20 Day Itinerary Check :)

6 comments

1. If you want Lolita clothes, do Takeshita Street before Tokyu Plaza. Closet Child has a great selection at decent prices, whereas Tokyu Plaza has a very limited selection.

2. When in March, exactly, will you be going? You mention cherry blossom viewing on the last day. Timing for that should be good if you’re landing in early March. If your trip extends into April the blossoms might be on the waning side.

   Also, if you want to see more blossoms, you want to do Tokyo first and Kyoto later, as the blossoms will pop off later in Kyoto. If I am ever back in Kyoto in late March I will be absolutely certain to go walk the Philosopher’s Path again, it was stunning:

   https://i.redd.it/oe8486b52hwa1.jpg

   Also: if you’re not absolutely set on doing the Kyoto ryokan, why not switch it up and do one in Hakone instead? I’m sure the experience in Kyoto won’t be bad, but Kyoto isn’t really a hot springs town and Hakone very much is.

3. Don’t do the micro pig cafe, super unethical, sad, and cruel. Definitely not something good to support financially.

4. Here’s hoping the loathsome ‘mipig’ café is shut down by the time you get there. Take a look at the pigs today on Instragram and say goodbye: all of those you see today will have died or been killed within a year despite their usual 12-15 year lifespans.

   I wouldn’t count on all of the restaurants you’re planning on visiting still being open, especially the pancake joint: food fads tend to explode in Tokyo for a few months, then effectively vanish. The local shopping street near where we live had five ‘bubble tea’ places open in a six-month period in 2018; all but one were gone a year later. Don’t worry about it, however, as most of the tens of thousands of restaurants and cafés in Tokyo are good.

   Looking at the cherry blossoms in Ueno Park will be good from, say, 21 March to 26 March, estimating from the 2023 peak time.

5. Looks pretty good! I can’t recommend doing both disneyland and disneysea in one day though! Better to just pick one (and I’d recommend Sea).

6. Good itinerary overall! Most days seem doable to me so I will only comment on the ones I have doubts about:

   day 2: This day will only work if you take a very early shinkansen like 7-8 am. especially the 11 appointment at the kimono store I have doubts about. The schedule after that is probably doable.

   day 4: fushimi (with hike) + kinkakuji + higashiyama area in a day is pushing it. I would opt to move kinkakuji to another day here. The most logical would be to combine it with Arashiyama but that day looks pretty full already.

   day 5: 19:30 is pretty late to start the ryokan. it’s your trip obviously but I like to take a bit more time to explore and relax when I go to a ryokan. relaxing is part of the experience and by this day I imagine you will have pretty sore feet from all the walking. A 3 or 4 PM check in at the ryokan will really give you the time to enjoy the experience.

   day 11: nice that you will attend a sumo tournament. depending on how interested you are you can really go any time of day. in the early morning you can see the lower ranked rikishi. the venue is pretty quiet at that time, giving you as a tourist some freedom to explore the area. After lunch is when the high ranked matches start and it gets pretty crowded, but the atmosphere is great. Matches normally finish at 17.00.

   day 16: a nikko day trip + kegon falls is pushing it. toshogu shrine takes some time to get to and explore, and kegon falls needs a 50 min bus drive from Nikko station to reach. Getting to Kegon falls, checking out the region and going back can cost you 3 hours easily. I see it is a must see visit for you but it will make it more difficult to see other places during the day. Nikko closes early so if you want to make this itinerary work, start early! Alternatively you can spend a night in Nikko (another ryokan?) and give yourself more time to explore this place.

   day 17: this day looks very busy to me. If you omit skytree it’s probably doable. I don’t know if skytree is a must do for you, but I don’t find it to be all that great. I do like the shopping center at the base. They have a lot of character shops.

   day 18: this day looks ok, but considering my previous comments on day 16 and 17, you could consider to kill a darling here and take hakone out of the itinerary giving you more time in nikko and maybe some time at night after nikko to visit skytree. If you take the Tobu line back from Nikko to Tokyo, it actually makes a stop at Skytree so this is a logical combination.

   I hope this helps you sort out the last bits. As for food, you are about to enter a food paradise with Tokyo and Japan in general. I always gain a few kilo when I visit, but I never regret it. It’s great that you already did your research on restaurants, but I would also recommend to leave a few days open for restaurants you stumble upon along the way. The general quality of restaurants, but high and lower end, is very good in Japan. I don’t think I have ever been to a place that really sucked. It will add some spontaneity to the trip.

   As for foods to bring back home, Don Quijote has a huge food department that is always fun to browse through. Convenience stores have the latest trends, but are relatively expensive. Also check out shops like Seiju Ishi and Kaldi for interesting conserved products, they carry a lot of import from overseas which can lead to interesting finds, products from Korea, Taiwan, Europe of America can be found along Japanese products. Finally the food departments of department stores are a blast to explore, albeit a lot more expensive.