Photo of Akihabara in Japan at night famous video game area with lots of bright lights on tall buildings next to a bridge and a pedestrian crossing with the word Japan written on the photo

Planning A Trip To Japan

Japan is genuinely one of our favorite countries on the planet to visit, and we don’t say that lightly. We absolutely love the fascinating blend of ancient world meets modern technology. The food is incredible, the people are so friendly and everything runs like a well oiled machine.

We’ve done two long trips to Japan, the first was for 2 weeks in the fall of 2018 and the second was for 3 weeks during the cherry blossom season in the spring of 2023. We haven’t quite been to every single place on our Japan bucket list, but we’re not far off!

In this Japan travel guide we explain everything you need to know about planning a first trip, including top experiences, itinerary, when to go and more.

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Photo of Mark and Kristen Morgan from Where Are Those Morgans standing together in front of a stone wall with green shrubs, cherry blossom trees and red wooden buildings at a temple in Japan
This is us at Senso-ji Temple in Tokyo

Places To Visit

Tokyo – Japan’s enormous and vibrant capital city is just so much fun to visit. We’ve walk around stunning gardens, eaten at endless hole in the wall restaurants, visited temples and shrines, enjoyed a buzzing nightlife and stood on top of towering skyscrapers. It’s a city you simply can’t miss if you visit the Far East.

Osaka – The food scene in Osaka is unbelievably amazing, so we always arrive hungry. It’s also really easy to get around and tick off the major attractions, so it can be done in just a few days. We like that it’s less touristy than Tokyo and Kyoto, so it feels more authentic. This is one place foodies can’t afford to miss.

Kyoto – For us, Kyoto is the most unmissable place to visit in Japan. Maybe it’s because we’re getting a bit older and slower, but if you’re heading to Japan to see temples and shrines, you need to prioritize Kyoto. It’s got a peaceful vibe, a great food scene and so many historical sites to visit.

Nara – During a visit to Osaka or Kyoto, we highly recommend planning a day trip to Nara. It’s a lovely small town with tons of temples and shrines, plus a huge amount of freely roaming sika deer that you can feed. We stayed at our first onsen ryokan in Nara, and that was certainly an experience.

Hiroshima – The Peace Memorial Museum is a huge draw for Hiroshima. But it also has a great downtown with an abundance of fantastic places to eat, and Miyajima Island which we really enjoyed visiting. It’s a long way west, so make sure you have enough time for the travel days.

Hakone – This popular holiday resort on the shores of Lake Ashi has views overlooking Mt Fuji, and it’s just a few hours from Tokyo by bullet train. We spent a few days in one of its traditional hot spring ryokans, and while it was expensive, it was a unique and fun experience.

Kanazawa – Featuring a castle, Edo period architecture and one of Japan’s most celebrated gardens, Kanazawa is one of the places we like most for an authentic experience away from the crowds. We also highly recommend the nearby historic UNESCO village of Shirakawa-go.

Takayama – We felt like we’d been transported back to the Edo period when we stayed in Takayama. It’s a small mountain town with attractive wooden buildings, narrow streets and hidden restaurants just waiting to be stumbled across. We bought our first set of chopsticks here and still use them today!

Top Experiences

Instead of looking at travel planning solely by which cities, towns or regions to visit, we like to know what experiences are worth doing when we visit new places. And trust us when we tell you Japan is full of amazing opportunities for unique experiences.

Here’s what we’d start with in Japan:

Getting Around

We never thought we’d be so excited about public transport, but the first time we got a bullet train we could hardly contain ourselves. And wow, did it live up to the hype! You absolutely must do at least one trip on a Shinkansen when you visit Japan, it’s a rite of passage for tourists.

We’ve explored pretty far and wide through major cities and rural parts of Japan, and we can tell you from experience that it’s really easy to get around. Take the bullet train when possible, but there’s also flights for longer distances or buses connecting more rural areas.

Here’s the best part – there’s always a friendly local on hand to help with directions, navigating train stations or metros or show you where the suitcase storage lockers are. And everything is bang on time, every time. It’s amazing.

We always try to walk as much as possible when we visit any major cities, but Tokyo is enormous so we begrudgingly take the metro (Tokyo pdf map). Osaka isn’t as big, but it’s still a massive city so we also use the metro there (Osaka pdf map).

Kyoto is smaller yet and it’s mostly walkable, but there are one or two places like the bamboo forest and Fushimi Inari that are too far out to walk, so we did a take a few trains (Kyoto train and metro pdf map).

The best thing you can do is buy a JR Pass in advance before you arrive in Japan. We bought 7-day passes both times we visited and planned our biggest travel days within those 7 day windows. But you can also buy 14 day and 21 day passes if you plan to travel more.

Top tip: During our busy cherry blossom trip we each had a big suitcase, so we reserved our bullet train tickets well in advance with two seats at the end of the carriage because they have bigger storage areas behind the seats.

Itinerary

If you’re just visiting Tokyo, you should plan for 3-4 days on a first visit. But we encourage you to look beyond Tokyo to include both Kyoto and Osaka on your itinerary. You can see all three places in as little as one week.

For longer trips to Japan, we recommend Kanazawa, Takayama, Shirakawa-go and the Japanese Alps to get off the beaten path, especially if you visit in the fall season. Alternatively, you could include side trips to Hakone and Hiroshima (or even Okinawa) in addition to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka.

After spending 5 weeks in the country, here’s how we’d plan a 3-week trip through Japan if it were our first time again:

  • Osaka – Days 1 to 3
  • Nara – Days 4 to 5
  • Kyoto – Days 6 to 9
  • Takayama – Days 10 to 11
  • Kanazawa – Days 12 to 13
  • Alpine Route – Day 14
  • Matsumoto – Day 15
  • Hakone – Days 16 to 17
  • Tokyo – Days 18 to 21

This action packed itinerary efficiently takes in most of the country’s popular tourist highlights and some of its lesser known areas. It’s exactly how we’d do it if we wanted to spend 3 weeks in Japan.

Accommodation

Japan is one of our favorite places in the world when it comes to unique and fun lodging experiences. Now, the two most important words you need to know are “ryokan” and “onsen”.

A ryokan is a traditional Japanese lodging with tatami mats on the floor and sliding doors with paper called fusuma. They’re very relaxing and cultural, and they come with impeccable hospitality.

An onsen is a hot spring that has minerals and provides health benefits. They’re scattered all over Japan, some are public and some are in hotels but the ones you really want are in ryokans. So look for accommodation called “onsen ryokan” to get the hot springs inside the traditional house.

We’ve stayed in some amazing traditional Japanese onsen ryokans in Hakoke, Takayama and Nara (here’s our Nara onsen experience). Yes, we bathed naked with a bunch of strangers. And yes it was a bit weird, but it’s also a pretty liberating experience. On the downside, sleeping on the floor is as uncomfortable as it sounds.

We’ve also stayed at a bunch of Japanese style hotel rooms and Western style hotel style rooms in Tokyo, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Hiroshima and Osaka so there’s absolutely no obligation to stay in a traditional lodging when you visit Japan.

Let’s talk about costs. Hotel prices in Tokyo always make us shudder. We’ve stayed in different areas around the city and every time it’s destroyed our travel budget. And lodging in Hakone is also very expensive. Otherwise, we’ve been pleasantly surprised at how affordable the hotels are in places like Kyoto and Osaka.

Here are our top mid budget recommendations:

Food

Okay, here’s where the real fun starts. The food in Japan is so good that we’d consider planning another trip right now just to dive into a ramen fest. Our favorite places are those nondescript hole in the wall spots that you could easily walk by and not even know it’s a restaurant.

But there’s also sushi, okonomiyaki, tonkatsu, gyoza, hibachi, teppanyaki and of course glorious wagyu beef. And it’s not just about the actual food itself, we love the eccentric decor and unique restaurant layouts. Oh, and let’s not forget a few plum wines and sakes to wash it all down.

In Hiroshima we ate some of the best bagels we’ve ever had outside of NYC called Wildman Bagel near the Peace Park. We also splurged on a high-end steak house called Momonoki that was excellent. In Osaka we found a cracking hidden ramen spot called Kyushu Ramen Kio in Namba. It felt like a proper locals haunt.

In Kyoto we ate at a fantastic pizza place (after a few weeks you’ll need something different too!) called Goichi Pizza. But it was so busy and we couldn’t get into a lot of popular places like Teppan Tavern for teppanyaki, so we ate and drank in Nishiki Market instead.

And finally, Tokyo is one of those places that just has so many amazing places to eat that it’s hard to pick out a few individual spots. Seriously, just walk around and pick somewhere that looks like it’s full of local businessmen!

Top tip: If you find a place you like the look of in Tokyo or Kyoto, book it well in advance. We got turned away from quite a few places we’d flagged because they were full.

When To Visit

Japan has four extreme seasons and each could be considered as a peak season in certain parts of the country. Spring brings the famous cherry blossoms, summer is naturally a busier time for families to travel, fall has stunning foliage and winter brings awesome skiing opportunities.

We’ve been to Japan in April for cherry blossoms and in October for the fall colors. Now, this might be an unpopular opinion, but we much preferred autumn.

Don’t get us wrong, the cherry blossoms were stunning but Japan was frustratingly busy, hotel prices were heavily inflated and we couldn’t get into restaurants. Plus, attractions like observation decks had massive lines and some places even closed because they were in cherry blossom areas! And finally, there’s only one color to see – pink.

Whereas fall was quieter, more affordable and honestly more photogenic (we went to the Japanese Alps in the fall and it was like New England in the US). And we could enjoy everything else on offer without having to deal with swelling crowds, just because the cherry blossoms were in bloom.

Next time we visit Japan, we’ll go in early September because it has a great balance between costs, crowds, weather and activities. But most importantly, the short Mt Fuji climbing season is still open.

Tours

We’re the do-it-yourself type of travelers because we do this for a living. But we do book tours in certain places when there’s something we just can’t miss, we want someone else to do the driving or explaining, or if we’re in a special place that we really want to make the most of. And Japan is one of those places.

Here are just some of the top rated tours we would book in Japan:

Keep Exploring

Are you planning a longer trip with stops in more Asian countries? Once you’re finished reading about Japan, keep exploring nearby areas by heading over to the following pages:

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We hope our Japan travel guide helps with planning your trip!

Happy Travels,

Mark and Kristen

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