14 days in Japan

woodzie

Hi,

I’m planning on going to Japan for 14 days on my way home from Australia later this year. I want to visit Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima. I fly into Tokyo and was planning on staying there for 4 days, Kyoto for 4 days, Osaka for 3 days, Hiroshima 2 days and back to Tokyo for final day.

I know I’ll be missing out on a lot of the country but does anyone have any suggestions on whether this itinerary is good or offer a better one?

Thanks

tac foley

Looks fine for an itinerary. Guess you'll want to travel by Shikansen? All those places are on the route. Take lots of money - I lived in Tokyo for almost eight years.

Buy your train/bus travel tickets before you go - not only better deals by far, but almost impossible to actually do in-country.

Enjoy.

tac

PS - take an umbrella, you will be arriving at the rainy season. Don't worry too much about missing it, when that one ends, another one begins.

Ticking and Bashing

Itinerary looks good. I'd take 1 day away from Osaka and add to any of the other cities unless you use one of those days as a day trip to Nara from Osaka.

tac foley

On second thoughts, you really must NOT miss out on a day out in Nikko - many truly amazing temples as well as some decent step-climbing to even more amazing sights/sites.

Japanese saying - 'Do not say 'kikko' [wondrous] until you have seen Nikko.'

tac

woodzie

Cheers for that guys. I’ll definitely do the one day trips. I’m going to buy the Japan rail pass before I go. Accommodation looks pretty expensive though so I’m prob going to have to try some of the pod hotels or hostels although at 33 I’m prob a bit old for hostels.

jam_mac_jam

I would cut down time in Osaka and spend more in Kyoto. You can get a train between them in an hour anyway so its near. You could spend one night there and on to Hiroshima from there. Depends on what you are into but there is a lot more to see in Kyoto and its a bit nicer then Osaka. I would also take a day trip to Nara from Kyoto, very nice place and easy to get to from Kyoto. itinerary looks good. You are not trying to see too much in the two weeks.

I would buy the rail pass, the trip to Hiroshima back to Tokyo is expensive. You could also fly back out of Osaka to save yourself train fare on the way back if you don't get the pass.

I loved Kyoto and if I was going back I would just go there but also you can't really miss Tokyo either. And I have heard other people who loved Tokyo.

The transport is so good that its quite easy to do day trips out from both Kyoto and Tokyo so if you spend longer in one of those places then you can also see more around the city.

jam_mac_jam

woodzie wrote: »

Cheers for that guys. I’ll definitely do the one day trips. I’m going to buy the Japan rail pass before I go. Accommodation looks pretty expensive though so I’m prob going to have to try some of the pod hotels or hostels although at 33 I’m prob a bit old for hostels.

Hostels are fine. We stayed in them and are older then you! You can get private rooms quite cheaply in hostels or sharing with a small number. Any I stayed in were of a very good standard. I wouldn't usually stay in hostels but we were out a lot sightseeing so the hotel was not as important.

Food and drink was cheaper then I thought it would be. I did find accommodation expensive though.

zilog_jones

Your basic itinerary sounds good for 14 days, though as said, you don't really need to split accommodation between Kyoto and Osaka as they're so close together.

I found https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/ and https://www.japan-guide.com great for suggestions.

14-day JR Pass probably makes sense considering you're going all the way to Hiroshima, but there are various calculators online to make sure you will actually save money.

HyperDia was best for route planning with trains in my experience - I'd recommend either getting a SIM card or pocket wifi so you have access to that and Google Maps at all times (made things so much easier if I missed a train or whatever). Get an IC card (Suica, Pasmo, etc.) for the non-JR local trains as well - no need to restrict yourself to only JR trains when travelling within cities as they're cheap anyway (there are many private railways around the place, not covered by JR Pass).

If you want to check out a real castle, Himeji and Hikone are within reasonable distance to do as a half-day trip from Kyoto or Osaka. Don't bother your hole with Osaka Castle as it's a concrete reconstruction. I'd highly recommend Miyajima Island as well, assuming that's one of your days in Hiroshima.

I also found a lot of reasonable accommodation around €30-40 per night - mostly places that were in-between hostels (private rooms) and proper hotels. Just don't be afraid of shared bathrooms Airbnb is also an option, but the renting out of apartments where the host is not present is still a legal grey area. Capsule hotels will obviously be cheaper again. And there's loads of very reasonably priced food out there if you're on a budget, dinner for under ¥1000 isn't hard to find at all.

Third_Echelon

I'd agree on the Kyoto/Osaka part. They are very close by train, so no need to move hotels.

Overall it really depends on what you are interested in seeing. Kyoto is temple after temple and gets a bit much after a while. You have 7 days scheduled for that area... Personally, I enjoyed Tokyo a lot more, so we spent more time there (Around 3 days at the beginning and 3 days at the end of the trip).

We used the Shinkansen with J-Rail pass bought from abroad to save a bit of money. Used it to go from Tokyo to Kyoto/Osaka and then down to Hiroshima for a day trip. The A-Bomb museum is definitely worth a visit. Makes you think a lot about what happened...

I really loved my trip to Japan and found the people very nice. Bars in Osaka and Tokyo were good fun. Younger Japanese will want to practice their English with you and have a few beers. Some great memories

tac foley

Just one point - many young Japanese people may have learnt to read from books, watched movies and TV, but may have never actually spoken to a real live person whose first language is English.  This can lead to some real surprises on both sides of the conversation, as English has a myriad of traps to catch the unwary person trying to speak it.

Add to that a basic language accent that makes even simple 'Ingrish' words into incomprehensible jumbles - Pepusi-Kora for a start...and you can see that you are in for an interesting time.
I was very lucky - where I worked I had a team of interpreters working with me for eight hours a day - they really made life worth living!

tac

zilog_jones

Third_Echelon wrote: »

Overall it really depends on what you are interested in seeing. Kyoto is temple after temple and gets a bit much after a while. You have 7 days scheduled for that area...

There's much more to Kyoto than temples - there are shrines too But really, I spent 6 days in Kyoto and just did Kiyomizu-dera and Fushimi Inari - there are many other things to do in Kyoto besides temples and shrines, e.g. Nishiki Market, Arashiyama/Sagano - and you're in close proximity to other interesting places like Osaka, Nara, Himeji, Hikone, Kobe, etc. It's a great base for exploring the rest of Kansai.