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17 days in Japan: Itinerary for first timers

17 days in Japan: Itinerary for first timers

Old Jan 18th, 2023, 07:13 PM
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17 days in Japan: Itinerary for first timers

Hello everyone!

Me and my fiancé have booked a trip (only booked flights so far) to Japan for our honeymoon in September 2023. This would be both of ours first time travelling to Japan.​​​​​​

We have a general idea of where we would like to go for the major cities but have a spare day in which we were ensure what city/towns to fill it with. Please see below for a high level view of the cities/towns we currently have planned.

We would love some suggestions on our current Itinerary and/or what we could add for the spare day and if it's worth changing or moving some stuff around.

Appreciate the time!

Itinerary:

Sep 2nd, Saturday: Tokyo (Land at 8pm at Narita) - Basically a write off for that night.

Sep 3rd, Sunday: Tokyo

Sep 4th, Monday: Tokyo

Sep 5th, Tuesday: Hakone (Stay over night)

Sep 6th, Wednesday: Kyoto

Sep 7th, Thursday: Kyoto

Sep 8th, Friday: Kyoto

Sep 9th, Saturday: Day trip to Nara (could do any of the Kyoto days as we are planning on coming back at night).

Sep 10th: Osaka

Sep 11th: Osaka

Sep 12th: Day trip to Kobe (could do any of the Osaka days as we are planning on coming back at night).

Sep 13th: Hiroshima/Miyajima (overnight in Hiroshima)

Sep 14th: Hiroshima/Onomichi (overnight in Hiroshima)

Sep 15: Spare

Sep 16: Tokyo

Sep 17: Tokyo

Sep 18: Tokyo (Flight departs at 10pm, arrive at airport for approx. 7pm as we are travelling to Canada)

Note: The spare day doesn't need to be filled at the end of Hiroshima as shown. It can be added at any point after leaving Tokyo on the 5th.

Some questions off the top of my head are:

- Should we maybe add more days to one or more of the major cities (Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka) or is what we have shown enough?

- Any other towns or cities you guys would recommend to do a day trip to to fill our extra day?

- Anything to switch around in our plan to be more efficient?

Note: We do plan on purchasing the JR Rail Pass.
arvingill23 is offline  
Old Jan 18th, 2023, 08:29 PM
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I would put all the Tokyo time at the beginning or the end. Probably the end. Narita has plenty of hotels and is a pleasant enough town with a temple with extensive grounds.

Have you considered a temple stay in Koya-san?
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Old Jan 18th, 2023, 10:02 PM
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Any chance you could delay your trip until October? September is typhoon season and Japan will probably be very hot in early September. September is also the month with the most rainfall.
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Old Jan 19th, 2023, 10:02 AM
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What mjs wrote was my first thought about this itin. Second thought was kind of in line with what thursdaysd wrote - you would be arriving too late to fly on to elsewhere in Japan and with that arrival time I would consider just staying in Narita for the night and going into Tokyo the next day or flying elsewhere from NRT. Certainly, just going into Tokyo that night is a good idea too - for visiting Tokyo or taking the train the next day (like overnight in Shinagawa and next day shinkansen to Kyoto).

Your itinerary looks good, but I think that you are at the "pins in the map" stage and need to do a bit more research into what you will do for the days, particularly the Kansai region. Why Osaka and why Kobe?

If you are interested in hot springs then you could find one in Hakone. There is Spa World in Osaka and an "onsen bus" day trip to Kinosaki Onsen (which would be good for one or two days). Arima Onsen is just outside of Kobe a city with unique history.

September would be baseball season and the grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.

That spare day seems obvious to me: Hiroshima. You could take the shinkansen back to Tokyo that night, the 15th, or next day. Looks like the Carp will be at home on the 15th, playing in their newish baseball stadium in Hiroshima.

Almost forgot to mention Himeji Castle.

Last edited by mrwunrfl; Jan 19th, 2023 at 10:04 AM.
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Old Jan 19th, 2023, 10:39 AM
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Originally Posted by mrwunrfl
What mjs wrote was my first thought about this itin. Second thought was kind of in line with what thursdaysd wrote - you would be arriving too late to fly on to elsewhere in Japan and with that arrival time I would consider just staying in Narita for the night and going into Tokyo the next day or flying elsewhere from NRT. Certainly, just going into Tokyo that night is a good idea too - for visiting Tokyo or taking the train the next day (like overnight in Shinagawa and next day shinkansen to Kyoto).

Your itinerary looks good, but I think that you are at the "pins in the map" stage and need to do a bit more research into what you will do for the days, particularly the Kansai region. Why Osaka and why Kobe?

If you are interested in hot springs then you could find one in Hakone. There is Spa World in Osaka and an "onsen bus" day trip to Kinosaki Onsen (which would be good for one or two days). Arima Onsen is just outside of Kobe a city with unique history.

September would be baseball season and the grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.

That spare day seems obvious to me: Hiroshima. You could take the shinkansen back to Tokyo that night, the 15th, or next day. Looks like the Carp will be at home on the 15th, playing in their newish baseball stadium in Hiroshima.

Almost forgot to mention Himeji Castle.
We will certainly try to change our itinerary to October. Didn't know it was that rainy in September!

We did want to go to Tokyo right away just so we could wake up and have the full day in Tokyo rather than travelling there in the morning.

As for more specifics on our itinerary, we have a few things in mind but just didn't list them. Kobe we heard is a nice and easy day trip from Osaka so that is why we included it and in Osaka we wanted to spend one day hitting the highlights of Osaka and eating food and the other day for universal studios and super Nintendo world.

The one day in Hakone we plan on staying at a Ryokan with a private onsen.

For Hiroshima, we wanted to have one day to see a bit of Miyajima Island and Hiroshima itself. Second day to bike some of the Kaido route in Onomichi and then spare day like you mentioned, we could spend in Hiroshima and then get Shinkansen back to Tokyo in evening.

What would be the downside of splitting up Tokyo like we have instead of doing it all together at once?

Thank you!
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Old Jan 19th, 2023, 12:38 PM
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After my last post i thought you might be further along than pins in the map, given that you mentioned onomichi. I see now that you are further along than I thought. Going into Tokyo that first night makes sense because Tokyo is a good place to start. I don't see any downside to splitting your time in Tokyo.

A case can be made that your two full days for Kyoto is not enough.

And you would be going from Osaka to Miyajima and that night in Hiroshima. A night on Miyajima would definitely be a good idea. I would rather spend that Spare day and night in Hiroshima. There would be no schedule pressure to get to the station for that long trip back to Tokyo that night.

What you've got is essentially three stops in Chugoku (Miyajima, Onomichi, Hiroshima) in three days and two of those days are inter-regional travel days.

Last edited by mrwunrfl; Jan 19th, 2023 at 12:59 PM.
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