Japan 🇯🇵

Should be good timing for autumn colours - so Kyoto is a must.

Approx schedule we did a fair few years back, but same time of year:
- Land Tokyo, train to Nagano, picked up hire car, drove to mountains for a few days (inc the weird Ninja Museum)
- Drove down to Matsumoto for a few days inc a trip to Kamikochi. Then dropped off car, and train to Kyoto.
- Few days there - Nara and Fushimi, plus a lot of local temples.
- Train back to Toyko for the expected weirdness + fish (+ robots)

(Driving outside of the big cities is easy. Trains are easy. Stayed in a few ryokans which were fantastic. Fairly easy mountain walks around, though I cannot remember how we found them - weather can be changeable. Allegedly bears in some places - small bell protected us).

Stay at least one night in a Ryokan.
Obviously visit Kyoto. I slightly prefered the Silver Temple to the Golden Temple.
Nara is well worth a visit.
I've visited Himeji-jo and found it interesting if it fits in your itinerary.
I didn't get out into the countryside much sadly

Kyoto? Erm...

Shameless link to another forum...was reading this with some interest as Japan is kind of a bucket list thing for me...should give some ideas?

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/two-weeks-in-tokyo.18985701/

And a longer read here with loads of great pictures:

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/japan-trip-2023-long-post.18970809/

Oh, and if you are a foodie...don't look at this, you might fly out in economy but you have to fly home DHL Cargo 🙂

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/what-i-ate-in-japan.18970535/

Kyoto is good, but get a guide who will trim it to the best bits otherwise you’ll be Temple’d to death.

Nara is worth a visit, as is Hiroshima.

Bike tour company called Bike Kyoto is very good and better than doing it on foot.

@andeh - who is we?  You and wife - any children (what ages. . .?)

Bullet train (Shinkansen) trip to Mt Fuji

Defo wander through Akihabara (electronics/tech/lights I still think it's worth a walk around.)

I personally enjoyed wandering around and night and feeling completely safe.

Go to Shibuya (Famous crossroads in many films)

There was this government building you could go up for a free viewing platform but I think it's shut now. Not sure. (Just checked - Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building - appears to be still open and you can go up for free.)

Everything about Tokyo was amazing and really sticks with me even though I was working on a job. It blew my mind.

Sorry you're way too early for autumn leaves unless you head into some hills/northwards. A day or two in the mountains is definitely an interesting option if you are looking for an adventure but it will take a chunk of time. Some of the most spectacular and memorable walking we did was early Oct in the Japanese Alps, an absolute blaze of colour. Nov/Dec is leaf-watching season in the cities for the most part.

It's still likely to be quite warm, you may get a typhoon if you're lucky - that's another interesting experience there!

Other than that, yes take a shinkansen to Kyoto, embrace the crowds (hint - start super early and you may get a few moments of peace). Eat everything you can see and don't ask too many questions about what it is. Lived in Japan for a decade, loved it there.

Some of the most spectacular and memorable walking we did was early Oct in the Japanese Alps, an absolute blaze of colour.

Youngest_oab loved the Alps, had a huge adventure and is really keen to go back.

He did the Dailkaretto ridge solo....

https://www.hikemasterjapan.com/daikiretto-yarigatake-hotaka

@J-R We is just Mrs Andeh and me. No kids involved. Still, planning on going to the Ghibli museum/Ghibli Park though.

Loads of good suggestions! Cheers

I figured we'd be a bit early for leaves, but we're planning on heading north for some mountains and countryside anyway. I do a bit of pottery so hoping to get to Mashiko for a nose about.

Bullet train bullet train 🚅 there is a train station with a garden surrounding it. (There is a old bullet train in York train museum and it looks more modern than our rolling stock

Japan is on my wish list but it looks like a country of several nations old/new, coast/city's, mountains/Forrests.

I could happily spend a couple of years living in Japan, has to be my fav country that ive never visited. Sisters bestie is married to a Japanese chap, and lived there for a decade or so.

Karawasa curl (cirque) was one of the most spectacular days I've ever had in the mountains. That was early Oct, probably the holiday weekend.

https://www.alpico.co.jp/en/travelog/post/karasawa-cirque-best-autumn-hike-in-kamikochi/

(But we climbed over the top of Hotaka-dake to get there though, spent the night in the hut on the way up.)

Also if you have Amazon prime, James mays 'our man in Japan' is well worth a watch!

Not relevant for your trip, but I want to walk the Shikoku pilgrimage route when I’ve retired - I’d happily do it sooner but can’t get the time off!

Oh that’s a coincidence and I’ll watch the thread / suggestions closely 😊

The Woody’s are also going to Japan in October for 2 weeks and looking at Kyoto, studio Ghibli, temples, Ryokans etc but are far from having a plan

Woody71

And we are off there too. Three weeks in July and August. We'd booked for four nights in Kyoto, but have recently been very put off by the reports of the huge number of tourists overcrowding the town (of which we'll be two more).
Considering we've never been, we'll never know what we've missed, so are catching the train down to Fukuoka and Kagoshima. Hopefully we'll see some quieter parts of the country, before travelling for four very busy days in Tokyo via Hiroshima.

We spent over 5 weeks there last October/November and could have stayed longer so 2 weeks is a challenge.  We tended to find that spending several days in one place is better than constantly travelling, so you'll have to be selective with what appeals to you out of all the good suggestions above.

As a minimum I'd suggest Tokyo and Kyoto and consider a few days also in Hiroshima and Takayama or Matsumoto.

Nearly everywhere is accessible by Shinkansen, and if you want to travel a lot its worth looking into a JR pass - book before you go.  Also they have a great system where your baggage can be sent between hotels, and the system works really well taking about 24 hours So you can send on a big suitcase to the next hotel and just travel with a small cabin sized bag with your stuff for overnight. Travelling around is much easier than you would expect becasue public transport is so well labelled in English, and of course Google translate is your friend (download Japanese for offline use).  Temperatures were generally a pleasant low 20s and sunny, but cooler in the mountains and only a few rainy days.  The leaves in Kamigochi in the mountains looked great when we visited there on 24 October, but they hadn't really started turning much elewhere. We hired bikes in most of the towns and cities and it was a great way to get around for half a day or in Kyoto and Tokyo for a full day or two. Food is great everywhere, we had a couple of big posh meals that were fantastic but mainly ate in places just on the street and the meal was usually less than £20 a person and wonderful quality - it is hard to go wrong.

- Tokyo as well Ghibli museum (book a long time in advance) other great places are Uneno Park and the National Museum, Asakusa and temple, Imperial Palace (check when open), Shinjuku (with maybe a trip up the Met tower and Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden), Hamarikyu Gardens  Also the bus loop tour is well worth it as a quick way to see the major sites.  Other things you could consider are Mario Karting on the streets (bring an international drivers permit), a day trip by train and light railway to Kamakura (for the Big Buddah, hiking trials and Enoshima Island for some sunset views of Fuji before getting the train back),  day trip by train to Kawaguchiko for a bike around the lake with close up views of Fuji, or  if you fancy it a Fuji hike, a day trip to Nikko for lots of great shrines and temples including the shrine to the spirit of Tokugawa Ieyasu (fictionalised as Toranaga in Shogun).  Also we took the monorail to visit the Team Labs art installation in Tokyo – it’s a bit weird but really  great fun and the monorail gives great views of the Rainbow bridge and the city.

- Kyoto is a must of course. You can do a lot of it by bike and there are more temples than anyone should ever visit but our favourites of the half dozen we visited were probably Shoren-in and Royan-in.  And the Kyoto Imperial Palace is worth a visit, but the one place we found a big disappointment was The Bamboo Grove in the west of the city, heaving with people taking selfies even by 8am.  From Kyoto you can do a day drip by train to Himeji for the magnificent castle – or stop there half a day en route to Hiroshima.

- Hiroshima is worth visiting for the Peace museum and Peace Park area, but in addition you can do a day trip by train and ferry to Itsukushima Island to see the floating red torii and cablecar up the mountain for some hikes and views  Also an interesting day trip is by train to Onomichi where you can hire a bike and do 20 miles of the Island route on quiet routes and a few spectacular bridges as far as Setoda on Ikuchi Island, then a ferry back to Onomichi and a train home (and maybe a visit to the Senkoji Temple if you have time).

Finally you should spend a day in Kamikochi mountain valley (or overnight if you like an Alpine hike and book a hut in advance).  Do it as a day trip by bus from either Matsumoto (has a good castle but not as good as Himeji) or my recommendation would be from Takayama because you can stay a day or two more to ride around the temples and folk museum there plus do a day trip a few stops on the train to the lovely village of Hida- Furukawa.

Sadly that’s a bit more than two weeks, perhaps you could stretch to three?

Worth going to Osaka (easy trip from Kyoto) - more vibrant and street foodie than Tokyo.

I’m off there too, October and half of November. Heading to South Korea first and then over landing from Seoul to Tokyo over a 5 week period (possibly a quick trip to Sapporo to see an old mate for some catch up beers) before flying to Hong Kong for a week then home.

Great to see some suggestions for what to see and do.

Oh dude! 🙂 Lots of good recommendations on here already - rather than add to that, I'll post a couple of links from this here parish rammed full of tips that people were kind enough to share with us:

https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/things-to-do-in-japan/

https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/things-to-do-in-japan-pt-ii/

More broadly - absolutely agree with taking a big bag to send between hotels and keep a couple of day's worth of kit in small rucksacks. EVERYTHING just works - the bags you send will be where they should be when they're supposed to be there, makes transit days loads easier.

Do not fear the Air BnB - the three we stayed in were amazing, all paper shoji walls and tatami mats, and the hosts will bend over backwards to help out - two offered to pick us from the station, the third couldn't but left taxi fare at the house, all three drove us to the station at the end of the stay (one of them took us via the post office and dealt with all the bag sending stuff for us).

English is not widely spoken, especially outside of Tokyo - it does not matter, everyone will bust a gut to work out what you're after. Nevertheless, just your "hello" and your "thank you" and your "two beers please" seem always to be appreciated. If you look lost, people will try and help - we had a total stranger on the metro help us buy tickets, paid with his own money and refuse to take money from us for the tickets.

The JR Pass used to be an absolute no-brainer - have a feeling there was a big price hike last year, so worth a look to see if it'll actually save you money. If you're doing a lot of travelling, it probably will, and bullet trains are just cool anyway.

Don't go too nuts - our first trip was utterly fantastic but it was rigidly timetabled and flat-out from start to finish to fit everything in. It was utterly brilliant, but it felt like we missed a lot of the day to day stuff - second time, we left space to grab lunch or a coffee or a nice meal or some sake. Just as utterly brlliant, slightly different tone - take your pick or mix it up! 🙂

We hired a wifi dongle from - I think? - Japan Telecom both times, just easier than faffing about with sims. Inevitably, it just worked perfectly - pop it into the supplied envelope and fire it into a post box at the airport before you leave, job jobbed. Maps and translation pretty much wherever you go.

Absolutely the best two holidays - by a margin - I've ever been on, will talk about it all day and all night and all next day. In many ways it doesn't really matter what you do, because everything is nuts and beautiful and just works. Had my 50th there drinking sake and eating street food in Takayama last October and it was just PERFECT. Man, now I want to go back again! 🙂 Almost certainly, I'll be back to post more later... 🙂

I noticed that the OP used a small font for 'jp'.

Are they Big in Japan?

Badumtish.

Stepson One (aged 26, touring SE Asia) is hopefully going to be there in time for cherry blossom season, something from by bucketlist.  I can't wait to see his photos.

"I personally enjoyed wandering around and night and feeling completely safe."

Absolutely this. Vivid memory of popping out in Hiroshima to the 7/11 for more beer about 11 o'clock at night, surrounded by cheery salarymen going home and feeling safer in this strange city on the other side of the world than I do at home. Many bikes at railway stations, very few locked up (although more in 2023 than 2016).

"Not relevant for your trip, but I want to walk the Shikoku pilgrimage route when I’ve retired – I’d happily do it sooner but can’t get the time off!"

Ooo - if you haven't read it, Walking In Circles by Todd Wassel is a great book! 🙂

Ooo II - JR Pass and Imperial palace tickets will need to be booked before you go (WELL before you go for palaces). In contrast, we did a walking tour in Asakusa last year that we booked on the day that was SO much more interesting than pottering about without a clue in 2016. Localised Tokyo, I think was the company - outstanding guide in Miyu who memorably explained partway through how Japanese people can be deeply uncomfortable about giving direct answers if they think it may cause offence, only to be very directly asked if she thought Japanese or European culture was better (he did apologise shortly afterwards, to be fair 🙂 ).

JR pass - you can use it on some of the Tokyo lines too I seem to recall.

Nara.

You could maybe stay in Tokyo then go to either Osaka or Kyoto as a base for day trips.

Investigate if cash is still king as it was when I went and struggled to find cash points in Tokyo. Probably much easier now.

English isn't widely spoken.

There's a Japanese satellite channel - NHK I think which maybe worth watching.

Kamakura and enoshima if you fancy a day trip beach from Tokyo.

"We hired a wifi dongle from – I think? – Japan Telecom both times, just easier than faffing about with sims. "

Japan Wireless, it was. 🙂

Ah lovely @pondo

I figured it had been discussed at some point but it's always nice to ask new questions etc. I'll be reading those threads tonight

I’ve never been to Japan and never likely too, however, Josie Dew has written a couple of books of her experiences cycle touring there that you might find surprisingly informative!

I agree with everything @pondo said except:

We hired a wifi dongle from – I think? – Japan Telecom both times, just easier than faffing about with sims.

We got a virtual sim from Ubigi - if your phone accepts eSims (most modern ones do) before you go you sign up pay for what data plan you want, download their app and type in the code they give you when you arrive and it simply works. No SIM card, no dongle. I really was impressed.

Also another useful phrase to learn is “gochisosama deshita” which is a polite way to thank the staff at a restaurant when you leave. It means something like thank you for the delicious food, and you could see the staff were really chuffed by it.

Off the top of my head:
- Kyoto. Probably plan on spending 3 days, maybe 4 nights, there. There's a ton to see, and an awful lot of walking around to see it all; plus Nara etc.
- A cookery lesson could be well worth checking out - we found it fascinating
- Hiroshima was very interesting, but there was probably only a day's worth of stuff to see really. There's a small section of the city which is a ratrun of bars and little food joints which was great.
- I thought Osaka was quite interesting. Very much more a business type city, but it also has some fascinating little areas to check out.
- Hokkaido is supposed to be amazing, and very different in some ways from the rest of Japan.
- Okinawa is interesting; warmer, a few beaches, but quite built up in places and not as scenic as you'd expect. If you're looking at a bit of tropical island time, use Okinawa as a jumping off point.
- Definitely look at train passes. Also definitely consider getting a mobile data dongle; there was surprisingly little wifi where we went.

I really enjoyed Osaka, great food and an interesting city with really nice people, stayed there a few nights. The bars and clubs if you can find them are really good fun. Did a day trip to Kyoto and hired a bike to get round all the temples.

It's about 90mins on the Shinkansen from Osaka to Hiroshima, that day trip has probably stayed with me the most out of the whole holiday.

There's loads to see and do in Tokyo, if you want one of the weirdest culturally different experiences head to a maid cafe. That's an hour of pure oddness but should be experienced.

Probably not the right time of year when you're going but flying up to Hokkaido and going snowboarding was epic as well.

looking at bloody tickets to Tokyo now 😮

Koyasan, stay in a temple.  Of the 2 weeks I spent there this is one of the best memories. Another good one was eating okonomoyaki in Hiroshima as per the Lonely Planet recommendation.

Worked in Tokyo on and off for a couple of years...all the above seems bang on to me. I'll add a couple of things...Ueno Park is nice imo and slightly less touristy than the Tokyo honeypots, good museums there too. Consider heading down to Yokohama for a day if you're in Tokyo for more than a few days, the waterfront there is good, has a tall building to go up for a view ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokohama_Landmark_Tower) which was the tallest in Japan until recently, Art Museum, interesting ship and Yamate /Motomachi is really interesting for a walk around - it's where foreigners first lived, has a foreigners cemetery and a few interesting houses open to look around.

Edit: And how could I forget the Cup Noodle Museum on the Yokohama waterfront too!

Make sure you have a data sim/hotspot/whatever, was a bit tricky getting one when I was there, but it's pretty much a necessity for reading menus, station names etc outside Tokyo (and Kyoto etc) . Google translate with the camera does an amazing job...then just point at the menu item.

it’s pretty much a necessity for reading menus, station names etc outside Tokyo (and Kyoto etc) . Google translate with the camera does an amazing job…then just point at the menu item.

Or download Japanese on Google translate to use offline, so you don’t need mobile data/wifi.  In fact that applies in any country.