Traveling to Japan For High School Daughter’s High School Graduation Gift

11 comments

1. Just to start with minimum time needed to see that, I would say you need a good 3 weeks minimum (or you have to do less). One thing that I have not considered in the number of day needed is that between some locations, you will have many hours of train to do, so depending on when you take the train and how early you start the day, might need more time to account for travel days that might have less sightseeing time available.

   First, I would start by landing in Tokyo, you likely want to spend much of the time in Tokyo at the end so you do not have to lug your shopping across the country, so maybe 1 or to days to kill jetlag before going to Kanazawa. Kanazawa will be a minimum of 1 day, but could be done in two depending on what you want to see. Next, Takayama, that is doable in a day, except if you want to go to the Hida folk village, that would likely take 2 days. One popular option is to stop by Shirakawa-go between Kanazawa and Takayama.

   Next, you would likely want to add Nagoya to the plan for the new Ghibli amusement park that will open, luckily before you go in 2023.

   Next is Kyoto or Osaka, both cities are close to each other so you can stay at the same hotel to do both. For what you have, only one day each should be enough. However, Kyoto can easily be worth 2-3 days and in Osaka you could include Denden town for anime related stuff and one new attraction is Super Mario World in Universal Studio. One popular day trip in Kansai that is not in your list is Nara.

   From there, you will get your first really long travel to Matsuyama, that will be a good 4 hours in the train. One options here would be to stop somewhere during the day to visit, the obvious option would be Himeji to see the castle (but Matsuyama also have an original castle).

   Matsuyama can be done in one day. Next is tricky as logically, it would be Yufuin, but this is not the most obvious. One option is to go to Hiroshima by ferry and from there take the train to Beppu, this would be is you want to stop somewhere on the way. The other option is to go to Yawatahama station to take the ferry to Beppu and from there it will be one more hour by bus to Yufuin. So it might be hard to have everything aligned to do it in a single day, especially considering that you usually have to check-in before 5 or 6pm in a ryokan that offer the meal.

   Next will also be a pain as it will be more than 5h in the train/bus to reach Kagoshima to take the ferry to Yakushima. Or you could take 3h30 to 4h to go to Fukuoka and fly to Yakushima from there, this also depend on timing of the train and flight. Considering the time invested to go to Yakushima, you likely want to take two full days to visit.

   Next, return to Kagoshima and fly to Tokyo.

   From Tokyo, you can do day trips to Nikko, Chichibu and Hakone. For Hakone, if you want to spend the night in a ryokan with onsen, you can ask your hotel to keep your luggage for a night and return to the same hotel once you return from tour Hakone trip. Fuji it depend on what you mean, as there is a chance you can see it from Hakone, but you can do a day trip to Kawaguchiko, that is the other popular “Fuji” option (unless you mean hiking the mountain, and that is a completely different story. On top of that, you have a good 5 days worth of things in Tokyo itself.

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   If you do all of that, it is clear that it will require a lot of planning as you would visit many city, so this mean transport between the different cities and changing accommodation. One thing you want to do is travel as light as you can, like the smallest luggage you can (big luggage now require space reservation in some shinkansen), this mean you wand to bring less than a week worth of cloth and you do your laundry once in a while.

2. PuroPuro land. Gundam cafe. Ghibli museum. See if there are special events during your days there. Prepare for long line if there is, but worth it, usually. Time game releases with Tokyo tower. Last time I was there it was Persona 5. Pokémon Mega center is great and Akiba nearby is just street after street of anime. Cheap statues sold at the weekend markets there.

3. That’s a nice list you’ve got there. Although, I would definitely remove Yakushima from the list as it’s way too far and you can do hiking in Takayama instead. (Yufuin is also pretty far, but you don’t want to miss the hot springs there)

   As for some other anime places:

   – Ube City in Yamaguchi Prefecture is famous for being the birth place of Anno Hideaki (director of Evangelion series). There are real life places that are used in the movies that you can see yourself.

   – The Ghibli Theme Park in Nagoya opens sometime next year, so you can try going there as well.

   – Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture. The anime “A Place Further than the Universe” is set in this city. It’s a day trip from Tokyo and there’s public transport there to move between locations.

   – Tokyo. There are loads of anime that are based off of places in Tokyo, it’s almost endless. If you can share her interests in anime, I’m sure I can find plenty of places even just in Tokyo.

4. I highly recommend getting a JR pass if you’ll be traveling around Japan, rather than staying in one area.

5. In Kanazawa you should also see the castle, outdoor market and Higashi Chaya (most photographed street in japan). They are all very near each other .

   Harajuku, Asakusa and shinjuku should be on your Tokyo trip! And mt. Fuji is pretty far from Tokyo
   Yokohama worth a trip if there’s time. Next to Tokyo and has minato Mirai and China town

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7. 1. My take on taking a trip to Yakushima: unless you are taking a trip in April or late October-November, it’s not a place you would enjoy on a family trip as it adds a lot of possible complications (even aside from travel consideration) – it’s one of the wettest places on Earth, and you would need to pack waterproof clothes and hiking equipment. While there might be temptation to visit Yakushima in August, which is the driest month (aside from occasional typhoon) – it’s the humidity that will get you during summer. While winter temperatures and plant species make it a temperate rainforest, it is a **rainforest**.

   2. Probably all other destinations can be worked into a standard three week trip – it may make sense to fly from Tokyo to Oita and work your way down from there: Yufuin → Matsuyama (via Beppu-Yawatahama ferry) → Hiroshima → Kansai (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Himeji) → Kanazawa → Takayama → Tokyo (with day trips to Hakone, Yokohama, Nikko and Chichibu).

   3. Note that Old Chichbu Bridge is about an hour’s walk from Banba street shopping district, Hitujiyama Park and Daiji-in (though you can visit Jorin-ji on the way). You might be tempted to schedule Chichibu and either Moominvalley Park or Kawagoe in your day trip, however, this will result in an extremely rushed day.

8. Potentially try the Pokémon cafe. You just have to make sure you apply for a spot way in advance.

9. So if you guys commit to Fushimi Inari, you’re going to spend most of a good 4-5 hours there, hiking up and down stairs and hilly trails in addition to the rest of your travel that’s already heavily pedestrian-focused. Plenty of stops on the way, plenty of shrines, lots of food and drink — but at the end of the day it’s hiking in summer, so treat it appropriately. Note that if your feet or shoes start hitting a wall, there’s a shoe shop in Kyoto station that can set you up with insoles or repair or whatnot (know your shoe size in cm). If you are going to just stay the one day for this and the Manga Museum and your daughter’s interested in trying a capsule hotel, that may be the night to do it. If you miss the ramen museum in Osaka, the one in Yokohama’s not far from Tokyo — but find additional things to go to in Yokohama, like Chinatown, the rest of Minatomirai, Red Brick Warehouse, etc.

   Hakone and Mt. Fuji may end up being separate day trips of their own. For the former there’s the scenic route to get there and a “pirate ship” for the lake as well as a shrine on the lake proper that’s good for a brief visit.

   Based on what your daughter likes, your Shibuya visit should run her over to the Animate! and Mandarake shops in Shibuya and if she likes Persona 5 she may want to hit the walkway overlooking Hachiko square. The new pedestrian mall around the corner at Miyashita park might be good for trying out regional cuisine from the rest of the country you can’t visit — the lowest level has a series of cafe-like restaurants that each specialize in different regions, and it’s right next to a Yokocho if she wants to see a traditional izakaya (or if you and your wife want to unwind and have a drink while your kids are on their own in the neighborhood, like at the Disney store).

   Note that if the crowds outside any of the big stations get a bit dense and/or unmanagable many of those stations have underground entrances up to a kilometer out from the station you can use to get around.

   Team Lab Borderless is in Odaiba, which you could try to bundle up with a trip to Tokyo Big Sight if there’s anything Anime or Gaming related happening during your trip, or Tokyo Disneyworld if not. Further, there’s a Miyazaki-designed clock in Shiodome on the far end of the Yurikamome line from the Borderless locations that might be a fun diversion, and the giant-sized Unicorn Gundam is in DiverCity, in between both points on the train line.

   The Ghibli museum has an odd method of handling tickets, so be sure to plan getting those tickets roughly three months before your flight. Can’t stress that enough. It’s on the same train line (Chuo) out of Shinjuku as Nakano Broadway, so if you have an early afternoon ticket for the museum, you can probably fit in Nakano Broadway beforehand. If you do that, you might be able to do Shibuya and Tokyo Tower after the Museum, using the Inokashira line to go to Shibuya, then transferring to the Yamanote, swapping from there to the Hibiya line in Ebisu and hitting Kamiyacho station (closer than Roppongi station) for Tokyo Tower, whose top desk closes at 9:45p JST.

   Akihabara and Asakusa/Sensoji can be in the same batch, and you can add Tokyo Skytree (which has better views than Tokyo Tower, but is also more expensive), or you can hit Tokyo Dome instead, which is also in the NE end of central Tokyo and offers a bit on its own.

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   A couple of things your daughter may want to do if she’s into the music or events would be to check for anniversaries for series she likes in the last year before the trip — this can lead to pop-up events like cafes, museum-style art showings, stores, movies in a Roadshow format (hopping from theatre to theatre up and down the country), and perhaps even author or voice talent appearances. Further, if there’s a particular band she likesthat was doing music for a show she likes, they often announce events on Twitter in raw Japanese, so grab google translate and do some copy and pasting to find concert events large and small about 6 months to a week out from your trip.

10. As others have said typically most of the famous anime/manga centers are focused more towards the male demographic and therefore … you know… there are still places you’ll be able to find that might interest her but just be warned.

    Yakushima is a beautiful otherworldly place but it’s far away and difficult to get to from most places. I know there’s a direct flight from Osaka once a day and most likely one from Tokyo but it seems like an excessive side trip. I’m sure it would be totally worth it though.

    I visited Takayama once and didn’t find much to do there apart from learn about the local Hida culture and see the old houses in Shirakawago and Gokayama. Again, beautiful but far away and difficult to get to.

    Unless it’s a tour where your transportation is sorted for you I recommend sticking to 1 or 2 places only. If you come back in the future you can choose 1 or 2 different places. Don’t underestimate the difficulty of traveling outside the tourist bubbles and using public transportation without Japanese.

11. There are enough locations on this list to fill at least a month, and there are a lot of very distant locations further down the list. Yufuin, Yakushimi, and Dogo Onsen in particular are nowhere near anything else you’re doing and will add a lot of travel time. Keep in mind that EVERYTHING will be new and exciting, so while it’s good to have some ideas, I would advise against spending too much time running all over the country. Typically I would recommend roughly two weeks just for the highlights of Kanto (Tokyo and its environs) and Kansai (Kyoto/Osaka and their environs).

    >Kyoto

    I used to live right next to Fushimi Inari and it’s very worth going to. That said, there is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much more to do and see in Kyoto than just the Shrine and the Manga Museum.

    See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/5wgxa1/best_way_to_group_these_sites_in_kyoto/dea059y/?context=3) for many of the major sights in Kyoto roughly broken down by geographic area, but do keep in mind that this is by no means exhaustive nor is it meant to be a checklist. I recommend at least 3 full days just for the highlights of Kyoto, which I would divide roughly into these three areas:

    * Southern Higashiyama (including Gion) + Downtown (Nishiki Market, Teramachi/Shinkyogoku, Pontocho)
    * Northern Higashiyama + the Kamo Delta/Imperial Palace area (I particularly like this area on bicycle)
    * Arashiyama + maybe one or two things in the north-northwest (e.g., Kinkaku-ji, Ryoan-ji, Kitanotenman-gu, Kamishichiken)

    And then at least another 3 days for day trips to Osaka (I recommend at least Namba/Dotonbori and Shinsekai; Kuromon, Umeda, and Tenjinbashisuji would also rank highly), Nara (primarily Nara Park area including Todai-ji, Nigatsu-do, and Kasuga-taisha), and Kobe+Himeji (Castle+gardens in Himeji, Chinatown and Iijinkan in Kobe).

    Around the first week of April is typically the height of cherry blossoms in Kyoto, which would all the more reason to spend more time there. Major sights throughout the city (especially temples in Higashiyama) have special openings/illuminations at night that are very worth going to, and Maruyama Park fills with food stalls for visitors in the evenings.

    As far as Fushimi Inari is concerned: it’s open 24 hours and I recommend taking advantage of that fact if you can. It can get quite crowded in middle of the day, but the very early morning and evening are much, much less crowded. My personal favorite time to go is about an hour before dawn, though that can be difficult to manage if you’re not staying nearby or have a hard time waking up early. The advantage of going that early is firstly that you basically have the place to yourself, and secondly that you get to experience it both illuminated at night and in the beautiful light of early dawn. Regardless of what you do, I recommend going both during the day and at night if you have the chance.

    The Manga Museum is in many ways more of a library than a museum. It’s interesting, but ultimately ranks relatively low on my list of things to see in Kyoto since there’s just so much else to see. One thing that is kind of cool about it is that it uses a repurposed elementary school building.

    The Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum is a colossal waste of time. It’s basically just a hallway filled with ramen packaging from different countries going back to the 60s and a few ramen commercials. You can also “make” your own cup noodle, but basically that just boils down to putting some freeze-dried ingredients on top of some freeze-dried noodles and then sitting at a table designed for elementary-school students to color the packaging with markers. It also doesn’t help that it’s not centrally located at all–very skippable.

    >Takayama

    >Kanazawa

    If you’re doing one I would do both and combine them with Shirakawa-go, which is between them via bus. They’re lovely towns, but the three of them together will take roughly 3 full days without any detours or day trips.

    >Nikko

    The omission of major sights here, particularly, Toushou-gu and Taiyu-in, seems a bit remiss.

    >Yakushima Island

    This is nowhere anything else on your trip. If this is a high priority you will really need to either have a lot of time or make tough choices on what to cut elsewhere.

    >Tokyo

    Akihabara is a mishmash of anime/manga shops, big-box electronics retailers, extremely niche electronics shops, niche hobby shops, video game arcades, and porn shops. Be prepared to see a generous helping of all of them, whether you intend to or not.

    I’m not exactly sure what you intend to do in relation to Mt. Fuji. You can see it from Tokyo assuming that weather is clear and you’re in a good vantage point, but the mountain itself is quite a ways outside of Tokyo proper.

    If you want to go to the Ghibli Museum, make sure to get tickets well in advance. If you don’t get tickets in advance, you’re not going. Inokashira Park, which is right next door, is one of the most famous places in Tokyo for cherry blossoms–check it out if you’re there on the right dates.

    Tokyo Tower is really not worth going into as far as I’m concerned. If you want a great view you’d be much better off spending your money on the Roppongi Hills observatory, from which you can get a lovely view of Tokyo Tower.

    Whether or not Nakano Broadway is worth your time is somewhat debatable. On the one hand there are enough shops that an anime/manga fan could probably spend a lot of time going through them, but on the other hand it seems like about half the shops are closed or closing, and it feels pretty dead compared to Akihabara or DenDenTown (Osaka). Nakano Sanbangai and Sun Mall right next door are pretty fun for a stroll though.

    I would suggest adding at least Shinjuku (west side is big business and government skyscrapers, east side is food, fun, and shopping+Shinjku Gyoen) and Umeda (especially Ameyayokocho) while in Tokyo. You might also consider Harajuku (in Shibuya, but it was unclear if you were including it), Kagurazaka (perhaps in the evening for dinner?), Yanaka, and Nakameguro (particularly if you’re there for the cherry blossoms).

    ****

    Finally, speaking as someone who was very into anime and manga in high school myself: Do not plan this entire trip around anime and manga. It’s absolutely fine to do some things related to it, but it’s also important to understand that manga is only a very small part of what Japan is. Going to Japan and experiencing how much more there was to the country cured me of my preoccupation with anime almost overnight. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with liking anime, but I genuinely feel sorry for people who come to the country and spend most of their trip shopping for memorabilia that they probably won’t care about in a few years.

    On the other hand, I think it’s a great idea to try to visit some of the places that appeared in or inspired some of her favorite anime, but I do worry that some of the specific places she’s chosen may not be doable within whatever time constraints you’ll be working with. Without knowing how much time you’ll have and a better idea of what she’s into, it’s hard to give any further advise on this topic, but suffice it to say that there are many anime/manga inspired by locations that are much more easily accessible.