This sub was super helpful when planning our honeymoon and I wanted to write up a summary of what we did - hoping it may help others! \[It's LONG,...
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The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/kristinnovowels on 2025-02-24 06:34:08+00:00.

This sub was super helpful when planning our honeymoon and I wanted to write up a summary of what we did - hoping it may help others! [It’s LONG, so sorry]

We decided to go for the first two weeks of February (1-16) as this fit in best with our work schedules. We were going to Japan from California, where we live. It was the first time either of us have been to Japan, so we decided to do the big three (Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto) and add some day trips.

My goals/priorities: eating delicious food, knife shopping. His goals/priorities: visiting temples/historical sites and the Ghibli Museum (more on this below), jean shopping. Our budget was quite generous, with more than half of our budget being spent on lodging - I think this itinerary could easily and definitely be done for much cheaper with less fancy hotels.

We aimed to, essentially, have one “event” a day, while the rest of the day we could explore or be flexible.

Lodging:

  • Centara Grand Osaka: super close to Dotonbori, large and clean hotel - they gave us a lovely welcome surprise which was greatly appreciated.
  • Hotel The Mitsui Kyoto: the star of our trip - this hotel is beyond stunning. We were hesitating between this hotel and the Park Hyatt in Kyoto, but so glad we chose this one. People seem down on this hotel’s location, but Nijo Castle has a ton of more “indie” restaurants and it’s much calmer. When we went to Kiyomizu-dera, we passed by the Park Hyatt entrance and the roads were overrun with people - I can’t imagine leaving/coming back to this every day. The Mitsui was just such a calm oasis away from all of this. Their concierge was not the most helpful - we needed some help with booking dinner reservations and they pointed us to Google.
  • The Peninsula Tokyo: giant rooms but it felt a bit dated. The concierge was excellent and helped with a number of requests, but we thought their included breakfast was pretty low-quality and I was disappointed that they were very unhelpful when we were trying to get medicine after some food poisoning (they didn’t have any medicine in the hotel and directed us to go to pharmacies that were closed).
  • Hakone-Gora Byakudan: beautiful ryokan in Hakone and private onsens - highly recommend! Note, booking on the website was a total mess, but we figured it out eventually.
  • The Kimpton Shinjuku: we loved this hotel - we do have a preference for Kimptons when we travel - it felt very urban and well designed.

Schedule:

  • Saturday, February 1: flying to Japan: flew to Japan from SF [lost a day due to the time zone change]
  • Sunday, February 2: getting into Osaka: transfer flight to Osaka. We landed in Narita around 4pm then got onto our next flight. Note, you do have to go pick up your luggage at Narita and reload it onto the domestic flight [we flew Japan Air]. We were exhausted, so we just had dinner/drinks at the hotel.
  • Monday, February 3: check out Himeji and Osaka: we took a train to Himeji Castle - we kind of messed up by taking a regional train instead of buying the JR Pass (see below) which took about 1h instead of 30m for the Shinkansen and was a bit more expensive. However, the castle was very cool and is the most preserved castle in Japan, and we ate at a really delicious udon place, Menme. We headed back, walked around Osaka Castle (didn’t go inside - so crowded) and headed to Dotonbori. Had fantastic drinks at Bar1515 and got some Matsusaka beef for dinner.
  • Tuesday, February 4: day trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima Island: we got our JR Pass in the morning and headed to Hiroshima. Went to the Peace Museum, which was, as expected, incredibly heavy [we are Americans so we felt we should not go to Japan without doing this] then headed to Miyajima. Miyajima was fantastic, prob the highlight of our trip - the Omotesando shopping street is so charming and of course the Itsukushima Jinja shrine is stunning. We walked up to Daishoin which was also beautiful. Headed back to Osaka for dinner in Dotonbori.
  • Wednesday, February 5: travel to Kyoto: had some ramen in the morning and went to get pastries before we went to the train station to go to Kyoto. We decided to sneak Fushimi Inari in here as well - it was not as crowded as we’d been led to believe, especially if you walk up a bit. Had some omakase back in Kyoto.
  • Thursday, February 6: exploring Kyoto: our big day in Kyoto. We started at Higashiyama and walked down the beautiful Philosopher’s Path, went to Nanzenji Fukuchicho, the Yasaka Shrine, and headed to Nishiki Market. Felt Nishiki to be overrated - so crowded and things you can find anywhere else. Walked over to Kiyomizu-dera which was so crowded. Went back to the hotel to relax before our dinner at Coppie (delicious and innovative!)
  • Friday, February 7: day trip to Nara: we went to Nara in the morning and mostly walked around the park. The Isuien Garden was lovely and the Todai-ji was cool but crowded. We did a sake tasting at Harushika Sake which was very delicious and had lunch in town at 洋食春 (it’s, for some reason, billed as a Western restaurant when it’s really a tempura shop? Maybe they mean Western Japan?). We headed back to Kyoto and ended up having dinner at Pizzeria La Balena, which was quite tasty - my husband needed a break from Japanese food but the pizza here was really good!
  • Saturday, February 8: travel to Tokyo: we checked out Nijo Castle to kill some time - I don’t know why it wasn’t on our list initially but it was super cool - you can get a ticket to walk through the castle which was pretty cool! We booked a Shinkansen to Tokyo because I was freaking out about having enough space for our luggage, which was really silly because I’m sure if we went to the ticket counter we would have been able to find seats without having to commit to that specific train. We checked into the hotel and got some soba noodles.
  • Sunday, February 9: sumo in Tokyo: we walked around the Imperial Palace gardens on the way up to Ryogoku to the sumo arena. It was super cool however not a ton of options to eat if you don’t eat meat, so plan accordingly! We headed back to Ginza to shop a bit before going to get sushi for dinner. We had a nightcap at Mixology Heritage which was delicious.
  • Monday, February 10: Studio Ghibli: we headed up to Kichioji to hang out before the museum. Tickets were a MESS to get - we ended up getting them on Fiverr. After the museum (which was very cute), we went to Tamatoya Hibiya, which specializes in monjayaki. We wandered back and ended up getting drinks at Folklore, which was right next to Mixology Heritage.
  • Tuesday, February 11: exploring Tokyo: we had breakfast at Haru Chan Ramen - a Michelin Bib Gourmand recognized tiny ramen shop. Really delicious! Then went to check out Akihabara (not really for us, so crowded!) and then to Kappabashi to go knife shopping. I ended up buying a nice set of knives from Tojiro - note that, unsurprisingly, most stores specialize in knives with Japanese handles. I have a preference for western style handles, which Tojiro has a nice selection of! We had dinner reservations at L’Effervesence (full review here if anyone is interested)
  • Wednesday, February 12: head to Hakone for ryokan: here is where things turned kinda nuts. We got severe food poisoning during the night - I have a feeling from a funky oyster we may have eaten on Monday. We somehow were able to drag ourselves to Hakone to our ryokan, which was lovely, but honestly we mostly just rested.
  • Thursday, February 13: cooking class in Tokyo: we headed back to Tokyo after some more onsen time and relaxed before a cooking class we booked on Airkitchen.
  • Friday, February 14: check out plum blossoms and shop: we went to Hanegi Park to check out the plum blossoms - these were so pretty and the park was not crowded at all! We shopped a bit in Shimokitazawa, then headed to go jean shopping in Shibuya/Koenji (not close to each other at all, but we had to go to both Momotaro locations to find the jeans we were looking for). Then we had omakase dinner at Sushi Yuu.
  • Saturday, February 15: TeamLab Borderless and shopping: went to teamLab Borderless in the morning then continued shopping, mostly around Aoyama/Omotesando. We headed back to Shinjuku, shopped some more, had some delicious cocktails at Bar Compsosition and then some udon.
  • Sunday, February 16: back to the USA: had so…

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