Trip Report – October 15-24 Tokyo/Kyoto

Just returned from 9 days in Tokyo and Kyoto for our first trip and wanted to share some highlights and our general itinerary in case it’s helpful to anyone! We took the new HAL direct flight from SEA to NRT, which was about 11 hours there and 8.5 hours back. With our jobs and not wanting to leave our cats for too long this was kind of the max amount of time we wanted to be gone, but I feel like we made it work for us.

About us: Married couple in our early 30s, no kids, generally like more relaxed trips. We are early birds (went to bed around 9 and woke up at 5 for almost the entire trip), love food and animals, don’t drink so nightlife is not a priority for us. This was our first trip to Japan so I wanted to see most of the “touristy” things, but we do hope to return someday and go a bit farther off the beaten path.

Weather: I was a little bit worried leading up to our trip that it would rain most of the time but the weather was honestly pretty perfect for us in both Tokyo and Kyoto. We had a few light sprinkles on a couple of days but not enough to need an umbrella (and being from Seattle I refused to buy one unless it started dumping rain). It didn’t really start raining until our last day in Kyoto and again right before we left for the airport. Low-mid 70s with some sun, it was perfect. Didn’t need a jacket most days (maybe at night but like I mentioned we were usually back in the hotel by 7ish).

Where we stayed: For the first part of our trip in Tokyo we stayed at the B:Conte in Asakusa. I chose the Asakusa area with the intention of being somewhere a little out of the way of the busy city and we were very happy with it. It was maybe a little busier than we thought it would be, but not in the same way that Shibuya/Shinjuku were. We loved being able to walk to Senso-ji in the morning before the crowds, it was a totally different experience then. It was a little loud at night because our hotel was right above a busy street with izakayas but these closed around 10-11 and it was otherwise very peaceful. We loved Asakusa and would stay there again.

In Kyoto we stayed at the Hotel Granvia at Kyoto Station. I can’t recommend it enough, both for the location and the hotel itself which had amazing views of Kyoto tower and the mountains, and very clean and spacious rooms. Would stay here again in a heartbeat and it was so nice being right at Kyoto station for the convenience but when you’re in the hotel you would have no idea how busy the train station is right below you because it’s so nice and quiet.

We came back to Tokyo for one more night before our flight and stayed at the Hotel Metropolitan Tokyo Marunouchi which I chose because it’s right next to Tokyo station (for a convenient trip to the airport the next day) but the hotel itself was meh (we booked a standard room since it was just one night and the room was very small and dated, not my favorite to be quite honest).

Getting around: We both used mobile Suica on our iPhones for the trains and buses (took a lot more buses in Kyoto and mostly trains in Tokyo). We took cabs a few times and didn’t find them to be too expensive. Certainly cheaper than uber in the states. 

Itinerary: We spent 4 nights in Tokyo (so 3 full/non-traveling days) and then took the Shinkansen to Kyoto where we spent another 4 nights (3 full days) before heading back to Tokyo the day before our flight home (6:30PM JST). I generally tried to plan at most 1 big (scheduled) thing per day to allow the rest of the trip for exploring/discovering new things/returning to any place we wanted to go again. In Tokyo our big things were: Tokyo skytree (this was more spontaneous/we decided to go the day of), teamLab Planets, Shibuya Sky. In Kyoto our big things were: Kyoto railway museum, Arashiyama bamboo forest/monkey park, Nara day trip, Fushimi Inari Taisha hike, and the new teamLab Biovortex. In between all of that, we did lots of shopping (clothes and pokemon centers), trying food spots, and honestly relaxing back at the hotel early because we did 20-25k steps a day and were beat.

Day by day:

Day 0 (10/15): Arrived just after 4pm, exhausted, no sleep on the plane. Got to our hotel, grabbed some dinner, went to sleep.

Day 1 (10/16): No set plans this day. We were in Asakusa so went to Senso-ji super early. Then some shopping in Ginza, 12 floor Uniqlo, back to the hotel for a break. Explored more of Asakusa and went to a rescue cat cafe.

Day 2 (10/17): Teamlab Planets, Tokyo skytree later in the afternoon. Dinner at Waunn in Asakusa.

Day 3 (10/18): Explored and got food in Ueno, walked through Akihabara, made our way to Shibuya for our Shibuya Sky entry time. Dinner and then explored Shibuya.

Day 4 (10/19): One last morning trip to Senso-ji, checked out of the hotel and made our way to Tokyo Station to take the Shinkansen to Kyoto. Dropped off luggage, went to Kyoto railway museum. Explored Nishiki market later that night.

Day 5 (10/20): Arashiyama day

Day 6: (10/21): Nara park/Nara day

Day 7 (10/22): Fushimi Inari Taisha in the morning, Gion later that night for dinner. We were pretty beat by this point so had a long rest in the hotel in between.

Day 8 (10/23): Teamlab Biovortex in the morning then Shinkansen back to Tokyo. Made the mission to Shinjuku that night after dinner to see the giant 3D cat because…well we hadn't seen it yet and if you can't tell we're big cat people lol.

Day 9 (10/24): Last bit of walking around Tokyo, walked to the Imperial Palace and saw the Emperor's motorcade leaving, Narita Express to NRT.

Notes on major places we went:

• Tokyo Skytree: So like I said I booked this the morning of, and I had booked a 3pm slot. At the same time, I also decided to book a restaurant reservation in Asakusa for 5pm, thinking that was plenty of time to walk or take the train back because how long could we really spend at the observation deck? It was an easy walk to Skytree town from Asakusa and we were able to stop at the Pokemon Center to get the Skytree Pikachu before getting in line for our time slot aaaaand then spent almost the entire next 2 hours in line. I’m talking a line to scan our ticket, a line to get through the security screening, a line to get into the elevator up to the deck, and then a line to get into the elevator for the galleria, and then 2 more lines to get into the elevators back down. So obviously we were scrambling to get to our restaurant reservation and ended up taking a cab and were a few minutes late. I don’t know if it is always this busy or if we chose a bad day/time (it was a pretty nice clear day and close to sunset) but considering I was able to get same day tickets for a pretty prime timeslot, I’m guessing they way oversell tickets. If it’s always this busy I can’t say I recommend this one, although the view was nice.
• Shibuya Sky: Booked these tickets a couple of weeks prior and got the 2:40PM slot (obviously the ones closer to sunset were sold out). Traumatized by the Skytree experience the previous day, we were considering skipping this one as to not spend our limited time standing in line again, but we ultimately ended up doing it and to my surprise it was much less crowded and crazy (probably because tickets are limited). Got through line and up the elevator in less than 10 minutes. It was a great view but very windy up on the observation decks and it was not a good day for a sunset so we left before it got dark to beat dinner crowds, although it would have been fun to get a night view of the city from up there.
• teamLab Planets (Tokyo)/teamLab Biovortex (Kyoto): I booked Planets first (chose this one over Borderless because it is closing I think at the end of next year). I learned about the brand new one in Kyoto later and decided it would be fun to see so got tickets for that as well. Overall, I don’t think you need to do both. I liked Planets better because it was brighter/better for photos, my husband enjoyed Biovortex more because it felt more immersive. Both were fun but I’d probably skip Biovortex if I could do it over. We spent less than 2 hours at each of them, if that gives you an idea for timing.
• Kyoto railway museum: We went here after arriving in Kyoto before checking into our hotel, so we walked from Kyoto station and it was a nice pleasant walk there and back. The museum was cool to see, this was an activity request from my husband. It was a sunday afternoon so lots of families with kids (I think we were the only ones without a little one haha) so kids would definitely love this and it was a nice way to kill time before hotel checkin time.
• Arashiyama bamboo forest/monkey park: We got up probably around 5:30-6 this day and got to the bamboo forest by 7:30. When we got off the train it was pretty obvious the group of us tourists walking toward the forest, joked with a few others how we didn’t need Maps at that point. Getting there by 7:30AM, there were some folks already leaving and it was busy-ish but not terrible and we were able to take some photos without too many people. I would say maybe an hour after that, it probably got unbearably crowded. We hung out for a bit, walked up to the observation spot overlooking the river and made our way to the monkey park where we got in line around 8:40 and there were a few people already ahead of us. Line was long by the time it opened at 9:00. Hike up the mountain took about 15 minutes and it was not terribly difficult but we are in decent shape and I was thinking about how much it must suck to do in the summer as it is uphill the whole time. Coming back down, there were definitely some people struggling on the way up, so make sure to bring water and dress appropriately, and go early. The monkeys were worth it, though, and this was one of my favorite things from the whole trip. Overall really loved the Arashiyama area, we spent some time walking around the shops afterwards and got food there and it was great.
• Nara park: Took the Kintetsu line from Tokyo station which was around 40 minutes to Nara if I remember correctly. This was another of our favorite things. The deer are so fun to see, and you can buy crackers to feed them and they’ll follow you around. We had a lot of fun doing that, but another highlight of Nara park was of course Todai-ji temple. Quite a site to behold in person, it was difficult to fully capture the scale of it in photos and videos but it’s magnificent. Spent the rest of the day wandering around the park and getting matcha and food in Nara.
• Fushimi Inari Taisha: This was one where we were really glad to be early birds. It was a quick ride from Kyoto station and we arrived around 6:45, there were already quite a lot of people but obviously it gets much worse later in the morning. Everyone says to keep going up and there will be “nobody there” but these days many people continue up the hike so there will be people. At the time we arrived though, we were fortunate to get some pockets of time with nobody around us as we continued up, which was very nice and peaceful. However if you go any later I can pretty much promise you will be next to other people the whole way up, as when we were coming back down around 9am it was shoulder to shoulder coming up. Also, there are lots of stray cats living around there, which was a pleasant surprise!

Overall we had a great trip; we wished we had more time but at the same time we were ready to go home by the end of it, because we missed our cats lol. Japan is definitely a place that we hope to return someday. We both agreed that we enjoyed Kyoto more than Tokyo. Although Tokyo was great, Kyoto was just more our vibe overall and we enjoyed the outdoor activities that we did and it also felt considerably less hectic than Tokyo. To be honest we visited Shibuya/Shinjuku only once on our trip and both felt they were too busy/overstimulating for us to really enjoy so we didn’t spend too much time there. If we get the chance to return again we’d love to see Osaka as well as Yokohama and Kamakura.