talk about politics that I didn’t really agree with – but it was good to talk and meet with some people. I found out the next day that Kyoto nightlife is not very good, but I think going to a lively izakaya is the move in Kyoto if you want to drink and meet people. The bar scene is pretty whack (although I didn’t have much time to truly navigate it)
* Day 6: I woke up relatively early to get to Fushimi Inari, but again – not early enough to beat the crowds. I hiked to the top. This may sound controvercial to say, but I sort of found that once you’ve seen one temple in Tokyo/Osaka, you’ve kind of seen them all. But Fushimi Inari is a bit different – and I really enjoyed the hike to the top. The view wasn’t anything crazy, but it was good to break a sweat and walking through the gates is pretty neat. I stopped at a fantastic French/Japanese fusion spot after. Then I walked along the river and sat down for a bit. When I came back I walked around what I thought was Nishiki Market but instead was just a massive outdoor mall with cover. I was honestly extremely impressed with the shopping. Some of the best military supply, vintage clothing, and general shopping i’ve seen in a while, and not the quality I expected from a commercial tourist area. I ended up buying some expensive sneakers at Graphpaper, then got a fish massage (cool experience, not too expensive) before heading home. Since it was Friday night I walked around looking for bars. Ended up meeting 2 really cute english speaking ex-pats living in japan and went to a bar with them after looking around for something cool for a while. The vibes at the bar were pretty whack and we looked up info on the best bars in Kyoto and it turned out we were already at one of the “best bars”. I had a great time in Kyoto and it is a great city but I have to say it has probably the worst bar/nighlife scene of any city i’ve been to. I wasn’t trying to go crazy or be a drunk tourist menace, but the vibes were just off. Nightlife was not the purpose of Kyoto though, and I met some nice people. Just a footnote. I came home by 11pm and started preparing for one night in Osaka.
* Osaka (1 night)
* Day 7: Since my hotel check-out was 10am in Kyoto and my Osaka Check in was 3pm, I had a solid 3 hours or so to kill in Kyoto so I went to kiyomizu-dera. The temples were cool, but for me it wasn’t too different from others. The crowds were insane. The pictures were nice though and it is situated on a solid elevated viewpoint of the city. I came back to my hotel to get my bags and took the Limited Express train to Osaka. Let me just say right now that the train experience in Japan is so freaking good. Whether it be getting around a city on local trains, getting to nearby day-trips or local stops, or covering large distances… everything is so simple, so easy, so well connected, and it is orderly and quiet. A lot of times navigating this can be stressful because of how loud and chaotic it can be in most cities. But japan was just lovely. Anyways. Got to Osaka. My plan for osaka was basically to just go out for good food and then hit the bar scene a bit. I got some fantastic fried dough with powdered sugar and cream filling. I got fantastic Japanese BBQ (I thought I balled out but the bill came out to just $55 bucks or so – no tipping. Crazy how cheap and devalued the yen is. Afterwards I went out to a series of bars for 1 or 2 drinks that I found on reddit. While it was livelier than Kyoto, I still found the nightlife scene to be a bit whack. The first 3 bars I went to were all australian tourists with about 40 guys to 5 girls, everyone in japan to go skiiing. Dudes were so horny just lining up to talk to girls. Another bar had an american expat but he started talking about politics and was just saying a lot of right-wing stuff I didn’t really agree with and didn’t want to talk about. Finally I went to another bar where there was about 5 people and they were SOOO friendly and happy to see me. I stayed there until 3am or so and it was lovely but again the vibes were just a bit weird. Still had a fun time. It is just different from what I’m used to.
* Tokyo (2 nights)
* Day 8: I took the shinkasen back to tokyo for the final portion of my trip. This time I stayed in a cheaper hotel in Shibuya. Hotel was fine, and affordable. A bit of a walk from the subway and not that fun going through shibuya scramble all the time, but being 10 minutes away from that allowed me to see a slightly quieter side of shibuya. I walked around Yoyogi park around sunset and generally wandered around the area to see some of the streets I missed on my first trip to Tokyo. By the end of the day I was exhausted from hangover/travel and just picked a random perfectly acceptable ramen spot a stones throw away from my hotel. Then I went to bed early.
* Day 9: The Super Bowl started at 8:30am and as an american football fan I couldn’t miss it. Even though it was early and tired I made my way to a sports bar in shibuya halfway through the first quarter and it was a MADHOUSE. But I had so much fun. Obviously it was almost all tourists and heavily american but everyone was so friendly. I got lots of free drinks and ended up getting festively drunk before noon and met a ton of people. When the game was over a few of us went to a really nice sushi spot in Akasuka. We split up after the fantastic lunch and instead of a 30 minute subway ride home I decided to walk an hour so that I could see different parts of the city. I had nothing else really to “knock off my list” and i was on my last day so I just enjoyed the walk. I initially planned on going to a fancy bar directly across from my hotel but when I got there, there was a line and I just wasn’t really up for a line, and didn’t really want to drink that badly. I was more looking for a relaxing wind-down to my trip. So I went back to my hotel and got to relax.
* Day 10: my flight was at 5pm so after I checked out of my hotel I had 2 hours to kill. I took a train to Ginza to look for some small souvenir to bring back but couldn’t find anything in a short period of time. I took the train back to my hotel, got my bags, got an uber, chilled for 3 hours in the airport, flew back to LA in 10 hours, had a 5 hour layover, boarded the 6 hour flight to NYC, got stuck on the tarmac for 3 hours. I handled jetlag in the worst possible way and slept through the entire flight. Finally got back home at 2am and stayed up unpacking, doing laundry, and rotting on my couch until 5am. Slept until noon. Did errands, groceries, etc. while sleepy with crazy brain fog.

Takeaways:

* Staying in Hakone in a Ryokan was so nice and needed. Having a full day to just relax and get away from the pressures of a tight schedule and the stimuli of a city was great and I think every solo trip requires a trip like this to break it up. I’ll make sure to do this on all trips going forward.
* The train system in Japan is awesome. I’ve never been on a trip anywhere that getting around was so easy. Getting around the city even in places with robust public transit can still be stressful, loud, overcrowded, and anxiety inducing. Japan is just so efficient and simple. There’s always a stop nearby. The train is always on time. You never have to wait more than 5 minutes. It is crowded but I never experience “too crowded”. Everyone is quiet. The shinkasen is so much better than flying to get around cities that are a few hours apart. It makes city hopping so easy. And limited express trains seamlessly get you both across the city and to day trips with zero stress and almost no need to plan ahead. The rest of the world needs to take notes. If you are the type of person who gets travel anxiety, I would imagine Japan would be a good place to try to experience something different.
* Except for the absolutely mobbed tourist spots, most people are spatially aware which makes walking around less stressful. 95% of people move to the side on escalators allowing you to walk by them. People generally don’t block the entire sidewalk.
* I found that most Japanese don’t speak very good english – and I’m a tourist so I’m not mad about it. Google translate effectively solved any logistical communication gaps, but it was definitely hard to meet locals and it meant that I was kinda limited to tourist spots if I wanted to meet people or go out for drinks. While I did have 1 or 2 really fun bar experiences, I generally find coming to another country and then only hanging out with tourists to be missing out on some of the culture. I would also say that generally speaking the nightlife in Japan for a tourist wasn’t that amazing and was a very different vibe from Europe/USA. I like to do a healthy mix of experiencing culture, sightseeing, discovering neighborhoods, and nightlife. The purpose of this trip was not primarily for nightlife, but if nightlife is a big part of your travel experience, I think you might want to try somewhere other than Japan.
* The first half of my trip was basically perfect and I was extremely lucky to meet the people I did, and plan out the perfect amount of time for activities without overdoing it. I didn’t have the same amount of perfect luck in meeting people during the second half of my trip but I was cognizant that I was lucky during the first 5 days and didn’t set my expectations too high (with the exception of the super bowl bar experience, which was awesome). I think that managing expectations is extremely important for solo travel because the experience can’t always be perfectly planned and you can’t always luck into meeting the right people at the right time. But it really makes you appreciate the times when the stars align.
* By the end of my trip, the novelty of the vastly different culture and amazing way of navigating the city started to become more routine. During these periods I tend to get a bit more anxious and restless and start missing home a bit. I think it would be hard for me to travel for 1 or 2 months, but I’m trying to learn to adjust my mentality and my expectations so that I can just relax and be present. I stayed just long enough to enjoy everything, but I started noticing myself just beginning to miss home by the last couple days.

I may edit this post to add any takeaways. I’m using this post as a bit of a journal/diary entry for myself, but I hope others can take something away as well.

by childishgames