We have a full 7 days(October)excluding travel. We arrive on Wednesday at Narita. We were thinking of spending 3 nights in Tokyo and 3 nights in Kyoto, with a return to Tokyo or close to airport for 12 noon flight back to Dallas. Any advice on 4 Kyoto and 2 nights Kyoto or vice versa. Which hotel in Tokyo, Kyoto or last night at Narita or Tokyo? Looking for luxury or upscale accomodations.

How long in each place depends on what you want to see. You could easily fill your 7 days in each city several times over. I would spend some time with a guidebook or two as well as browsing the posts here to determine what you are interested in...once you know what you want to see, you can more easily budget your time.

There is a good selection of luxury accomodation. In Tokyo, you might consider Four Seasons, Imperial, Mandarin Oriental, or even the Conrad if you get an executive floor room. In Kyoto, the club floors of the Westin Miyako, the Brighton, or you could try a top-end, foreigner friendly ryokan like the Hiragaya. Of course, in each city there are many more options....no shortage of luxury hotels at all.

In Tokyo I would add the Westin (excellent, excellent, excellent; have stayed there twice for 5 nights each time) and the Park Hyatt for luxury accomodations.

In Kyoto, I'd add the suites at the Okura; great central location. The club floor at the Westin Miyako is nice in that you get free breakfast and appetizer/drinks from 5-7 pm in evening. It is in eastern Kyoto and not as centrally located as the Okura, IMO. I've stayed at both, would go back to either, but Okura is better located for seeing the whole city, IMO. There is also a new Hyatt in Kyoto; only one poster on here has stayed there but you might check out reviews at tripadvisor, keeping in mind that it just opened recently.

With a noon departure I would stay in Kyoto the day before departure until afternoon. My memory is that there is a 3 pm or 3:30 pm Hikari that goes to Shinagawa. You can then either stay in Shinagawa for the evening and take the Narita Express to airport in the morning, or switch right away to Narita Express and continue on to Narita and stay at the Hilton Narita overnight, taking the shuttle to the airport in the a.m. Thse are the most convenient options.

You can also stay in Tokyo somewhere fairly close to Tokyo Station to get the Narita Express, or at a hotel on the limosine bus route that will take you to the airport directly in the a.m. BUt the limo bus takes about two hours to get to the airport. From Shinagawa it is 1 hr on the Narita Express to the airport; I am not sure how long it is from Tokyo Station to airport on Narita express as I've never done it. I prefer the Shinagawa connection and have done that twice.

I assume this is your first trip to Japan. I am having a hard tiem following your post re what days you are talking about. At first you said 3 nights in Tokyo and 3 in Kyoto and then you said 4 and 2. I understand you arrive on Wed.- what day do you depart? That will help with recommendations on how many days where. Also, what do you want to see/do/experience?

oops, let me back up a bit. The reason I recall that there is a 3 or 3:30 pm shinkansen from Kyoto to Shinagwa is that that was the last one we could take where we could switch to the Narita Express and get to Narita in the evening at a decent time (and maybe it was actually the last one). If you are going to go to Tokyo, you might have later options for the shinkansen. You need to investigate the train timing on hyperdia.com

Thanks fo the great post. Arrive Wednesday and leave the following Wednesday. Realize we can't see everything so the question was 3 in Tokyo and 3 in Kyoto or 4 and 2 or 2 and 4. I asked the question of a few friends who had quite different opinions. Tokyo is overwheming!? You have to go to Kyoto?! ,etc. This forum may help us decide.

And it is a sure thing that we will have different opinions. KimJapan answered your How long? question quite well.

OTOH, if you can tell us what your interests are, as emd suggested, then we can help.

But, to answer your question: 2 and 2 and 2 would be best as I recommend getting away from the obvious places, Tokyo and Kyoto.

I did book a room this afternoon at the Four Seasons Marunouchi. not sure what kind of physical shape w will be in after long flight from Tampa via Dallas on AA. Cashed in the AA Miles for a couple of FC seats but not sure how much sleep we will get. We will stay Wednesday through Sunday morning. Haven't done anything from there on but plan to take train to Kyoto on Sunday morning. Spend Sunday, Monday and Tuesday(leave in mid afternoon) in Kyoto and return to somehere close to airport. Our flight leaves at Wednesday 12:30 for Tampa. That being said. we are pretty touristy. Our wish list:
Kabuki
Sumo
Temples
Gardens
Department Stores(more looking than buying)
Interesting food
Small shops

Our home is a very quiet place with bamboo floors, lots of greenery, principles of Feng Shui, etc. Only mention this as background . Not sure what you meant by 2-2-2. Bob

Ok, so you are going to fly into Tokyo and out of Osaka Kansai? That is a good plan. You won't need a Japan Rail pass for this itinerary. I highly recommend using your AA miles to fly on Japan Airlines.

By 2-2-2 I was suggesting that it is worthwhile to consider a third destination, besides Tokyo and Kyoto. Maybe that is not too realistic for a 6-day trip, but until we understood a bit more I didn't want to buy in on your proposition that Tokyo and Kyoto were the only places that you should visit.

The Grand Sumo tournaments are held during the odd-numbered months, so there is none in October. I have read about visiting sumo stables in Tokyo. You might find info about this at www.jnto.go.jp or at the sumo home page:
http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/index.html

Shinjuku Gyoen in Tokyo has famous gardens. Korakuen in the city of Kanazawa, a couple of hours from Kyoto is very beautiful.

Kyoto and Nara have wonderful temples and shrines. Also, Japan has marvelous castles.

Here is a link at the JNTO site that has some good info:
http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/location/interests/index.html

Sorry about misunderstanding but we are leaving from Narita also. Actually I didn't even think about using them on JAL. AA was choice since I need to run though their main US hub in DFW. spent a week in Germany last fall and 3 cities is too much packing and unpacking. We travel light one carry on and a midsize briefcase. I am hoping a Blue blazer will suffice for anything more formal Thanks for the ideas. Bob

I see now that you mentioned going back to NRT in your OP. In that case, a JR pass would save you about 6000 yen, maybe a bit more (but you would have less frequent departure options, 2 per hour instead of 9 per hour if you didn't use the pass).

It would be worthwhile looking into changing your return to go from KIX. Going back to NRT will cost you 4 hours of travel time and about 8300 yen per person (figuring 16500 for NRT-Tokyo-Kyoto and 3500 for Kyoto-KIX versus 28,300 for a 7-day pass).

IF AAdvantage has a penalty for changing your ticket then it would probably be about $100, but subtract the rail cost savings and the change will cost you about $30 to save about 3.5 hours of train travel. Doesn't sound like your budget necessitates slicing things that closely, but paying the penalty, if any, might be justified.

Not sure how that would work. Turned 250k miles for 2 first class tickets. (I still have million plus in the bank). What do you think of we just do a return to Tokyo and spend the last night in Tokyo at a hotel convenient to train to airport. I understand the bus/limo takes quite a while. I am leaning to the Hyatt or Westin in Kyoto. What is situation on tipping doorman, bag handlers, restaurant staff? You can go broke in the USA by the time you get to your room. Bob

Japan is easy...no tipping, ever. Don't give it a second thought even.

How that would work is you call the AAdvantage customer service and tell them that you want to change your reservations and ticketing for your trip.

Tell them that you want to change the return to be from Osaka Kansai airport. You would then have an open jaw ticket. This is permitted under the rules of the FF award that you already have.

If you have an electronic ticket then it should be a simple matter for them to change it. They may charge a fee for this change, but as I explained before I think it would be worth it. You could spend your last night at the Westin Miyako instead of a Narita airport hotel.

While you are making the change to return from KIX, you could also look into changing your outbound trip to use JAL. Or you could just keep what you have.

The Aadvantage folks are really good, as I suppose you know, and will certainly be able to explore and explain your options without you having to give up your existing reservations.

emd is right, you just don't tip. If you tip a hotel staff person they will likely feel uncomfortable about accepting while also not being able to refuse it without offending you. At least I think that is the though process. If you leave a tip for a waitress it you are only going to make her chase you down the street to return it, her wondering how you could have forgotten it.

That was a great reply. I called AA and they were great. We got flights back at 15:35 and still make the last flight back to TPA at 17:30 arriving TPA at 8:40. Looking at he map don't know why I didn't think about it. These chatrooms are great. It would appear we can stay in Kyoto Tuesday night and leave for KIX on Wednesday. Ok, Is train best way to Osaka? Any reason to go to Osaka-Kansai area on Tuesday around noon and spend a day their as opposed to extra night in Kyoto?

excellent!

You could stay in Osaka, but you won't be that much closer to Kansai airport.

A JR limited express train takes about thirty minutes to go from Kyoto to Osaka. It then takes about 15 minutes to travel across Osaka. It then takes another 30 minutes to go from the other side of Osaka to Kansai airport.

The Haruka limited express train departing Kyoto at 11:45 arrives at Kansai airport at 13:03 (there are departures at 15 and 45 minutes after the hour from Kyoto so if you miss that train you can get the one that arrives at 13:32).

The Westin Miyako has a shuttle bus to the train station.

There are airport buses from Kyoto to KIX and also from Osaka to KIX.

Hi

My wife and I went to Tokyo and Kyoto last year and I have posted a trip report with pictures and links on my homepage http://gardkarlsen.com/japan_tokyo.htm . Maybe you can find some useful information there

Regards
Gard
http://gardkarlsen.com - trip reports and pictures