We just returned from our first trip to Japan: a ten day, nine night trip to Tokyo and Kyoto over Xmas and New Years. Here’s our report! We are a well-traveled American family of 5: me, my wife and three kids (two pain-in-the-ass high schoolers and a middle schooler). Instead of getting into the details of all the places we went to, which is probably no different from everyone else’s list of first time spots, I’ll focus on the things we picked up from Reddit that really helped on our trip. Without further adieu, here we go!
At the advice of a friend (a Tokyoite), we flew in and out of Haneda. We started with a late night flight (midnight) out of LAX and a late return flight (830pm) out of Haneda. This timing worked perfectly as we slept on the plane rides there and back, allowing us to spend most of both travel days to sightsee (we couldn’t stay longer because of my youngest’s practice schedule). We didn’t suffer from any jet lag on the outbound flight and so far (after 1 day) we’re fine back in LA.
For our cell phones, even though we had a good international plan on T-Mobile, I reserved a Pocket Wifi, which we picked up at Haneda. While we mainly relied on this device for our communication, the kids knew to switch to cellular if we got separated so they could contact me. A couple nights we let my two older kids wander off away from the Pocket Wifi in Shinjuku and Akihabara and they were able to call/text.
For our transfers, we: 1) booked a driver for 8 hours our first day, 2) reserved Shinkansen tickets to/from Kyoto on Smart Ex, and 3) had Suica loaded onto each of our iphones. For the most part, this worked well, however we did get tripped up on a couple occasions. First for the Shinkansen, I didn’t want to load each ticket onto our individual phones. Instead, I picked up paper tickets – which was trickier than i expected: after a few go rounds, I figured out that you cannot get them from just any ticket machine and you may not be able to get them until a couple days before your trip. I still don’t know which machines dispense them – but i had to go to Tokyo station before I could finally get them with help from an attendant. Second, when using paper tickets to enter the Shinkansen terminal, if you’re coming from a subway or train, you need to use the Suica/IC card to pay for your subway fare first (at the Shinkansen entrance) before inserting your paper ticket. Finally, there were several instances where something would go wrong using Suica and one of our party would not be able to exit or enter a terminal. I never did figure out what we were doing wrong, but we solved this the easy way: we’d go to the guy at the window, he’d ask politely to see our phone, and then he’d fix it for us. We also used a fair amount of Ubers in Kyoto. For a family of 5, we had to get the larger Premier rides, which was more expensive (but that’s on me and my wife for deciding to have 3 kids). On the way back to Haneda, since I’m fascinated by rail transportation, i forced the family to take the Tokyo Monorail back to Haneda . . . because MONORAIL sounds cool! I don’t know what I was expecting but there was nothing about the monorail that was any more exciting than any of the other trains that we took.
Getting a driver to pick us up at Haneda worked great, since we arrived at 6am. He hauled our luggage for us all day, we got to hit a bunch of sites, and then he dropped us off at the hotel. If I were to do anything differently in terms of transfers, I’d probably book a flight out of KIX to avoid having to return to Tokyo – but it wasn’t that huge a deal for us.
In terms of the distance that we covered, our “steps” averaged to almost 18k a day. On our highest day, we walked over 10 miles. I wore running shoes and waterproof boots most days. My oldest wore Uggs most of the time and obnoxiously ran up sections of the trail to the Monkey Park in them. Traveling in December was cool but not terribly bad (even for a bunch of “soft” Angelenos).
As for our lodging, we stayed 4 nights in Nippori, 3 in Higashiyama/Kyoto, and 2 in Ginza. All of our hotels were within walking distance of a train/subway station. I felt that the subway/train system is really well laid out, clean, safe, and efficient. Nevertheless, even though I’m really comfortable with subways and public transportation, the major stations in Tokyo really stressed-me-out (esp Tokyo and Shinjuku). I also got tripped up whenever we had to transfer from one type of system to another (like from subway to train or subway to whatever the thing is that goes to Daiba Station). Google Maps works well, but when you're in Tokyo station, nothing really worked for us.
For our family of 5, we knew our accommodations would be tight. In Tokyo we were able to squeeze into one room – but this left us with little space to walk around. In Kyoto, we had to get two rooms. Next, my wife’s a workout fiend, so I tried to book hotels with gyms. I was able to get two hotels with gyms, but our hotel in Ginza did not have any workout stuff (so she was out of luck).
With three picky kids, who mostly don’t eat vegetables, we did surprisingly well with the food. We ate a ton of 7-11 cream filled breads and sandwiches and sweets and rice balls. But we also got to try some authentic spots – like a tiny omakase place where they ate everything (bean sprouts and all!) and a great yubu spot in Kyoto. I especially enjoyed the Japanese twists on foods like pastas and sandwiches and curry buns!
With all the eating that we planned, I was really worried about the other end (from Reddit, I was well aware of the possibility of constipation). I took care of this by increasing the fiber supplement that I already take – from two servings to three a day (Metamucil + a coarser psyllium powder), and everything came out just fine.
The AI tools were a game changer for us. I used Gemini for everything. Certainly it was useful for planning – from high level itinerary planning to last minute changes (like “we’ve already finished with everything you suggested in Diver City, what else can we do?” – “oh, there’s a poop museum 50m from Gundam Station that your youngest child might find interesting. And if you’re planning to eat in the food court go before noon because you might have trouble finding a table for five.”) But we also used it to add color to some of our activities – for example, it explained difference between a shrine and a temple for New Years Eve and why we wouldn't get the 108 gongs where we went, and it tried valiantly to help get deer biscuits in Nara when all the vendors were sold out (unfortunately, we still got shut out and didn’t actually get to feed any). (Side note: I think people were hoarding the biscuits because when we were leaving around 3pm I saw people with stacks of biscuits just dishing them out to deer as they were leaving.)
Even though the sites were really awesome, the best part of our trip was experiencing how different things are in Japan for us. Like the cute (but weird, if you think about it) Kumachen Onsen restaurant we went to, where our bear friends enjoyed sitting (and melting) in a hot pot onsen at our table before we ate them. To the owl cafes, which would never fly in the U.S. To a ten story building (Radio Kaikan) populated with only toy shops and a mega Don Quijote store filled with mostly junk. (Btw, I don’t understand how these types of stores can occupy what seem to be expensive real estate in Akihabara or Shibuya. It doesn’t seem like they or the gumball dispenser stores can have high enough margins to pay the rents that must be required in these business districts – but what do I know. And I really don’t understand how there can be such a huge demand for all these action figures and card games and toys.) And my youngest’s hilarious first experience with a bidet. And while not everything was positive (like the sea of people in Tokyo and Shinjuku) or the rules that they have (my wife didn’t realize she couldn’t eat a pastry in front of the neighboring shop in the Tokyo Station, while i was off trying to get paper Shinkansen tickets), it was great being in such a wonderfully different country.
by GrouchyOne4132