This is a recap of my trip to Japan over the Christmas holidays of 2022. It was me, my wife, and two kids. Please note that I used to live in Japan and my wife is Japanese so our itinerary may not seem super touristy.
We arrived on December 20th at Kansai airport. We bummed around Osaka while we waited for my friend, whose house we were staying at, to get home. We went to the dotonbori and my wife got some takoyaki. I wanted ramen so we went to Ichiran. It was okay. I didn’t like the closed off atmosphere of the place. Basically, it’s designed to minimize human interaction. Food was decent but not my favorite.
The next day we went to Nara. Got a bit of a late start because my wife, who is Japanese and hadn’t been back to Japan since 2017, went crazy in the grocery store buying all the snacks. The boys and I helped a little too. Nara was cool. I always love Todaiji and the Daibutsu. We grabbed dinner at this little place in the JR station called yayoikan. It was good and not horribly expensive. It’s a teishoku, set meal, place. Good array of choices.
On day 3 we went to Kyoto and after stashing our bags at Matsumoto ryokan, we grabbed ramen for lunch. Afterwards, we went to Kiyomizu. I love this temple. It’s my favorite. I hadn’t been back since 2013. We walked from Kiyomizu to sannenzaka. There were tons of neat restaurants and shops. I liked this one shop dedicated to plums. I can’t remember the name. The boys became tired and we ended up having to do dinner with konbini food.
The next day, day 4, was super cold. We went to Fushimi Inari but the kids weren’t super impressed. We explored a little and then went back to Kyoto proper. Since it was cold, we decided to hang out at the Yodobashi Camera near Higashihonganji and just north of Kyoto station. My wife enjoyed getting to shop and the boys enjoyed seeing the Japanese toys and stuff.
Day 5 was mostly a wash as we spent a good deal of it moving to my wife’s hometown outside of Nagoya.
Day 6 was Christmas. We mainly hung out at the mother in law’s place. We did the typical fried chicken (not KFC though) for lunch and gave the boys some small gifts.
Day 7 was more shopping and I got to hangout with my host grandfather (I did a homestay 20 years ago and still keep in touch with them). We went to the Aeon Mall in Nagakute and this went past Ghibli Park. Couldn’t see anything from the linimo.
On the following day I took the boys to Nagoya castle. I was disappointed to find that the main castle was actually closed for renovations. We also took this time to go to my favorite okonomiyaki place in the Kanayama area of Nagoya. It’s called Hiroshima Honten. I love that place.
Day 9 was spent going around my wife’s hometown and showing the boys around.
Day 10 saw us head to the Tokyo area. Our Shinkansen tickets were for the afternoon so we just enjoyed with the mother in law until we had to leave.
On Day 11 we explored Asakusa and I bought some Ukiyoe prints. We also went to the Asahi building and the Tokyo skytree. We did not go up. We did yakiniku for dinner.
We departed the next day. I’ll go back and touch this up later.