Need help on last bit of itinerary for family trip
 

Hi -

I'm traveling to Japan with my family (2 college age kids and a 9 year old) in december and looking for help with a couple of days in the middle of our trip. Here's what we have:

12/21-12/25 Tokyo

12/26-28 EITHER Kyosan and then some other small town where we can find a great ryokan (willing to pay at luxury end) ideally with onsen OR Japanese Alps where we'd try to do small towns and onsen

12/28-1/1 Kyoto

1/1-3 Naoshima

1/4 depart

We love to travel, and love to get to non-touristy places. Given that we'll have ample time in cities, want to get to small town where we can avoid huge masses of tourists. Would welcome suggestions of onsen/ryokans that we could get to between Koyasan and Kyoto OR great places to stay int he alps that I could build around.

THANKS!

Koyasan is delightful, IMO, but I believe it would be quite cold in December and I don’t believe that the temples there are particularly known for onsen. I could be wrong.

Have you checked japaneseguesthouses.com? You can search by region….
https://www.japaneseguesthouses.com

The temples are more places for meditation and vegetarian food than for onsens. If you want a good ryokan you may have left it a bit late. Not all take foreigners, and you would have to check on whether the nine year old would be accepted.

Have you considered Kinosaki?
https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3525.html

You could also see Amanohashidate on the way.
https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3990.html

I agree that Koyosan would not be at all appealing in December. Too cold! For your days after Christmas, many of the smaller towns in the alps may be very crowded.
Kinosaki is a lovely onsen town, and only a couple of hours train ride from Kyoto or Osaka. I was just there in September and loved it.

Arashiyama, which is only about 20 minutes from Kyoto might be a fun place, as I've heard they decorate the town with lanterns around Christmas.
https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3912.html
Some other ideas:
https://wow-j.com/en/Allguides/osaka...eing/00033_en/

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopi...ara-Japan.html.

What I would do, though, is take the one hour flight from Tokyo to either Fukuoka or Kumamoto on the southern island of Kyushu. From there take a train, bus or car to to the really perfect little onsen town of Kurokawa. We stayed at Yamashinobu Inn a couple of days before Christmas, and it was magical. Snow, but not bone chilling cold. For variety, you could take trains back up to Kyoto, maybe breaking up the 5(?) hour journey with a night in Hiroshima or somewhere else.

Wherever you go, I would not spend 3 nights at the same ryokan. Two nights is perfect, but three is usually too long, as you will be eating breakfast and dinner there, and I find I want a change after four meals!

While I agree that Arashiyama is worth visiting, I believe it is a part of Kyoto and so wouldn't be a good fit if visiting a small town is a priority.