Hi,
Me and wife travelled to Japan in Jan/Feb 2019 and had the most amazing time, we’re now planning our second ever trip and have about 30 days to play with. Our original 22 day trip in 2019 was as follows:
Tokyo -> Fujiyoshida -> Kyoto (+Nara) -> Okayama (+Naoshima) -> Hiroshima (+Itsukushima) -> Fukouka -> Kanazawa -> Nagano -> Tokyo
Now that we have a few extra days to play with, I’m thinking of something like this:
​
|Destination|Day trip(s)|Nights|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Tokyo|Ghibli Museum|3/4|
|Nagoya (or Kyoto again??)|Magome post town|3|
|Himeji? – as a in-between stop||1|
|Nagasaki||2|
|Kagoshima|Volcano|2|
|A nice hot spring onsen somewhere on way back up?||1|
|Osaka||3|
|Koya-san||1|
|Nikko||2|
|Sendai|Yamadera + Yamagata|2|
|Mountainous hot spring onsen somewhere on the way up to Sapporo?||1|
|Sapporo|Snow Festival|3|
|Yokohama?|Stay here the last few days instead of Tokyo again?|2|
​
The destinations above are not in the correct order, I would probably stagger them so we have something to see on the way down Japan as well as the way back up. We have about 2/3 spare days.
We loved Tokyo but we also loved exploring walkable areas with temples such as those on Itsukushima island. We’ll be travelling via JR Pass so can’t go too far from the JR lines.
We would really appreciate input on the itinerary and any Onsen recommendations in the areas I’ve mentioned. Thank you!
EDIT – Forgot to say this trip will be at the same time again, mid-Jan to mid-Feb