Please advise me for an intinerary.
I have 10 nights. This is how I was going to plan it:
4 nights in Tokyo for the city scene, restaurants, gardens and musuems.
3 nights in Kyoto for some cultural and peaceful stuff, like gardens, temples, shrines etc.
3 nights in the country or coast looking for scenic beauty. This last part is where I have no plans, or no idea where to go. Should I rent a car for this part? Can public transportation take you to some of the more rural areas? Also, I have 3 nights so I will need a convenient central base to venture out from each day. I want this part to be peaceful, to wind down.
Regards,
Poogie

Do you have to stay in the place each day? By venturing out, would it be ok to take a 1 or 2 hour bus trip or train ride, visiting a place, and then returning? You won't need to rent a car since train/bus will get you where you want to go (and would be more relaxing IMO).

I'll suggest staying in Takayama and taking a day trip to Shirakawago. Maybe an overnight in Shirakawago?

If you don't mind moving around:
day 1 - travel Kyoto to Shirakawago: train to Kanazawa then bus to Shirakawago (3 hours, I think)
spend the night in a gassho zukuri in Shirakawago
day 2 - 1.5 hour bus to Takayama. sightsee, spend the night in a nice ryokan, and sightsee next day
take the train in the early evening to Gero, less than 2 hours away, and spend the night in an onsen hotel.

I aree with mrwunrfl. Tokyo and Kyoto are both huge cities. Go to Kyoto, by all means, it's a don't miss, but your expectations of peaceful may well not be met...it's a huge city, and it's always filled with loads of tourists. For peaceful, you've got to get out of the cities. mrwunrfl has recommended what I would have.

Poogie,
I went to Kanazawa on Kim's advice and we enjoyed it very much, but it is still the city. If you're looking for scenic beauty, before you get to Kanazawa, get off the train at Fukui and go to the Echizen Kaigan coast and see the cliffs of Tojimbo. Watch out for diving falcons if you buy some of the Echizen crab on a stick to eat. From there we walked along the coast (peaceful & beautiful) to the village where you can walk across the bridge to the island of Oshima. I've included some web sites where you can read about the area & see some pictures. Another area we wanted to see & take the trolley through was the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine route. It sounded awesome, but the route wasn't open yet when we were there. I think this is NE of Kanazawa. The last site tells about this area. http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/RTP/Hokuriku/index.html
http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/RTP/Hokuriku/day_1.html
http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/RTG/RI/chu...ekyoukoku.html

By the way Kim & others, we had a great trip and I want to thank you again for all the help everyone gave me. Ann

Glad your trip was great. The idea to visit Echizen is a very good one. If time allows, it is a lovely place to visit in nice weather. Tateyama is also really nice...up there, snow lasts a loooong time and is very deep. The mountain area there is home to lots of rare alpine plants.

Kanazawa is a city, with a metro area population of 400,000 or so. Kyoto city (NOT metro area) is 1.5 million. Kansai area (including Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe and the surrounding metro area...one big city really) makes up 1/4 of Japan's total population of 130 million. The reason I recommend Kanazawa is that it is easily toured in a couple of days and it was not bombed during WWII so that the old style is still apparent in many neighborhoods. It is large enough to have plenty of hotels and restaurants or various styles and prices, yet small enough to have a kind of small town feeling. I also recommend it because when my parents visited us here in Japan, of all the places we visited they liked Kanazawa best...they could get around on their own, the loved the local art products, and just felt comfortable in Kanazawa in ways they were not in the other places we went.

With the original poster's limited time, I'd still recommend Takayama, Shirakawa-go or Gokayama (world heritage sites). Actually, now that I think about it a bit, Okayama might be nice for you. http://www.harenet.ne.jp/villa/info.htm might be a great experience - rent a car, go to the supermarket, shop, drive around the area...outside of Okayama it is countryside...visit Kurashiki for 1/2 a day for example, but have that home base at one of the international villas for the 3 days, and be on the shinkansen line for easy access to the airport.

http://www.harenet.ne.jp/villa/ this link works better.