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The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/Aries37 on 2024-03-17 17:58:32.
Background info
Me and my wife have just returned home from a fantastic 2 week trip to Japan in early March. We were first timers but spent a lot of time researching so hopefully this post will help others plan their trips as well. Planning for us wasn’t about squeezing in as much as physicaly possible but rather to help us avoid wasting time getting lost or having to backtrack. You will spend a lot of time getting from point A to point B so having efficient routes will make a big difference.
We tried to get a balance of shopping, eating, sightseeing and themeparks and found that 2 weeks was the perfect amount of time for this. We were helped out by good weather with only 2 days of significant rain over the 2 weeks.
General tips
- Eat at weird times to reduce queue times at popular/well-reviewed places. If you are going at a busy time of year (like March) then you probably can’t avoid queueing competely but you can at least reduce the queue times. 2-4pm seems to be best.
- Use an app like google maps or wanderlog to give yourself a choice of places to eat at each location you visit. I had pre-researched and saved a load of recommendations in each area. It then became easy to pull up the map and pick somewhere each meal depending on what we fancied eating at the time. For Tokyo at least we avoided reserving restaurants to give ourselves flexibility in the itinerary, but if you are looking for fine dining then you absolutely should book ahead.
- Shops and many restaurants open late in Japan (many open 10-11am). Therefore most mornings you may want to schedule sightseeing at a spot that doesn’t require employees to be present (Senso-ji, Meiji Jingu, Fushimi Inari, Kiyomizu-dera all fit this bill) and save your visits to manned locations later in the day. Check opening times for everywhere you plan to visit beforehand.
- It is not an exaggeration to say that some Tokyo metro stations (e.g Tokyo, Shinjuku) are laid out like an international airport with multiple terminals each. They are HUGE and getting from one side to the other can easily take 30 minutes+ and it is very easy to get lost on the way as signage is not always very clear. Rarely you will find some parts of some stations to be entirely disconnected from the rest of the station and can only be reached via street level. Plan transfer and travel times accordingly.
- Ship your luggage between hotels if you have large or multiple large suitcases. You do not want to be carrying a lot of luggage around on Japanese public transport. Especially during rush hour.
- More than once several stores were out of stock of something we wanted to buy and we had to resort to using Amazon.jp. The reception staff at the various hotels we stayed at were more than happy to take deliveries (although I did email them beforehand to check). Amazon prices also tended to be cheaper but of course we wanted to support local business where we could.
- If you are looking for gaming/anime/gunpla/ghibli merch we found Osaka to be way easier to shop in. Tokyo at the moment is just flooded with tourists and places like Akihabara have been picked clean. Even the relatively unknown Gundam Specialty Store in Akihabara had very little left in the way of rare kits. Osaka stores were also just less crowded and stressful to shop in.
- Save your 100 yen coins where you can as these seem to be the most versatile. If you find a vending machine that takes copper coins take the opportunity to dump them all.
- Public toilets are everywhere in Japan. Check any large store, shopping centre, convenience store or station. They are clean and many have electric heated seats. I feel bad for Japanese tourists who come to the UK and encounter our public toilet situation for the first time.
- If you don’t have one I suggest getting a credit/ debit card that doesn’t have foreign transaction fees before you travel. We found that most stores apart from small eateries will accept plastic.
Day 1, Tokyo
- Landed 5:20pm at Narita. Took 50 minutes to get through customs with the QR code.
- Got cash from the ATM after baggage claim. If you have a card with no foreign fees then make sure you are paying in yen when given the choice and let your bank back at home do the conversion. DO NOT USE Dynamic Currency Conversion on the machine as the fees are significant.
- We then charged our IC cards (machines only accept cash for this)
- Took the N’ex to Shinjuku- makes sure you sit in the correct car on your ticket as the train often splits at tokyo station.
- Got to our hotel 8:20pm. Hotel was Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku. I’d rate it 8/10. Amazing location right next to to a small branch of Shinjuku station with access to 2 metro lines. For the main Shinjuku station you will need to walk 5 minutes at street level. Small but clean rooms. If I were to nitpick there was no safe in room and they used 1 ply toilet paper which disintegrated instantly on contact with moisture. Toilet seats were also an uncomfortable narrow oval shape and the bathroom ceilings were low. However the front desk were amazing and were happy to sort our baggage transfers between hotels.
- Dinner at Udon Shin (tabelog 3.72)- 10/10. This place apparently gets pretty long queues but we arrived about 40 minutes before closing and waited 15 minutes for seats. I got the hot udon soup with beef and shrimp tempura. Amazingly tasty yet light. Wife got the hot udon with black pepper, beef and raw egg yolk. Tasty but she found it a bit strong by the end. We shared a vegetable tempura set which was lovely.
- Went to 7/11 and bought snacks, desserts and drinks then crashed for the night.
Day 2, Tokyo
- Planned as a jetlag recovery/rest day
- Breakfast at the Yoshinoya chain in Keio mall (Tabelog 3.04), 7/10. We got a beef short rib bowl and cheese beef bowl. Wife found the cheese bowl a bit too heavy for the morning. Saw lots of salarymen who come in to eat alone and then dash off even on a weekend morning.
- Walked by Sumida river
- Visited Tokyo skytree- there was a sakura tree blooming outside which was crowded with people taking photos
- Tokyo Solamachi- many stores over several floors but not much looked interesting. Bought some stuff at the Pokemon centre. Contains the largest Ghibli store in Tokyo which was packed with people.
- Dinner at Kaiten sushi toriton (tabelog 3.54) 9/10. Sushi choices were a bit limited but really good quality and price. Great atmosphere as staff were fun and loud. Go earlier in the afternoon to get in the virtual queue. Ours took over 3 hours on a Saturday but thankfully you can just shop in Solamachi while checking the queue status online.
Day 3, Tokyo
- Breakfast at Kamo to negi (tabelog 3.75) 9/10. Came for the famous duck ramen. Great flavour in the duck meat but the ramen and broth were more bland. Arrived just before opening and waited 40 minutes but it was worth the wait as this was high on my priority list pre-trip.
- Walked through Ueno park- had a few cherry blossom trees in early bloom. Pleasant walk on a really sunny and clear day.
- Visited Ueno zoo- busy but plenty of animals. We spent quite a few hours here as my wife loves pandas. 40 minute queue to see the panda cub twins but no queue at all for the adult pandas who we revisited several times.
- Yamishiroya huge toy shop next to Ueno station- extremely busy, high prices but good variety. We bought some Ghibli merch.
- Ameyoko shopping district, walked through and was absolutely heaving with both tourists and locals at this point
- Rk540 artisan shopping arcade- disappointing as not much to see here which was reflected in how dead the area was
- Akihabara- On Sundays the roads become closed to cars. However every store was packed and it was difficult to walk down the aisles of any store. We went looking for a specific rare-ish gunpla kit and ghibli goods but many stores had no stock of anything in high demand.
- Dinner at Tonkatsu Marugo (Tabelog 3.76) 7/10 - 40 minute wait after arriving 10 minutes before they open at 5pm on a sunday. We both got the premium filet set. Pork was juicy and the batter was light. The pork came with a brown sauce that tasted a bit like HP sauce which neither of us particularly enjoyed. Ended up having the tonkatsu with salt alone which made it quite plain.
- Back to shopping in Akihabara but now it was getting late in the day and we didn’t have time to check every store before they closed at 8pm. We made a mental note to come back later in the week on the planned flex day.
Day 4, Tokyo
- Harajuku- takeshita street. Quick walk through, didn’t see anything that caught our fancy.
- Breakfast at Eggs n things (tabelog 3.45)- 4/10 cold eggs benedict and omelet with no flavour. Slow service. Avoid.
- Walked down Omotesando and shopped at Kiddy land - found some good Ghibli merch. Also spent 2 minutes walking through Toy sapiens which was neat.
- Shibuya, beelined to Parco- Pokemon, Jump, Nintendo, Capcom stores
- Muji, Loft (bought the mandatory nail clippers and umbrellas), Disney stores
- Shibuya crossing ended up doing this crossing like 5 times as our GPS went haywire and we couldn’t find our late lunch spot
- Finally arrived at Katsumidori sushi (tabelog 3.47) - 9/10. 5 minute wait at 3:30pm. Embarrassingly kept forgetting to press the button to send the train…
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/JapanTravel/comments/1bh2gmq/2_week_mega_trip_report_tokyo_hakone_kyoto_osaka/
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