We are finishing a 2 week trip to Japan that we had to plan at the last second. We were originally flying to Vietnam, and when we landed to make a connection in Seoul, we found out our tour in Vietnam was cancelled due to the typhoon. So we pivoted, booked flights to Tokyo from Seoul, and planned a Japan trip. We had never been to Japan before so Reddit was very, very helpful in quickly figuring out places to stay and visit.
I want to share some of our trip we found helpful and enjoyable.
Tokyo
Nohga Hotel Ueno: Lovely hotel, great area if you want a much more quiet experience compared to Shinjuku or Shibuya but still close to a major train station and a 5 minute walk to Ameyoko (a fantastic walking area with tons of small restaurants and shops).
We did many tours via Viator and getyourguide. Our favorite was https://www.getyourguide.com/tokyo-l193/tokyo-shinjuku-night-walking-tour-t565364/ with Loc, where learned about the drinking culture, the host/hostess culture, and many other aspects of life in Tokyo (but without bar hopping like many of the other tours).
One observation-Loc and a couple of our other guides were not Japanese, and they were more open and less reserved about making observations about Japanese culture compared to some other guides.
We also really enjoyed Kappabashi Street, which is “kitchen street,” and spent a couple of hours wandering the shops of kitchen items and bought some beautiful Japanese knives at Kawa Asa.
Hakone
We stayed a night at Hakone Yumoto Onsen Aura Tachibana. The room itself was dated (I think they are renovating soon) but the onsen in the room and the private, open air onsen on the roof were very, very nice. We did the half board and had the traditional kaiseki dinner, which was enjoyable and so much food.
We met some people who did Hakone in a day back and forth from Tokyo, and they felt very rushed and barely made it despite taking the first and last trains to/from Tokyo. We arrived the first day and spend over 2 hours at the Hakone Open Air Museum, which was an incredible display of sculptures and had an entire building for hundreds of works of Picasso. and then did the Hakone loop the next day. Definitely buy the Hakone pass-that simplified all the of the transportation. And if you do that you can start the loop very early your 2nd day avoiding many of the crowds.
Kyoto
We stayed at the Westin Miyako Kyoto. This is one of the nicest hotels I have stayed at, in a quieter area but a 20-25 minute walk to Gion and the busy shopping areas as well as a 3 minute walk to a subway station.
Besides the main sites and a bunch of tours, one of our favorite sites was in Arashiyama–Ōkōchi Sansō. There were not many crowds (the rest of the town was packed) and it was one of the most beautiful garden walks we went on during our time here. We got to Arashiyama at 8am on a Sunday. While there were some tourists here, it was enjoyable walking through the bamboo forest. By the time we left the town at 1, it felt like I was at a Disney on a very crowded day.
We’d also highly recommend the Gion Corner show-a 45 minute show that gives you a glimpse of 7 different kinds of japanese arts (music, Giesha dance, and a few others).
We also went to the Camellia tea ceremony, which was more about learning about the ceremony by watching a tea ceremony master perform and explain the ceremony than participating in one, but it was realistic and not touristy and enjoyable. At the end, you do make your own matcha after learning about the process. There were only 8 people in our group that morning.
A couple other tips.
Bring your passport with you as you can purchase tax free at most shops as long as you have your physical passport (we didn’t realize this the first day when we did a bunch of shopping).
We shipped our bags from Tokyo to our hotel in Kyoto. Our hotel in Tokyo took care of that, and it was only about $15 per bag. That made our travels to Hakone much easier where we only stayed a night. The bags arrive the following day after you ship it.
Thanks again to the community—in many ways it was more helpful than the guidebooks I looked through for our last second planning
by Disastrous_Piglet549