Trip Report: 10 days 3/28 -4/6 Tokyo, Kyoto and Disney with Kid

Finally getting around to typing up our trip report. We had such an incredible trip, it was quite depressing to come back to reality! This sub was invaluable to putting together our itinerary and I enjoyed reading every trip report so I hope mine can help someone as well. Sorry for the length but this is for my records as well!

Traveling squad: Me (36 F), husband (37M) and our 6 year old daughter

Tips/Thoughts: Putting these first in case you don’t want to read my whole novel report

* Jetlag: We visited from California so our jetlag was terrible but worked in our favor. The first couple days we were awake by 4-5am so we were able to get to destinations before they were crowded. Of course this meant we were exhausted by 7pm if we didn’t nap. It took us about 3-4 days to stop waking up early naturally but we kept to the early morning starts to beat the crowds.
* JR Pass 7 days: I wasn’t originally going to even get it but for some reason decided to lol. Not totally sold on if this was best for us. We probably broke even on costs with the shinkansen and using regional trains. Also, booking the shinkansen was kind of a pain, can you use the machine with the jr pass? I couldn’t figure it out so we had to stand in line for the counter various times, which took up time. The line at the airport to redeem it was probably an hour long so we waited until later in the trip and didn’t use it for the Nartia Express. So it truly benefited us on our last day when our Suicas ran out so we only used JR lines for sightseeing lol. Now that I see the cost is going up, it definitely would not be worth it in the future.
* Suica card – 10.000 on our cards and 5.000 on child card to start off. This was a good amount for our duration and we only had to top off once at the end of our trip because the monorail at Disney costs money (shock for us!). We used it for public transportation, to pay for drinks and snacks at various places and at arcades. So convenient!
* Pocket wifi: We have T-Mobile so we have internet and data internationally but they told us it would be very slow in Japan. Pocket wifi worked out great for us. Yes, it was an extra thing to carry but we always had one backpack on us throughout the day anyways. Because we had so many devices (3 peoples phones and tablets) it made the most sense. Only negative was that it took a long time to charge. We used Japan Wireless, very easy to pick up from Narita Terminal 1 and the drop off mailbox was right outside the security gate at the airport. When my husband would step away carrying the wifi (usually to catch Pokemon) I would still get a pretty decent signal through T-Mobile, was definitely slow but usable!
* Eating: We were worried about what our kid would eat but there were always plenty of options and there was always fried chicken and rice lol. She was more adventurous in eating than we thought she would be and of course, there was always bribery with ice cream and candy. It was vacation so we tried not to be strict about her diet, we just all wanted to have a good time so we picked our battles.
* During our trip I read on the sub that people were upset at the very long lines for restaurants since it was peak tourism. I think having a kid worked in our favor here because we ate so early we never had to wait very long anywhere or at all. Obviously that isn’t for everyone, but it really helped to not feel like it was crowded the whole trip. If we saw a line somewhere we would just skip it! There were restaurants every 5 to 10 feet! We also weren’t picky and weren’t trying to get into popular places, we will save that for a trip without our child and probably go during the offseason now that we’ve seen what lines can be like. Pokemon Cafe is the only exception and we used advice here to book it in advance, thanks! Nevertheless, everywhere we ate was delicious!
* Luggage forwarding: This ended up not really working out for us unfortunately. It was probably user error though or an anomoly lol. We loved the idea of it but we didn’t get our luggage for 2 days and while we had packed backup clothes in our backpacks, it was still a bit of a pain to not have our luggage until we were about to leave Kyoto. If we had a longer stay it would have made more sense or if we had fwded our luggage the night before we left Tokyo it would have worked better. There was also plenty of room on the train for our small carry on luggage, it just would have been a pain transversing the stations and city with them. You live and learn!
* Goshuin and journaling: I was so glad to learn about goshuin from this sub. Collecting them from all the temples we visited was such a highlight and will be my favorite souvenir. I hope to go back one day and continue to fill out my book. I also recommend taking your own journal to write down your own daily trip report, along with writing down what goshuin page is what temple, it helped me to remember what restaurants we went to and things my kid loved from each day (spoiler: ice cream and bath time) and will be a great reference for the future. We also loved shopping for charms at all the temples/shrines so that was a fun thing for my kid to do since I thought she might find the temples and shrines boring after a while.
* Backpack: We had a roll of doggy poop bags for garbage and it definitely came in handy. Hand sanitizer & sunscreen stick. I meant to pack a hand towel and forgot but ended up buying a really cute Totoro one the 2nd day and we used it a lot during our trip. We didn’t see paper towels in bathrooms until we got to Disney lol. I definitely recommend a hand towel but maybe buy it in Japan so it’s another keepsake! My husband had a foldable blanket, which I laughed at, and this ended up being very useful when we were sitting around at parks. But that’s not really a must, it just worked out for cherry blossom viewing. We are big water bottle people and always have our Yetis but we didn’t take them on the trip because of the prevalance of vending machines. That ended up being a good idea. We would buy a couple to have on us throughout the day and they were easily recyclable and not a big weight on our bags.
* Traveling with a kid: All I can say is thank gods we had to cancel our March 2020 trip. I am so grateful that we ended up doing this epic trip with a 6 year old vs a 3 year old. I could see how navigating with a stroller and nap times would have been very difficult. It was A LOT of walking for our daughter, but she was a trooper. We took a lot of breaks at parks and playgrounds (always know where a playground is!) and made sure to include her in looking at maps, deciding between this or that for activities and food and picking what train to get on, little things. By the end of the trip she would take our phones and navigate for us. It was a great learning experience! We also realized how much we eat on the go because we knew it was rude to eat and walk. However, we let her do that from time to time and we even saw locals eating on the go sometimes too (she would point them out lol). We never did it on the train and we never got dirty looks, but regardless I wasn’t going to worry about a passerbys opinion if I knew my daughter needed a snack while we were on our way somewhere. If you have kids you know snacks are the difference between a good time and a BAD time lol. Her endurance ended up really surprising us and if you are taking a kid just make sure to also treat them as a travel partner and make sure their needs are met as you would anyone else. I think my husband and I complained more about our feet than she did!

Day 1: Tokyo

* Landed at 5:50pm. Customs was VERY LONG. We waited almost 2 hours to go through and after an 11.5 hour flight with little sleep from my kid, it was exhausting just standing in that line. Make sure you have all your screenshots ready when you land, we saw a lot of people had to stand off to the side to fill out Visit Japan Web for the first time or even just to take the time to sign in and pull it up.
* Hotel in Shinjuku around 11pm.

Day 2: Up at 4am

* Ueno Park: Peak cherry blossoms
* Walked to Kaminarimon Gate
* Nakamise-Dori Street was just opening so not crowded at al
* Sensoji- Temple: bought my goshuin book and got my first one!
* Walked to Sumida Park: more beautiful sakura!
* Had lunch and back to hotel to nap
* Walked around Shinjuku in the evening: It started raining so we bought a cheap umbrella, popped into an arcade with crane games and beat(?) games, had dinner and walked through Omoide Yokocho before calling it a night!

Breakfast: 7-11 egg salad sandwiches (YUM), drinkable yogurt and packaged waffle for kid. Lunch: Flamme d’or beer hall at Asahi building. Dinner: Sushiro in Shinjuku.
19,000 steps

Day 3: up at 5am

* Meiji Shrine: Wow, walking there with no one else around was like stepping into a Miyazaki film. Couldn’t believe we were still in the city, what a beautiful hike.
* Yoyogi Park: snowing cherry blossoms! We spent a couple hours there people watching and doing our own little hanami with some 7-11 food and drinks we had brought in our backpacks. So so beautiful!!
* Harajuku street wandering and lunch. Latte art at Cafe Reissue (they drew our dog, it was awesome)
* Takeshita Street: This was probably the biggest crowd we encountered the whole trip. We weren’t even moving at one point and my kid got very nervous so we started popping in and out of shops to ease her nerves. Bought some fun souvenirs
* Shibuya: Hachiko! People had mentioned here to go early in the morning to avoid crowds but we only had to wait about 5 minutes and were able to get a picture easily enough, this was probably around 2pm. Did the crossing and then went up into the mall across the street from the station and watched it from an gachopon store window while my husband used some machines with my kid. The crossing wasn’t very busy so maybe it would have been better to wait until nighttime to see it.
* Disney store: if you are a Disney fan, highly recommend! It was a beautiful themed store and they are celebrating their 30th anniversary now so we got cool merchandise.
* Walked back to Harajuku to visit a taproom that we love from the states that no longer exists and is only in Japan, they didn’t open until 5pm hence the backtracking. Had a great time talking with the manager that happened to open the one we used to frequent!
* Back to hotel to rest and meet babysitter
* Husband and I went out to Golden Gai. SO. MUCH. FUN. The hardest part was figuring out how to pick a place. We probably went into 3 or 4 bars and met so many interesting people and learned so many things. It was a great way to spend our only evening away from our kid.

Breakfast: 7-11 again, you’ll notice a trend but we were always up so early there was nowhere else to eat, we didn’t mind it was always delicious. Lunch: Sakura-tei where we cooked our own okonomiyaki! Dinner: Harajuku Taproom

28,000 steps

Day 4:

* Tsukiji Market for breakfast
* teamLabs Planets at 10am, probably the best time to reserve, we waited for less than 10 min under tents and absolutely loved our time there, few complaints. No trash, no rude people, seemed sanitary, definitely a lot of people taking pics (as we were) but we live in LA so we are used to influencers in the wild and we know to ignore them and not worry about their shot lol. The experience was one of my kids favorite parts of our trip and my husband was totally surprised and impressed, I didn’t tell them anything about it. I would have never known about it without this sub, thank you!
* Unicorn Gundam and lunch at DiverCity Mall then shopping
* Headed to Tokyo Station to redeem our JR Pass to start the next day and walked to Pokemon Cafe for our 4pm reservation. Explored Pokemon Center after
* Back hotel for an early night’s rest after a couple days on the go

Breakfast: Tsukiji – sashimi, oysters, grilled seafood on a stick, waygu topped with uni (YUM), egg on a stick and ice cream. Lunch: curry katsu and ramen from the food court at DiverCity. Dinner: Pokemon cafe early and conbini snacks back at the hotel later.

17,000 steps

Day 5: Kyoto

* Leisure morning before heading to Tokyo Station to forward our luggage and catch the shinkansen to Kyoto.
* 2pm reservation for a tea ceremony at Maikoya. Dressed up in kimono and mens robes, took pictures and learned about tea ceremonies. A wonderful family activity!!
* Walked through Nishiki Market on the way to our hotel
* Checked into ryokan hotel and reserved the private bath for 5pm
* Grabbed quick dinner nearby before the bath. The private bath was so wonderful after days of more walking than we have ever done. It was way too hot for our daughter but she played with the water from the shower until it cooled down enough for her. We were very grateful for the private experience as she would not have been comfortable around other people and obviously would not have been able to play around in a proper onsen, we also have tattoos.
* Walked along the river and then Hanamikoji Street to Maruyama Park to see illuminated cherry blossoms. Just the walk was beautiful but WOW! We didn’t realize there would be a night market (more delicious food!) at the temple there and since it was Saturday night it was going off! So cool to see locals along the river and then at the park. The weeping tree was beautiful.
* Walked back to hotel via Gion and my daughter was fascinated by the beautiful women with the “white faces” that were wearing the same robes we wore earlier in the day. It was nice that it was late so not crowded at all but we still got to see the geisha wandering around. I would have liked to go back during the day but we never made it back

Breakfast: caffe veloce in Shinjuku Lunch: ekiben from tokyo station Dinner: McDonalds (because yes we are Americans that need to try mickey dee’s in every country we go to!) and snacks from the night market.

16,800 steps

Day 6:

* Took a taxi to Arashiyama as we had breakfast at the ryokan and that delayed our morning more than we planned. Wanted to beat the crowds.
* Hiked up the bamboo forest. It was….nice? The hike may have been more beautiful than the actual bamboo forest IMO. Everything was blooming and there were blossoms everywhere so it was almost underwhelming when we got to the short bamboo forest path.
* Tenryu-ji Temple garden. It was in full bloom and absolutely worth the minimal cost to tour the gardens. So many beautiful plants and the grounds were gorgeous. We ended up not going into the temple as we wanted to get to the monkey park before it got later.
* Hiked up Mt. Arashiyama to monkey park. I’m not sure why I never realized in my research that this was an actual hike up a mountain. It was strenuous on our already aching feet. Our daughter read the sign that said “Do not stare at monkeys” and cried the whole way up the mountain because she was scared she would stare at them. Her only breakdown the whole trip! We were going to take turns doing the very last part of the summit but after my husband came back with pictures of the monkeys she decided she wanted to go up. And of course, she loved it.
* Walked back to Arashiyama main street and ate some delicious waygu and japanese beef on a stick and ramen from street vendors.
* Train + bus to Kinkaku-ji
* Taxi back to hotel to nap and private bath again.
* Walked around for dinner and down by the river again because it was so pretty.

Breakfast: American & Japanese breakfast at ryokan. Lunch: street food in Arashiyama. Dinner: Omurice place in Kawaramachi Garden Food Hall

18,000 steps

Day 7:

* Fushimi Inari! We made sure to get up early and got breakfast from 7-11 the night before for on the go. This time we KNEW that we were going to be going up a mountain but we told ourselves we didn’t have to go all the way up if we were tired, no need to overdo it since we had just climbed a mountain the day before lol. It was so beautiful although a little crowded for 8am, but as we climbed higher there were fewer people. Once we saw the overlook of the city, my daughter and I said we could go back down but of course my husband encouraged us to keep climbing. We begrudgingly (but in a lighthearted way) climbed all the way to the top! We gave a donation at the top and were so proud of ourselves lol. In the end we were both glad that he pushed us to do the full loop because we were nearly alone at the top, which was very cool, and the rest of the trip my daughter talked about how she climbed 2 mountains back to back.
* We debated going to Nara for the rest of the day before heading to Tokyo Disney Resort area but we knew that we had 2 busy days of theme parks coming up (and we had just climbed 2 mountains!) so we decided to spend a few more hours in Kyoto, where we strolled along and ate at Nishiki Market, before heading back to Tokyo for the evening.

Breakfast: 7-11 food Lunch: Nishiki Market tempura and various seafoods and meats on a stick. Dinner: ekiben on shinkansen back to Tokyo

25,600 steps

Day 8:

* Tokyo Disneyland! I feel like I could do a whole separate post on visiting Disney. I won’t include it here as this is already long enough! Let me know if you want another post on it.

17,000 steps

Day 9:

* Tokyo DisneySea!

22,000 steps

Day 10: Last day, flight from NRT at 6pm

* Checked out of hotel and went to Tokyo Station to store our luggage in lockers to do or last sightseeing.
* Went to Akihabara and used the rest of our Suica card money on arcades. I really loved that beat game where you have like a keyboard and it is kind of like guitar hero but way better lol. I spent a lot of time on those games while the other 2 were doing crane games. A very cool overstimulating looking neighborhood but other than the arcades Akihabara wasn’t really our scene so I’m glad we didn’t have a whole lot of time to explore it. We aren’t huge into anime and my daughter didn’t want to do a maid cafe, which was my only plan there.
* Walked to Kanda shrine from there so we could get some last minute charms for family back home.
* Back to Tokyo Station to catch the train to the airport to leave 🙁

13,000 steps

Again, we had such an amazing time and we already can’t wait to go back one day. My daughter even misses it, although it might just be all the ice cream and stuffed animals we bought her. Everyone was so nice and we never felt judged or looked down on. We always felt very safe and we couldn’t believe how clean everything was. It was truly depressing to come back to America and get back to watching the news on the state of our country, but I guess that probably happens to a lot of people post travel, no matter where you live. Thank you again for every trip report, quick response on the weekly and itinerary check comment. I tell everyone I know that they must research this sub before going to Japan. I can’t wait to frequent here again to plan our next trip to travel lesser known spots without kids!